[HN Gopher] Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
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Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
Author : rayhaanj
Score : 677 points
Date : 2025-01-28 15:46 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| For those wondering, it is in flight right now
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Watching it. :-)
| mbloom1915 wrote:
| Mach 1.1! *Xoldplay's 'speed of sound' song starts*
| dralley wrote:
| Is the goal to be able to supercruise, or are they just going to
| be to waste tons of fuel on afterburning like the Concorde?
| doctoring wrote:
| I had the same question. From their FAQ
| (https://boomsupersonic.com/faq):
|
| > Will Overture use afterburners like Concorde?
|
| > No. Overture will fly without the use of afterburners,
| meeting the same strict regulatory noise levels as the latest
| subsonic airplanes. The airliner will be powered by the
| Symphony propulsion system. Symphony will be a medium-bypass
| turbofan engine designed and optimized for environmentally and
| economically sustainable supersonic flight.
| foobarqux wrote:
| > ... meeting the same strict regulatory noise levels as the
| latest subsonic airplanes
|
| Extremely dishonest: as far as I can tell (CFR title 14,
| B36.5) there are no specific noise level regulations for
| subsonic cruise flight (i.e. not take-off and landing)
| because you can't hear subsonic aircraft at cruise altitude.
| On the other hand, however, you will be able to hear sonic
| booms.
| stetrain wrote:
| I think that statement is saying it will meet those noise
| levels for takeoff and landing, not during cruise which
| will be over the ocean.
| foobarqux wrote:
| It's intentionally misleading, they are technically
| saying they will meet the takeoff and landing
| requirements (which they are required to meet by law) but
| implying that the plane is going to be quiet at cruise
| (which they want to perform over the continental United
| States, not just over the ocean).
|
| Moreover, their statement falsely suggests that Concorde
| does not "[meet] the same strict regulatory noise levels
| as the latest subsonic airplanes" but 36.301 says that
| Concorde also has to meet the same standards as subsonic
| planes (standards which exclude operation at cruise which
| didn't matter for Concorde because it was over the
| Atlantic).
| ctippett wrote:
| I'm far from an expert, but at least as it pertains to the
| SR-71, that craft was designed to use its afterburners most
| (all?) of the time[1].
|
| Edit: Of course, the Blackbird had the benefit of refuelling
| mid-air.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/gkyVZxtsubM
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| The SR-71 engine is a weird beast operating like both a
| ramjet and turbojet due shaping the flow and injecting fuel
| in the air stream.
|
| A ramjet [1] stays efficient at high speeds even though it on
| the outside kind of looks like an afterburner.
| It was a conventional afterburning turbojet for take-off and
| acceleration to Mach 2 and then used permanent compressor
| bleed to the afterburner above Mach 2. The way the engine
| worked at cruise led it to be described as "acting like a
| turboramjet".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_J58
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet
| talldayo wrote:
| The afterburner on the SR-71's engine is being fed super-
| compressed bypass air from the intake. It can ignite the
| exhaust with comparatively minuscule amounts of fuel when
| compared to a regular turbojet.
|
| At speeds beyond Mach 3, you don't even need fuel to ignite
| the oxygen. The simple friction and drag of the airframe is
| enough to ignite the oxygen around it and surround the
| aircraft with superheated plasma.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| The Concorde was in fact able to supercruise. (As someone else
| pointed out)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise#Aircraft_with_supe...
| dylan604 wrote:
| I know nothing about Boom. Why is this impressive? We've achieved
| supersonic for passengers before. Are we meant to be interested
| just because someone is taking up the mantle again, or is there
| some new design that makes it impressive?
| bangaroo wrote:
| there hasn't been supersonic civil aviation, as far as i am
| aware, since the concorde was grounded. there are no active
| commercial aircraft capable of going supersonic.
|
| this is significant because it's the first civil aircraft to
| reach that milestone since the ending of the concorde program.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > there hasn't been supersonic civil aviation
|
| There still isn't, and this is not a very interesting
| stepping stone. We already knew that we could fly a plane
| quickly. This company has no engines for their allegedly full
| scale plane. The last manufacturer dropped them a few years
| ago, and there has been no movement in that direction. This
| demonstrates the easiest part of what they're trying to do,
| not the hardest.
|
| This is the equivalent of a hand drawn ui mockup for a future
| "AGI workstation", while not at all addressing the "AGI" part
| bangaroo wrote:
| i don't disagree with any of that, i'm extremely skeptical
| that they will ever scale this up
|
| however: there is, now. this is a civil aircraft flying
| supersonic, which is still some sort of interesting fact.
| talldayo wrote:
| "Civil" supersonic aircraft is a designation, that's it.
| Like the other comment said - you can fly supersonic
| military jets with a civilian designation as long as the
| jet is deemed airworthy.
|
| The real question is whether this will ever scale up to
| be a passenger aircraft. There are still a huge number of
| unsolved problems, many of which plagued the Concorde in
| the best of years. I don't think a scaled demonstrator is
| going to give people the confidence to denounce
| traditional passenger jets.
| rbanffy wrote:
| This is the first supersonic aircraft in a long time that
| started as a civilian one and was never intended for
| military applications. Loses points for the military
| engines though.
|
| Still impressively cool.
| talldayo wrote:
| "in a long time" kinda doesn't matter to me. America
| hasn't built a supersonic bomber "in a long time", you'll
| have to excuse me for not caring. The value of such a
| weapon is dubious and only made sense in a hype-laden
| Cold War environment.
|
| Similarly I don't think we've learned the lessons of the
| Concorde yet. Not only do people not _need_ hypersonic
| flight, it 's going to create a premium class of
| hydrocarbon emissions that is already bad enough with
| passenger aircraft. Progressive countries will ban
| operation (much like they did with the Concorde) and
| routes will have to be changed. Removing the afterburner
| and making the boom quieter simply isn't going to bring
| these skeptics onboard, and they're right to remain
| skeptical.
| bangaroo wrote:
| as a person who likes airplanes (and airliners in
| particular,) i think it's cool that a commercially-
| focused aircraft manufacturer has managed to return to a
| type of flight that has primarily been relegated to
| military operations for a very long time
|
| today i am not thinking any further ahead than "wow, they
| did a really cool thing and made a supersonic test
| platform for a commercial airliner."
|
| there will be lots of future questions and concerns but
| we are far off from them, because they are not even close
| to scaling this up and there are so many gaping holes in
| the plan that i don't take it seriously at the moment.
|
| i just think the little plane is neat.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I can't wait to see NASA's one. What I really hope is
| Mach 2 at altitudes higher than the Concorde, in order to
| minimize sonic booms on land. Even if we never get to fly
| supersonic over land again, a Mach 2 plane that can cross
| the Pacific would be incredible.
| creer wrote:
| The work to minimize or delete sonic boom - that's an
| important one. And it's a NASA project.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Not only do people not need hypersonic flight,
|
| We do. It takes me more than 14 hours and two flights to
| visit my son in Brazil. Even if there was a direct
| flight, it wouldn't be much less than that.
|
| At this time, very few people visit places more than 10
| hours away from their homes. Knowing places faraway and
| different expands one's horizons. You learn that there
| are different ways of living, different ways of thinking,
| and that not everything that's different is bad,
| threatening, or broken, or "underdeveloped".
|
| The more people know each other, the better we are able
| to work together. And the better we understand we are all
| on the same boat, regardless of what our governments say.
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| Are you willing to pay 10x the price for 1/2 the travel
| time? And even if you are willing to pay that, are there
| enough people besides you willing to pay that to sustain
| this business model?
|
| I'd imagine most people in this wealth bracket would just
| fly private. I'll happily spend 5, 10, 15 hours in a
| plane if I don't feel like a sardine in a can.
|
| The Concorde failed for a reason (actually multiple
| reasons). And they actually had an engine supplier - the
| hard part - whereas Boom has been shunned by the entire
| industry for this critical part.
| notahacker wrote:
| > At this time, very few people visit places more than 10
| hours away from their homes
|
| I suspect if you were to draw a Venn diagram of "people
| who had never visited a place more than 10 hours from
| their home" and "people who could afford a ticket on a
| Boom Supersonic airliner at their target profitable
| ticket price range..." there wouldn't be any overlap.
|
| You don't need hypersonic travel to discover places far
| away, and the target market who are so busy it's worth
| paying extra so they can get back to the US from their
| European office without staying overnight aren't going to
| be doing much of that anyway...
| rbanffy wrote:
| Boom will only be the first. Other supersonic airliners
| will happen once Boom validates the market. We can do a
| lot better than Concorde did now, with higher efficiency
| engines and lighter materials.
|
| I just saw the other day China developing a rotating
| detonation ramjet. I guess missiles will come first, but,
| eventually, China will want to cross their 21st century
| empire faster than current airliners.
| notahacker wrote:
| There's a difference between "better than Concorde",
| which isn't exactly a high point of efficiency, and
| defying the laws of physics to make supersonic flights so
| cheap they can operate flights between origins and
| destinations that aren't commercially viable to fly
| direct at the moment (like your trip to Brazil) in
| sufficient comfort to attract people that don't do long
| haul at the moment
|
| The barrier to most people not to visiting places that
| are very far away isn't "flights are 40% longer than
| ideal". 40% _cheaper_ flights would open up the world
| more, but this is a step in the opposite direction
| chgs wrote:
| If there's no direct flight now it seems unlikely there's
| enough demand to justify a supersonic flight.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I can take one subsonic leg to the nearest hub
| (Amsterdam, London, Paris) and fly from there. It's that
| second leg that kills the joy of travelling.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Do none of the private jets like G6s or whatever fly
| supersonic?
| bangaroo wrote:
| nope.
|
| commercial and private jets generally cap out around mach
| 0.9
|
| i am very rusty on the economics and details of
| supersonic commercial flight, but the general gist as i
| recall is:
|
| - going much faster scales up the cost of flying at a
| rate that's hard to justify for how much time it saves.
| there is less case in the 2000s for "having to be in
| london in 3 hours from NY" than there previously was,
| too.
|
| - noise restrictions and such limit the usefulness of
| planes that are set up to fly that fast as people don't
| like being underneath constant sonic booms, so the routes
| that supersonic passenger flights were relegated to are
| mostly over water.
|
| it is just way cheaper and easier to fly subsonic, and if
| you're on a private jet anyway it's not like you're
| uncomfortable while traveling.
| ghaff wrote:
| And the range in which supersonic really gets interesting
| (to wealthy people/execs) is trans-Pacific. My dad got
| upgraded to the Concorde once from NYC to London and his
| reaction was more or less eh. Glad to have done it once
| but I'm now arriving in London at rush hour rather than
| having a nice dinner in first class.
| chgs wrote:
| There ar every few day flights from the US to Europe. A
| lunchtime flight arriving at 8pm is far nicer than 5
| hours sleep on an overnight flight or the 7am flight.
|
| West bound being able to leave the office at 6pm and be
| in New York to pay the kids to bed is great.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes, the question is how many thousand dollars out of
| your own pocket great which would be the situation with
| most people.
| chgs wrote:
| It's not about most people, it's about the 1500 in C/F
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure the people who pay full-boat fares for
| business and first today is a sufficient market for a new
| supersonic plane and a viable set of airline routes
| (within the range of the plane which probably doesn't
| include trans-Pacific).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _going much faster scales up the cost of flying at a
| rate that 's hard to justify_
|
| Worse: drag in the transonic regime is generally worse
| than subsonic _or_ supersonic.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Air travel is more popular than ever and 2024 broke
| basically all records. Why would there be less case for
| faster flights?
|
| Supersonic flight will be the preserve of the 0.1%, but
| the vast majority of private jets can't fly trans-
| continental (without stops along the way) and there are
| people out there paying $50k per flight for Etihad's The
| Residence suites. So, yes, there are people who will pay
| for this.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Would you pay $5k to fly basic economy?
|
| Air travel is popular, but extremely price sensitive.
| Ryanair and its ilk have shown that people will suffer
| humiliation to save even $50 on ticket prices.
|
| Supersonic will have to serve the rich, who are willing
| to pay to fly private. But how big is that market?
| Especially if you're still going to raise prices 2-3x?
| teractiveodular wrote:
| _Some_ passengers are extremely price sensitive, but
| full-service airlines make 80% of their profits from the
| 10% sitting up in the pointy end. It already costs 4x
| more to fly biz than economy, and 9-11x more to fly first
| (actual first class, not US domestic).
| chgs wrote:
| There are thousands of business and first class seats
| sold between London and New York every day, most in the
| 5k plus per leg range.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Would they pay that much to fly economy, for a flight
| half as long? I'm skeptical. (Comparable first-class
| tickets would be $20k - $50k.)
| bangaroo wrote:
| the way i've heard it explained is functionally that the
| ultra rich are either leaning towards things like those
| private suites onboard a large plane, or flying in a
| private jet.
|
| people don't mind the experience of flying in a plane or
| the time it takes for the most part - they mind being
| uncomfortably crammed into a seat for hours on end with
| another person spilling into their lap in a loud, stuffy
| cabin. otherwise, it's just hanging out in a different
| place than you usually do.
|
| at the point you're paying for a resort hotel room with a
| shower, bed, privacy, internet and a tv in the air... who
| cares if you spend a few extra hours? the only example of
| a supersonic airliner that i can point to, the concorde,
| was actually fairly uncomfortable and cramped because of
| the way it was designed. it's likely (though i've been
| wrong before) that future supersonic planes would make
| similar tradeoffs to try and minimize weight and drag and
| maximize fuel economy - you will trade comfort for speed.
|
| i think most of the people you're talking about would
| prefer 8 hours in a private hotel room (or full on
| private jet) with a full bar, bottle service, a shower
| and fancy meals to 2-3 hours cramped in a relatively
| small cabin after the novelty wears off. given how much
| easier it is to effectively meet across the ocean without
| traveling, the market for ultra-fast flights to get a
| one-day trip over with is also likely smaller.
|
| i can't say i know any of these facts for certain, but
| previously when discussing the return of supersonic
| flights with folks who know better than i, this was the
| general sentiment. it makes reasonable sense to me on its
| face.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the ultra rich are either leaning towards things like
| those private suites onboard a large plane, or flying in
| a private jet_
|
| Anyone making $1+ mm / year is not in regular private-jet
| territory. That leaves commercial, which doesn't have
| suites on most routes. (Most domestic routes don't have
| lay-flat options.)
|
| In between you have a $5k to $25k window in which
| something like Boom could operate. Same, dense domestic
| business seats. But lower service costs because you don't
| need to serve a coursed meal on a 2-hour flight.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| The real money is in business travel, not leisure. For
| long haul transpac flights in business class, it's not
| uncommon to pay 2-3x more for direct flights instead of a
| stopover, which means the market values the savings of a
| couple of hours at around $5000.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Air travel is more popular because of cheap flights,
| airline competition and a consolidation amongst
| manufacturers leading to standardisations. There's no
| evidence that the 0.1pct are going to swap their private
| jets that fly at 0.8 for sharing an aircraft flying on
| other people's schedules between airports they dont want
| to travel to/from.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| No, you can kinda tell by the planes shape how fast it
| can go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_rule
|
| Certainly they're fast, wikipedia says the the G650 can
| get to mach 0.9, but it's called the sound barrier for a
| reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_barrier
| dylan604 wrote:
| That makes sense. I've known that private jets fly faster
| than typical commercial jets as well as flying at higher
| altitude.
| ctippett wrote:
| We've already been to the moon before, but I for one would
| be excited to see it happen again.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| The equivalent of a hand drawn ui mockup for a future "AGI
| workstation" would be a hand drawn mockup of a supersonic
| plane, not a functional supersonic plane.
| rvz wrote:
| Might as well tell the folks at SpaceX to not land on the
| moon because it we already "knew" we could do it because it
| has been already been done before.
|
| This sort of pessimism to dismiss this achievement is
| exactly how to lose and stay comfortable.
|
| Ladies and gentlemen, dismiss the above take.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| And if someone proposed to run a company for flying to
| the moon after every rocket engine manufacturer actively
| and overtly dropped them and they had no rocketry
| experience themselves, I would be equally skeptical.
| mshook wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're being downvoted because you're
| right: they have the technology, they don't have an engine,
| and this just looks like a civilian version of a fighter
| jet pretty much (except it has 3 turbojets).
|
| And what people always fail to mention when it comes to
| supersonic flights is one of the main issue is neither a
| technological nor an economical one nor a supersonic boom
| one.
|
| Traveling west bound is great: you leave in the morning and
| you arrive, local time, before the local time of your
| origin point. But traveling east bound isn't that great:
| you still have to leave in the morning and you land in the
| evening, so the only thing you gained is a shorter flight
| time but not a full day of work or shopping or what not.
|
| So on regular flights (because Concorde was profitable, at
| least on the French side, thanks to charter flights),
| people would fly Concorde to go to NYC and fly back on a
| red eye...
|
| As someone who worked for and flew on Concorde, I think
| what they're doing is amazingly cool though and I hope they
| succeed. But I'm still unsure what the long term plan is...
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > I'm not sure why you're being downvoted because you're
| right
|
| OP is being downvoted for saying there is still not
| supersonic civil aviation on a video showing a civil
| aircraft going supersonic.
| mshook wrote:
| Fair enough...
| creer wrote:
| You are right - (And it's not a civil aircraft just
| because it's painted white.)
| ghaff wrote:
| Right. Whether I arrive in London at 4pm or 8pm doesn't
| really make much of a difference. (Admittedly it probably
| lets you arrive on the continent without a red-eye--
| depending on supersonic over land rules--as you pretty
| much have to do today.)
| enra wrote:
| I still prefer shorter flight time. I rather spend those
| hours in hotel bed or eating at restaurant than sit/lie
| in the airline seat.
| ghaff wrote:
| All other things being equal, sure. But I'm probably not
| paying thousands of dollars to save a few hours. Maybe if
| that amount of money is basically pocket lint, but that's
| a tiny percentage of the population.
| niklasrde wrote:
| If you solve the boom component, can you just keep going
| West? London, NYC, LA, Tokyo, Singapore, Dubai, London?
| mshook wrote:
| Concorde holds the world record in both directions
| actually.
|
| F-BTSD did it:
|
| - westbound in 32 hours 49 minutes and 3 seconds on 12/13
| October 1992, LIS-SDQ-ACA-HNL-GUM-BKK-BAH-LIS (Lisbon,
| Saint-Domingue, Acapulco, Honolulu, Guam, Bangkok,
| Bahrein, Lisbon)
|
| - astbound in 31 hours 27 minutes and 49 seconds on 15/16
| August 1995, JFK-TLS-DXB-BKK-GUM-HNL-ACA-JFK (New York,
| Toulouse, Dubai, Bangkok, Guam, Honolulu, Acapulco, New
| York)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde_histories_and_airc
| raf...
| panick21_ wrote:
| > they have the technology
|
| Having the tech sounds funny. In some abstract way maybe.
| Actually being able to build a supersonic airframe and
| everything connected.
| creer wrote:
| There has not been supersonic civil aviation but "supersonic"
| is not the interesting point here. "Supersonic" is easy and
| solved often in aviation. The question is what else can they
| do to make it work. And there is no aircraft yet, just a
| scale model. Progress sure but not because "supersonic". The
| new engine would be more interesting.
|
| And how is this a civilian aircraft? It is a cool one-off
| single seater with three military engines (oops, civilian
| engines derived from military and used in business jets -
| still not cheap for a one-seater). Two-seater for some
| definition of "technically". But perhaps they can sell a few
| of these to private pilots and then it would be a supersonic
| civilian aircraft. One pilot and one passenger if we insist
| on making it a business jet.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Supersonic is "easy" in the sense that rocket design is
| "easy." Orbital rockets were still out of reach of non-
| government-funded efforts until SpaceX, and supersonic
| flight is still the sole domain of government contractors
| now. Boom is changing that.
| creer wrote:
| Easy of course in the sense that that many aerospace
| engineers and aircraft have done it all over the world
| for many years. And most "government contractors" in the
| capitalist world are civilian private companies, many of
| which build both military and civilian aircraft and
| started small.
|
| Which means, for example, that even this small private
| company knew pretty well what to look for in wind tunnel
| tests and other materials work. Their first transonic and
| supersonic flight was stable, did not destroy the
| aircraft, did not kill the engines, etc. Even,
| presumably, broke through the sound barrier the first
| time they tried - and was fully expected to.
| dingaling wrote:
| > there are no active commercial aircraft capable of going
| supersonic.
|
| Both the Cessna Citation TEN and the Bombardier Global 8000
| were taken supersonic during test flights, as they have to
| demonstrate stability at speeds of M0.07 greater than max
| cruise.
|
| They aren't certificated to do it in service, but
| structurally and aerodynamically have no problem.
|
| Long-range business jets have been pushing aeronautical
| boundaries well beyond the mundane airliner state-of-the-art.
| kindatrue wrote:
| Previously Boom's CEO said this:
|
| "That's not travel, that's like a thing you might hope to do
| once in a lifetime," says Scholl, before adding, "Versus where
| we want to get, which is anywhere in the world in four hours
| for 100 bucks."[1]
|
| Anywhere in the world in four hours for $100 USD really caught
| people's imagination and attention. I'm puzzled by how they
| will achieve this.
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/boom-supersonic-four-
| hour...
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| Huh. The longest flights are around 10,000 miles. They
| usually cost over $1000. Fuel apparently accounts for about
| 25% of ticket price on long haul, so $250 in fuel normally.
| To do that in 4 hours is to travel 2,500 mph. Naively,
| traveling twice the speed requires 8x the power, so going
| over 4x the usual 550mph should mean over 64x more fuel burn,
| or $16,000 in fuel alone. Maybe a bit less since drag doesn't
| grow quite as quickly above transonic, call it $10,000. But
| if a ticket's only $100, I guess they've figured out how to
| get gas for 0.25% of typical prices.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Once you get out of the atmosphere, drag (and fuel
| consumption) is ~0. So theoretically possible, but I'm not
| sure if that's what he was talking about. Certainly
| Overture won't be capable of that.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| Fair, I hadn't considered the intercontinental ballistic
| passenger missile approach.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't that specifically one of the types of travel
| predicted to be made possible by reusable rockets capable
| of landing on the ground? From Florida to Japan in 45
| minutes type of thing
| adastra22 wrote:
| Yes point to point travel was a market for Starship. I
| think they've mostly backed off that though, as Starlink
| offers an easier market opportunity and just as much
| revenue potential.
|
| The supersonic plane would have advantages over the
| rocket approach though. Rockers require long,
| inconvenient transfers to offshore launch facilities.
| (But would have the selling point of a microgravity
| transit.)
| notahacker wrote:
| Reaction Engines in the UK spent over 35 years working
| mostly on that concept (though when they eventually went
| bust trying to scale up last year I think they were
| focused on reusable space launch business model which is
| ironically more realistic)
| ballooney wrote:
| No, they were working on the latter (skylon) most of the
| time, though the new management that came in after their
| PS60M investment quickly dropped SSTO in favour of more
| immediate RoI applications. The passenger plane was
| LAPCAT which was a paper study commissioned by the EU.
| They did some interesting real work too, such as
| designing and testing a hypersonic engine combustion
| chamber that could reduce NOx emissions, which would be a
| big problem in any 'conventional' (eg scramjet)
| hypersonic engine.
| blinding-streak wrote:
| ICPM! That's a new acronym you just coined!
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Fair, I hadn't considered the intercontinental
| ballistic passenger missile approach.
|
| The terminal deceleration on an ICBM trajectory would be
| lethal. Ballistic passenger transport at global distances
| has to be almost orbital so the entry is sufficiently
| shallow.
| mppm wrote:
| Once you get out of the atmosphere, lift is ~0 too.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| If you're going fast enough, you don't need lift.
|
| But judging by "in four hours" I'm guessing he's
| imagining something somewhere in between those two
| extremes. High enough to substantially reduce drag, low
| enough that you don't need to approach orbital velocity
| to maintain altitude.
| mppm wrote:
| "Fast enough" is very nearly orbital speed, though.
| Suborbital range is _very_ short on the lower end, and
| increases rapidly and nonlinearly later. E.g. if you can
| boost to 2km /s (~ Mach 7), this gives you, I kid you
| not, around 200km of ballistic range. It's either
| atmospheric flight or orbital flight, and there's nothing
| really useful in between.
| adastra22 wrote:
| GP is not talking about a ballistic trajectory though.
| pfdietz wrote:
| One possibility is a trajectory that's a series of skips.
| jjk166 wrote:
| There actually is still significant lift. We define the
| edge of the atmosphere to be where the lift to drag ratio
| of a plane would be less than 1 below orbital velocity
| (ie if you were going fast enough to lift your weight
| with conventional wings you'd be in orbit), so you can't
| fly conventionally in space but lift might still be
| generating a force which is significant compared to your
| craft's weight.
| echoangle wrote:
| Well the assumption was that there is no drag because the
| air density is so low. You can't just say there's no drag
| but still assume that you get lift. Your lift/drag ratio
| won't go up infinitely just because you're flying higher.
| credit_guy wrote:
| The air density decreases exponentially with the altitude,
| while the drag only increases quadratically with speed. It
| is entirely possible that there is an altitude, maybe 70km,
| where it is much more economical to fly (at supersonic
| speeds) than the current subsonic planes. Most likely the
| CEO of Boom ran the numbers, and the $100 ticket price is
| doable, at least if you exclude things like profit, capital
| depreciation, insurance, etc.
| wnolens wrote:
| > Most likely the CEO of Boom ran the numbers, and the
| $100 ticket price is doable
|
| Most likely it's aspirational, something to market to
| investors and potential employees.
| scythe wrote:
| >Naively, traveling twice the speed requires 8x the power,
| so going over 4x the usual 550mph should mean over 64x more
| fuel burn
|
| You've forgotten to cancel the denominator. If you use the
| drag relation of speed to power, you're multiplying by
| time, but the time is reduced by the speed. It would be
| more straightforward to use the F ~ v^2 relation between
| speed and force. So going 4x as fast for the _same
| distance_ would require 16x the fuel, while going 4x as
| fast for the _same time_ would require 64x the fuel. But
| the latter would obviously never happen in practice as you
| 'd circumnavigate the Earth.
| jandrese wrote:
| New York to Sydney for $100 in 4 hours? My bullshit alarm is
| blaring. Unless they have a secret teleporter project they
| aren't telling people about. If you're burning dinosaurs to
| do that it is not happening, not unless oil becomes magically
| free and even then I think you would struggle to make ends
| meet.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _New York to Sydney for $100 in 4 hours? My bullshit
| alarm is blaring_
|
| LA to Sydney is $10k on a good day for lie flat. You could
| probably charge $15 even 20k a seat and (a) turn a profit
| (b) filling the plane.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Did you miss the part you quoted that said "$100 in 4
| hours"? It does not say $100k.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It does not say $100k_
|
| >> _You could probably charge $15 even 20k a seat_
|
| Neither do I.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| That's overstating it. I literally did this flight in
| Polaris yesterday (from NYC), and I'd say tickets from LA
| are more like $5-7k. There are lots of options from LA to
| Sydney next week in that range.
| wraptile wrote:
| > which is anywhere in the world in four hours for 100 bucks
|
| That's while my tesla robotaxi is making that 100 bucks
| driving leprechauns to their golden pots!
|
| Totally not vaporware guys.
| nirav72 wrote:
| Seems like they want to bring back supersonic commercial
| flights similar to the trans-Atlantic Concorde flights. But
| with more destinations.
|
| Per their site - https://boomsupersonic.com/overture
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| The same could be said about those who watched SpaceX since the
| Falcon 1.
| gangstead wrote:
| I hadn't made that connection but it's really apt. People
| watching Falcon 1 flight 4 get to orbit probably said "It's
| 165 kg payload, so what? We've been sending satellites to
| orbit for 50 years. ULA just sent
| (https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/1538) a 2000 kg
| payload to orbit 3 weeks ago!" It really is significant what
| Boom did in the time frame and budget they had.
| ortusdux wrote:
| The Concorde relied on an afterburner to achieve supersonic
| flight, so it burned a ton of fuel. It also could not go
| supersonic over land because its sonic booms were too loud.
| This mean that flights could only go over the ocean, and they
| were expensive due to fuel costs. Boom's goal is to reduce the
| sound of their sonic booms 30x and eliminate the need of
| afterburners.
| hangonhn wrote:
| No. I don't think that's correct. The Concorde used its
| afterburners during take off and to get through the transonic
| region, where the drag is very heavy. Once you've gone past
| that the drag drops. At that point the Concorde can turn off
| the after burners.
|
| Source: https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-engine-re-
| heats
| jdblair wrote:
| That's right, the Concorde had engines capable of
| supercruise - long distance supersonic flight without
| afterburners.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise#Aircraft_with_sup
| e...
| mshook wrote:
| This is correct, reheat / afterburner was used from Mach
| 0.9 something to 1.7, after which they'd were off. So
| yes, Concorde could supercruise.
| gpderetta wrote:
| IIRC Concorde could super cruise a Mach 2 which is
| unmatched. It would also flight supersonic for most of
| its journey which is also presented unprecedented
| difficulties.
|
| It was really an unique plane.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Legend says the Tu-144 used afterburners the whole time
| while supersonic, but, then, it seems five units have
| engines without afterburners (RD-36-51's replacing the
| Kuznetsov NK-144 used in most of the fleet).
|
| I wonder what was the noise level in those late models.
| ddalex wrote:
| WHAT ?!?
| ortusdux wrote:
| "The Concorde relied on an afterburner to achieve
| supersonic flight..."
|
| "The Concorde used its afterburners ... to get through the
| transonic region..."
|
| Am I missing something, or is there no difference between
| these sentences?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Boom also requires afterburners, at least for now.
|
| You can watch them kick in on the telemetry (which goes from
| "100%" to "A/B" for all three engines) at the bottom of the
| video around the 58:35 mark. https://www.youtube.com/live/-qi
| sIViAHwI?feature=shared&t=35...
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| The engine in XB-1 test plane is not the same that's going
| in the production plane.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| When the production engine exists in physical form, we
| can absolutely discuss its capabilities. The XB-1
| demonstrator is, using afterburner to get to speed,
| demonstrating _other_ design features intended to keep
| the noise down.
|
| The original plan was a commercial partner for the
| engines, but the big three - Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney
| and General Electric - turned them down. It's one of the
| biggest remaining question marks in the entire project.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| s/When/If/
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > The engine in XB-1 test plane is not the same that's
| going in the production plane.
|
| There _IS_ no production plane, nor can there be. The
| last company they wanted to use for engines dropped them
| as a client years ago (others did earlier):
| https://english.alarabiya.net/business/aviation-and-
| transpor...
| mandevil wrote:
| Boom is not currently flying their intended engines, the
| Symphony, which does not exist yet. (1) The XB-1 is flying
| with J85's just like a T-38 has, and just like a T-38 it
| can go supersonic with afterburners. If the Symphony is
| able to meet its design goals, it will not need
| afterburners for any part of flight. How much they will be
| able to deliver on that remains the biggest open technical
| question for Boom. (2)
|
| 1: Well, their Plan B intended engines. Their Plan A was
| that one of the Big 3- RR, PW, GE- would make engines for
| them, but none were interested in taking the risk that a
| difficult engine could be designed and built in enough
| volume to make the investment back.
|
| 2: Their biggest legal question is over-land supersonic
| regulations. Their biggest economics question- and probably
| the biggest and most important of all of them- is how much
| will people pay for civil supersonic?
| kypro wrote:
| > how much will people pay for civil supersonic?
|
| Do we know how much more it's likely to cost? I could
| easily see people paying 1.5x - 2x.
|
| Anything beyond 2x I imagine would start to price out the
| average person and anything beyond 5x would probably
| price out the vast majority of potential customers.
| johncalvinyoung wrote:
| Their business model for a long time has theorized that
| they can deliver an operating cost that would allow
| airlines to offer tickets at roughly current business
| class ticket costs, which would be a fraction of Concorde
| ticket prices expressed in current dollars.
|
| I don't know if those theorized efficiencies will be
| delivered (a lot depends on that engine) or if airlines
| will price tickets at that level. But it's the theory so
| far.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _could easily see people paying 1.5x - 2x_
|
| People pay more than that for domestic first class, which
| doesn't even have lay-flat seats. $2,500 or even $5k for
| a New York <> San Francisco 2-hour flight would
| absolutely sell.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| A number of US carriers offer lay-flat seats for at least
| some of their coast-to-coast domestic flights. UA has
| over a half dozen Dreamliners flying back and forth
| daily, all with Polaris cabins. I know AA and Delta have
| routes with them, too. I agree, a two-hour flight time
| would be better!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _number of US carriers offer lay-flat seats for at
| least some of their coast-to-coast domestic flights_
|
| They're limited. And I regularly see them going for $4k+.
| bgnn wrote:
| With the amount of billionaires increasing, I'd think
| more people than Concorde had pay for civil supersonic.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > The Concorde relied on an afterburner to achieve supersonic
| flight, so it burned a ton of fuel.
|
| Wiki says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise
| > Supercruise is sustained supersonic flight of a supersonic
| aircraft without using afterburner. > Concorde
| routinely supercruised most of the way over the Atlantic
|
| Real question: How many in-production/operation engines in
| world can fly supersonic without afterburners? I think it is
| only a handful, all insanely expensive and backed with
| squillions of dollars of gov't/military money. And, the
| maintenance cycle must be out of this world expensive.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| There are some interesting technological developments around
| fuel efficiency and minimizing the "sonic boom" that's felt on
| the ground. Neither of those killed Concorde though, because
| the entire idea of Concorde turned out to be incredibly faulty.
| MOST people weren't in such a hurry to get from point A to
| point B that they'd pay 5x-10x a normal business/first class
| ticket to cut a trip down by 50% or so. The intended 100+ units
| to be built and sold turned out to be a fantasy, airlines
| weren't interested.
|
| Now consider what's changed: Back when Concorde was new,
| airline security was perfunctory and brief, so the time spent
| in the airport was a fraction of total travel time. Today that
| represents potentially 2+ hours of your travel time that can't
| be omitted. For much of Concorde's life the modern internet
| wasn't a thing, or at least mature; every business traveler
| didn't have the ability to have a conference call IN MID
| FLIGHT. Today that's routine.
|
| So what's the hurry exactly? Sure some people might have a need
| or desire, but the planned jet holds 64 people who are going to
| have to pay through the nose to make it profitable for an
| airline. Who are these people who wouldn't rather take a
| sleeping pill or futz around on their laptop instead?
|
| tl;dr Supersonic civil aviation is an ECONOMIC problem, not a
| technological one, and the economics haven't changed.
| ctippett wrote:
| On the live cast the presenter mentioned Boom have already
| secured ~130 pre-orders, including United Airlines. Not bad
| considering the Concorde _anticipated_ 100+ orders but only
| manufactured a fraction of that.
| mshook wrote:
| Well Concorde showed pre-orders don't mean much... :-D
| jandrese wrote:
| Pre-orders are just wind until they're actually delivering
| product. It doesn't cost the carriers much to make the pre-
| orders. The calculation is that if it somehow pans out then
| they won't miss the boat, if the company fails then they
| aren't really out anything.
|
| To be honest I thought Boom was an investor scam. I didn't
| think they would get this far. I still don't think they are
| going to build full scale production models and actually
| sell them, but I'll give them points for keeping it going.
| Moller kept his Aircar prototypes going for decades too
| though.
| mshook wrote:
| My take is it's not even an economic problem. Unless you fly
| really fast (like Mach 3++), flying east sucks.
|
| Let's assume we have a plane capable of Mach 3+: the SR-71
| holds a record for flying from NYC to London in 1h54 and it
| could do well over Mach 3. Let's assume our plane can do the
| same in 2 hours.
|
| If you take off from NYC at 10am, you will land at 5pm local
| time in London. Sure it's a lot faster than a regular flight
| but you didn't gain as much as flying west bound.
|
| With the same 2 hour flight (because when you fly that high,
| wind doesn't make such a big difference), you could leave
| London at 10am and land in NYC at 7am local time, that's so
| much better.
|
| But that's for a plane doing Mach 3+. Boom is planning to fly
| slower than Concorde (Mach 1.7 vs Mach 2.02).
|
| Concorde did that in 3 hours FYI.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Who are these people who wouldn 't rather take a sleeping
| pill or futz around on their laptop instead?_
|
| Me. Time is time. A lay-flat seat intercontinental is already
| $10+ k within weeks of departure, point to point. Not having
| to plan around sleeping on the plane or whatnot makes
| international trips feel domestic.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I suppose the question is whether you feel like spending
| 3-5 times as much for the same flight, to save a bit of
| that time. Perhaps you would be, but I think you can
| understand how most wouldn't, even if they could. That is
| of course assuming that unlike Concorde, this can do
| single-hop journeys longer than a trans-Atlantic flight.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _whether you feel like spending 3-5 times as much for
| the same flight, to save a bit of that time_
|
| Plenty of people do for comfort. And these seats don't
| look horrendous.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| You have a good point, maybe they'll find the sweet spot
| between price and utility.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| I keep seeing you using this $10k figure, where is that
| coming from? I'm fortunate to fly intl biz class a lot, and
| I rarely see prices that high. In September I flew SG from
| NYC to Singapore in biz class for $4k RT.
| chgs wrote:
| I spend more than that in premium economy with no
| Saturday stay and last minute like many business
| travellers.
| echoangle wrote:
| So how much would you be willing to pay additionally to get
| from a 10 hour flight to a 5 hour flight? More than 5k?
| ben7799 wrote:
| If it's already going to be expensive and exclusive they can
| easily design a program where all the passengers have to be
| some kind of TSA++ pre-approved ahead of time and perhaps
| have a special terminal and/or security screening line.
|
| The # of passengers on the plane is small so that could also
| speed up many aspects.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| There were enough passengers, and flying the Concorde
| actually became profitable for the airlines once they figured
| out they just needed to charge through the nose for it. This
| was despite prodigious fuel consumption and that fuel
| becoming much more expensive after the oil crisis.
|
| The main problems were that the requirement to only fly
| supersonic over water massively limited the possible routes
| it could fly, and that actually flying in a Concorde was not
| very comfortable (cramped, tiny windows, hot, vibration etc).
| Boom promises to tackle both of these, which will open it up
| to far more routes.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I still don't see this being something large airlines would
| be overly interested in, but I wonder if there's a private
| market. If you're Taylor Swift maybe being able to fly from
| NYC to LA in half the time is well worth it.
| chgs wrote:
| Last time I flew from Heathrow it was 45 minutes from car to
| take off, and that was with a 20 minute door close.
|
| It doesn't take 2 hours to go through security , certainly
| not in the first class section in any case.
| ctippett wrote:
| Ah yes, let's use the timeline for a first class passenger
| as the average for how long it takes to go from check-in to
| take off.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| That is the correct benchmark for potential Boom
| customers.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I fly a couple times a year from Portland, OR.
|
| The line at security is typically 0-20 minutes. Add in
| walking time, and I'm getting from car to gate in 10-30
| minutes.
|
| But I still feel like I need to get to the airport at least
| 90 minutes, if not 2 hours early, just in case I end up
| flying on a day where 1 of the 2 security checkpoints is
| entirely closed and every traveler is now forced to go
| through a single checkpoint and it's going to take over an
| hour.
| 16bytes wrote:
| They're betting that they can make supersonic travel
| sustainable and profitable with a new aircraft and engine
| design. The Concord wasn't either of those.
|
| The business case is apparently solid enough that several
| airlines are partnering with them during development.
|
| This is the first actual demonstration that they can achieve
| supersonic flight in their demonstrator aircraft, so it is a
| significant milestone but they are years away from their full-
| scale aircraft.
| bluescrn wrote:
| I suspect it'll only ever be a toy for billionaires.
|
| For the rest of us, isn't air travel supposed to be something
| we're giving up/ramping down due to climate change?
| MBCook wrote:
| What if this ends up being more efficient for long flights
| over oceans due to the ability to fly in thinner air?
| mmustapic wrote:
| Probably not, and for sure the company is not expecting
| to be more efficient than subsonic.
| tim333 wrote:
| It's the first supersonic plane from a YC startup or any
| startup for that matter. Also they are hoping to do profitable
| passenger travel which hasn't really been done - concorde had
| ups and downs but mostly lost money.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| Concorde was a large program backed by two governments and
| designed and built by nationalized aerospace companies. This is
| a strictly private affair, so no tax dollars behind it, just
| private funds. The end goal is also to be much more efficient
| than Concorde, which was a pretty brute forced effort which
| multiple large afterburning engines. They hope to make the
| production model capable of supercruise.
| EncomLab wrote:
| Concorde used supercruise for most of the flight -
| afterburners were only used for departure and for transonic
| acceleration.
| Someone wrote:
| > The end goal is also to be much more efficient than
| Concorde
|
| I would think that is not very hard to accomplish. Their
| first flight is almost half a century after Concorde's.
| Technology has progressed.
|
| As an (imperfect) comparison, in subsonic flight (https://en.
| wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Past):
|
| _"Jet airliners became 70% more fuel efficient between 1967
| and 2007, 40% due to improvements in engine efficiency and
| 30% from airframes. Efficiency gains were larger early in the
| jet age than later, with a 55-67% gain from 1960 to 1980 and
| a 20-26% gain from 1980 to 2000. Average fuel burn of new
| aircraft fell 45% from 1968 to 2014, a compounded annual
| reduction 1.3% with variable reduction rate."_
|
| Supersonic is different, but there was half a century of
| development in military supersonic flight, so a new design
| need not start where Concorde stopped.
| jahewson wrote:
| While true, the catch is that very little technology
| relevant to civilian supersonic flight has changed since
| Concorde. We have composite fuselages and that's about it.
| Concorde was close to optimal within the design constraints
| it was built for and those constraints haven't really
| changed - airport parking docks remain the same size,
| runways are the same length, London and NYC are still the
| same distance apart, people don't want to hear sonic booms,
| and few are able to shell out $$$$ it takes to pay for all
| the fuel. I have huge respect to Boom for giving this a go
| but it will be incredibly hard for an aircraft manufacturer
| to turn a profit.
| timeon wrote:
| > Concorde was a large program backed by two governments and
| designed and built by nationalized aerospace companies. This
| is a strictly private affair, so no tax dollars behind it,
| just private funds.
|
| Why is this interesting?
| henvic wrote:
| Because once things are paid by consumers things get
| better, more responsible, efficient, and so on, compared to
| free money granted by states to a few at the cost of many?
| scrlk wrote:
| There were plans for a Concorde "B" model that aimed to
| increase efficiency through wing and engine modifications,
| allowing the removal of the afterburners:
| http://www.concordesst.com/concordeb.html
| mikeyouse wrote:
| "No tax dollars behind it" is directionally true since it
| wasn't built by one of the Primes, but not literally true. As
| is the wont of every company these days, they've extracted
| tens/hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds..
|
| $200 million in North Carolina for production:
|
| https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/subsidy-
| tracker/nc-...
|
| $60 million from the US Air Force for development:
|
| https://www.aerospacetestinginternational.com/news/flight-
| te...
|
| $2 million SBIR grant for development:
|
| https://www.sbir.gov/awards/187787
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| The $200 million in north carolina is a discount on future
| taxes for when they start production. - seems a little
| unfair to count it against the company when they haven't
| even started production yet.
|
| And the total amount of private funding raised to date is
| $700 million - so maybe 10% of funding to date is from the
| government? Seems like a good deal for the government?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Some portion of it is indeed a discount on future taxes -
| but a huge chunk isn't, whether it's direct grants,
| infra/hanger upgrades at the airport, a bunch of the
| subsidies are government spending to make the facility
| more useful for Boom.
|
| It's not even that I'm opposed to that kind of spending,
| I'm a big believer in government support to bootstrap new
| industries! But the conceit that they're doing this
| without any government support should be disregarded. I'm
| only partially being pedantic on this because the CEO of
| the company in question is definitely not a proponent of
| that type of spending.
|
| It's like when some of those other Thiel-adjacent
| goofballs kept tweeting things like "taxation is theft!"
| while ignoring that every one of their companies had
| multi-million dollar government contracts.
| mlindner wrote:
| I think these types of arguments are somewhat disingenuous
| when it's referring to tax breaks on future taxes. It
| doesn't harm the state at all because the company wouldn't
| have located in the state in the first place without it. It
| just acts to remove the drag on the company being
| successful. If they're successful then the amount of tax
| revenue the state will get will be tremendous. So there's
| no downsides.
|
| And it also doesn't immediately act as funding or tax
| dollars for the company.
|
| Just talking about the "$200M" number.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Over half of the $200M is infrastructure upgrades to
| attract the new company as well.. so those are hard
| dollars spent in advance of a single new employee or
| anything positive for the state. It may end up being a
| good investment, but if you ask the voters, "Do you want
| to spend $100M in taxpayer money to get the airport
| facilities ready for a startup backed by the richest
| people on earth?" they might ask why those people don't
| just pay for the upgrades..
|
| > _" In addition, the state set aside in the state budget
| (via HB 334) $106.7 million for the site and roads
| improvement and for constructing hangers at the project
| site. "_
| beede wrote:
| Concorde didn't use afterburner during cruise. There's a lot
| of discussion from pilots and engineers in a long thread
| https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-
| question-7.h... describing the actual flight profile.
| ethagknight wrote:
| It's not a huge deal for humanity, but it's exciting for
| aviation enthusiasts and those studying the air travel space.
|
| To my layman's eye, they've built a civilian version of a
| trainer/fighter jet, now all they have to do is scale it up to
| airliner size :) Long way to go but you have to start
| somewhere.
| nejsjsjsbsb wrote:
| Arguably more impressive than deepseek.
| ge96 wrote:
| So funny how everything is live streamed now I like it,
| transparency is good
| nhoss2 wrote:
| Pretty exiting times in aerospace these days. Seeing spacex doing
| awesome innovation with starship and boom making good progress
| bringing back supersonic air travel
|
| Can someone innovate general aviation
| HappyJoy wrote:
| There's a company called Airhart that's trying to bring Fly-By-
| Wire to GA. But (at least in the US) I think innovation would
| be better focused on regulations - looking at you aeromedical
| specifically.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| Until the FAA oversight and permitting regs are updated, it's
| far too cost and time prohibitive to bring anything (aside from
| avionics) truly innovative to the GA market.
|
| For a vivid example, look at the multi-year certification
| torture that even a minor new engine design (DeltaHawk
| https://www.deltahawk.com/ ) must endure, or hell, the comical
| marathon of low-lead avgas adoption, or even a basic 12V
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22K-XdV7e-0 lithium battery.
|
| GA is a hell of a fun hobby, but not a market conducive to
| venture capital timelines or returns.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Until the FAA oversight and permitting regs are updated,
| it's far too cost and time prohibitive to bring anything
| (aside from avionics) truly innovative to the GA market.
|
| Unless you take a look at _why_ those regulations came into
| place - literally tens of thousands of people dying in fiery
| crashes. Aviation safety is an incredibly complex topic, and
| even with the strict regulatory regimes of today, companies
| like Boeing manage to skirt the rules and proudly sell planes
| that crash themselves, or fall apart in mid air.
|
| Lowering regulatory boundaries in aviation will certainly
| result in more death.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I know that we like to circle jerk about "written in blood"
| around here but your take is asinine.
|
| We don't regulate freight barges and personal watercraft
| the same way we regulate cruise ships and ferries. There's
| a pretty clear demarcation line between commercial
| passenger service and noncommercial non-passenger in every
| industry,
|
| Why is aviation not similar? Oh, that's right, because
| decades ago the FAA and Congress brought the entire
| industry (with a tiny carve-out for experimental) under the
| same regulatory scheme and damn near killed the GA
| industry.
|
| Furthermore, the whole Boeing fiasco is a great
| illustration of how futile the approach that you people
| peddle is. Boeing and their army of lawyers and carousel of
| lobbyists get to skirt or play right up to the letter of
| the the regulation while the little guy has to bend over
| and take it full force. So what even is the point of having
| the same set of rules if the big guys are the ones subject
| to less rules in practice?
|
| I'm not saying repeal it all or exempt GA but the current
| approach is clearly the worst of both worlds and ought to
| be changed.
| sofixa wrote:
| > I know that we like to circle jerk about "written in
| blood" around here but your take is asinine.
|
| Aviation regulations are indeed written in blood. I can
| recommend https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/ if you're
| into reading, or https://www.youtube.com/@MentourPilot if
| you're into watching for some education of how bad things
| used to be. Airplane crashes were an almost weekly
| occurrence, sometimes barely making it into national
| news. Enormous advances have happened in technology,
| redundancy, training, maintenance to make aviation
| absurdly safe. In the US, you have a higher chance of
| injury/death while driving to the airport than flying (if
| anything that's an indictment on American roads, terrible
| cars and bad drivers, but that's a whole other topic).
|
| > We don't regulate freight barges and personal
| watercraft the same way we regulate cruise ships and
| ferries. There's a pretty clear demarcation line between
| commercial passenger service and noncommercial non-
| passenger in every industry,
|
| > Why is aviation not similar? Oh, that's right, because
| decades ago the FAA and Congress brought the entire
| industry (with a tiny carve-out for experimental) under
| the same regulatory scheme and damn near killed the GA
| industry.
|
| If you think GA is under the same regulatory regime as
| civilian airliners, you're misinformed. It's drastically
| easier, with much less redundancy or safety requirements.
| None of the current GA planes would be accepted in
| commercial airline service for a variety of reasons. For
| a quick example, TCAS (a system that will warn you if
| you're going to crash into another plane) isn't mandatory
| for planes with less than 30 seats or with takeoff weight
| less than 33,000lbs.
|
| And as for why there are still regulations for GA, it's
| quite easy - those planes fly in the same airspace, and
| them falling down on population centres or crashing into
| other planes can kill people just as much as a civilian
| airliner. You really really have to try to kill someone
| if your Zodiac fails.
|
| > Furthermore, the whole Boeing fiasco is a great
| illustration of how futile the approach that you people
| peddle is. Boeing and their army of lawyers and carousel
| of lobbyists get to skirt or play right up to the letter
| of the the regulation while the little guy has to bend
| over and take it full force. So what even is the point of
| having the same set of rules if the big guys are the ones
| subject to less rules in practice?
|
| Boeing aren't subjected to less rules. They're lucky to
| be in a country that doesn't care that much for rules
| because they're the national champion and must be
| protected. But the rules still are being enforced for
| them - they're at a very low production cap because they
| shat the bed so badly so many times.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| I'm not saying the regulatory environment is wrong. I'm
| saying the market it creates (aside from avionics) is not a
| good fit for innovation stemming from venture capital due
| to venture capital's expected return magnitudes and
| timelines.
|
| I cited three technologies (ICE engine redesign, low-lead
| gasoline, and lithium batteries) where those timelines for
| market adoption (outside of GA) were orders of magnitude
| (decades) shorter.
|
| My comments were solely targeted at GA. Commercial aviation
| is an entirely different ball game.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Successful supersonic test! Amazing what humans can achieve.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Boom Supersonic to break sound barrier during historic test
| flight today_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42852077
| echoangle wrote:
| Why are some camera shots so dull? Is that a HDR problem?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Long tele lens - lots of air between it and the plane, I'd say.
| echoangle wrote:
| It was actually fine for the air-to-air shots but all shots
| from the ground/drones were very washed out.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Likely LOG settings in the cameras, a color profile aimed at
| color correction. If LOG footage is not color corrected it
| looks like that.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ap8k564N_w
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_profile
| stephen_g wrote:
| Somebody must have forgotten to load a LUT into the camera!
| stephen_g wrote:
| Yes I noticed this for a lot of the ground shots - looks like
| they've made a mistake and we're seeing the uncorrected log
| curve output of the camera, and they've forgotten to load (or
| enable) a LUT (look up table) for the conversion to linear.
|
| It's basically just missing half of the image processing,
| normally you'd only output to that to a recorder if you were
| going to apply all the grading later in post production (which
| obviously they're not doing here).
|
| See this random article for a bit of a rundown -
| https://pixflow.net/blog/difference-between-raw-log-and-rec-...
| cowsaymoo wrote:
| The camera also lost focus on the jet during the record where
| it went transonic for the first time ever (around 1:01). It
| looks like they struggled for a while to recover focus
| against the featureless sky because I would guess they had
| their lens set to auto focus, which uses a spot or grid of
| consensus edge detectors. There's no circular polarizer
| filter equipped because you can see window glare, and that
| momentarily caused the AF grid to choose the window as the
| subject because there wasn't (any?) a good enough stabilizer.
| For a relatively stationary subject like this, it's more
| reliable to pull focus manually because the camera can be
| jostled without confusing an AF algorithm. Even better to
| periodically use spot auto-focus to acquire the sharpest
| focal plane, then flip it to manual.
| ics wrote:
| For those wanting to jump to where it goes supersonic, it happens
| a little after minute 11 on the flight time. The camera shots are
| clearer during subsonic flight, then it gets fairly blurry. The
| takeoff and climb were interesting to see; also before it goes
| supersonic the shots from the air are remarkably clear.
| cryptonector wrote:
| 1:01:29
| tomaytotomato wrote:
| Can't wait to live the good life of the 80/90s again with that
| our parents enjoyed with 5 hours flights to New York.
|
| More technology advances please so we can break through this
| zeitgeist of human pessimism and introspection.
|
| Onwards and upwards!
| jandrese wrote:
| My parents certainly never did that. Very few parents did, the
| tickets were way out of the price range of the typical
| passenger. It's like pining for the days when people traveled
| in the opulant lounges of ocean going steamer ships, forgetting
| that the bulk of the people were crammed into tiny cabins with
| few amenities for the long journey.
| JshWright wrote:
| Scott Manley posted an interesting video including some
| interviews and technical details on XB-1 (as well as some time in
| the XB-1 simulator near the end of the video).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITGgRhjcHAM
| ctippett wrote:
| The plane looks so small on the runway, I thought how could it
| possibly hold 64-80 passengers.
|
| Hint: it's because the XB-1 is a one-third scale model of their
| fully fledged Overture.
| hinkley wrote:
| So it's a jet for ants?
| papertokyo wrote:
| Until they make it at least three times bigger, yes.
| yownie wrote:
| Why would you want ants 3X bigger?!
|
| It would be horrible!
| reassess_blind wrote:
| Jesus, that's a lot of ants.
| conradfr wrote:
| It's kind of cute when it takes off.
| ctippett wrote:
| Is it okay/usual for the test pilot to partake in a glass of
| champagne so soon after landing?
|
| On a side note: Channing Tatum is a shoe-in for playing the
| pilot, Tristan "Geppetto" Brandenburg, if this ever gets made
| into a movie.
| nfriedly wrote:
| It's certainly better than before landing!
| ctippett wrote:
| For context, my father who's a commercial pilot for Air New
| Zealand says this wouldn't be condoned. Take that as you will.
| ballooney wrote:
| 'Partake in' - you mean drink? What's the issue?
| mv4 wrote:
| Watched it live, and it was amazing. Beautiful aircraft.
| finiche wrote:
| BMW
| nwatson wrote:
| To be built in Greensboro, NC / North Carolina ...
| https://boomsupersonic.com/superfactory
| zoba wrote:
| Wow, as a Winston Salem native this is interesting news. Thanks
| for sharing.
| nwatson wrote:
| I'm in WS myself now, going on 12 years.
| mrtksn wrote:
| How cool is that, hopefully will pressure Airbus into developing
| one too. So far they did silly concept vides only.
|
| I'm also quite worried about Airbus after winning against Boeing
| becoming complacent since Chinese or Russians are not even close.
| belter wrote:
| How do you make this profitable?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How do you make this profitable?_
|
| Selling it for more than it costs to build.
|
| Computer-based modelling, advances in our understanding of
| supersonic flight and sonic booms and a mature civil (and
| private) aviation industry make the profit case much more
| compelling than it was for the Concorde. (The real test will
| be in their engine.)
| alex_duf wrote:
| I assume the question was about the questionable economics
| of running a super-sonic airplane profitably.
|
| The Concorde was notorious for bleeding money.
|
| Maybe the premium aspect will be enough, given that we have
| a bigger and bigger chasm between rich and poor, or maybe
| the economics of running it won't compete against sub-
| sonic, lower fuel consumption planes.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm skeptical. Trans-Pacific would be interesting for
| some because that's a long time in a plane even with lie-
| flat seating. But then you need a lot of range because
| once you have to refuel you've cut into your time
| advantage.
|
| NYC to London or Paris? Sure.
|
| But now you still need to find people willing and able to
| spend $5K+ each way. I'd _like_ to do it but
| realistically I 'm not going to.
| senko wrote:
| First class NY to Paris in a couple of weeks, one way, is
| ~$6k "best overall", with $10k for "fastest" (checked a
| random flight on Skyscanner).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _First class NY to Paris in a couple of weeks, one way,
| is ~$6k "best overall", with $10k for "fastest"_
|
| La Premiere will regularly go for $20k one way.
| echoangle wrote:
| And how many people are booking that for that price? Is
| that enough to build a dedicated service on?
| senko wrote:
| I wouldn't know, tho I am sure there's a McKinsey deck
| somewhere that calculated this :)
| ghaff wrote:
| European airfares from the US can be really funky. I'm
| doing a trip in a couple months with a roundtrip for
| Heathrow and I'm actually taking the Eurostar back to
| London because returning directly from Paris was going to
| be so expensive. Open jaws in particular can be fairly OK
| or can be really expensive (as in my case).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I'd expect for trans-oceanic, you'd have people
| scheduling their travel around limited flights, given the
| unique offering.
|
| I.e. you aren't trying to figure out "How do I 100%
| capacity a 8:17am daily flight?" (traditional subsonic
| carriers) but rather "How much demand is there per
| week/month?" (Boom)
|
| If the flight is Wednesdays-only, then folks line their
| travel up on Wednesday. Because the alternative is a much
| longer flight.
| ghaff wrote:
| There are usually at least daily flights on most routes.
| Business travelers, in particular, aren't going to wait a
| few days to take a flight that's a few hours faster.
| Absolutely no one is heading out 5 days early to shave 3
| or 4 hours off their flight time.
|
| Even for tourism, I wouldn't.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| Especially at 2-3x the cost
| ghaff wrote:
| I suspect a lot of people here get really excited at the
| idea of supersonic flight but would never pay the
| business class+ premium themselves.
| echoangle wrote:
| Yes, I think many people would at most do it once so they
| have flown supersonic, and then never do it again.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Depends where Boom's ticket prices fall.
|
| If they go for the low-rich market, their target customer
| moves schedules around themselves. If a CEO can't be in
| Europe until Wednesday, then the meeting happens
| Wednesday.
|
| And the key thing Boom will be selling is literally
| unique: fewer hours on a plane.
|
| To some, that's a nice to have. To people who hate being
| on a plane, it's worth a lot.
|
| And even lie-flat first class sucks... it's nice, but
| you're still crammed into a dehydrating box.
| ghaff wrote:
| Color me skeptical. I don't think CEOs have as much
| schedule flexibility as you think they do. A lot of the
| time they're traveling to meet with customers,
| analysts/media, investors, and so forth. And they have a
| lot of timing constraints. Senior execs tend to travel a
| _lot_. It 's part of the job description basically along
| with early morning and late night conference calls and,
| generally, often grueling hours although some maintain
| better balance than others.
|
| And trans-Atlantic flights just aren't all that long. I'd
| pay some premium to avoid a red-eye but not likely
| $5K-$10K even if I could. That's probably about what I'm
| paying for a whole 3 week trip today.
| Full_Clark wrote:
| "People scheduling their travel around limited flights"
| drove extra operational complexity and expenditure for
| Concorde; it's not a hassle-free business case.
|
| BA and Air France understood that people paid extra to be
| able to quickly travel transatlantic[0]. That premium
| value proposition depends heavily on passengers'
| expectation that the flight WILL go at the scheduled
| time. The airlines had to invest significant extra
| resources in spare parts, additional staffing, and
| standby airframes to ensure on-time performance.
|
| If the Concorde were to ever develop a reputation for
| six-hour departure delays or days of cancellations in a
| row, no one among their premium customer base would
| bother paying extra for it.
|
| British Airways and Air France did profit from them prior
| to the 9/11 hijackings and the flight 4590 crash, so it's
| not an impossible hurdle to clear for Boom. But the value
| proposition for a new SST is going to be vulnerable to
| operational concerns that don't affect the rest of an
| airline's fleet.
|
| --
|
| [0] https://omegataupodcast.net/166-flying-the-concorde/
| - "Every now and then they'd have a survey amongst the
| regular passengers [...] 'What do you think you paid for
| your Concorde flight today?' These people haven't got a
| clue what they paid for their Concorde flight today. They
| just tell their secretary, 'book me on tomorrow's
| Concorde, I need to get to New York in a hurry!'"
| fsloth wrote:
| $10k transatlantic return hop. Add expedited immigration.
| Does not sound insane. First class tickets London-NY can
| be already in this price range. Not for everyone of
| course (certainly way out of my price range).
| ghaff wrote:
| There's a market, just not sure how big. Business class
| works mostly because there's a big plane full of people
| paying for Economy (and maybe Economy Premium) and I
| suspect a lot of business is upgrades for flyers with a
| lot of status or mostly using miles. With e-entry (not
| sure how it will work with ETA now), I haven't waited
| long in London for immigration in ages.
|
| British Airways business class-only flights from the City
| airport have been off and on. Don't know their current
| status. I _could_ afford business but it seems like a
| poor value relative to other things I could do other than
| maybe a co-pay with miles trans-Pacific.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The Concorde was notorious for bleeding money._
|
| I see this stated all the time on HN, yet there's a whole
| section at the top of this very comments thread where
| people are talking about how very profitable the Concorde
| was.
|
| One person quoted the line "There were times, in fact,
| when the seven aircraft in the fleet would contribute
| around 40 per cent of BA's entire profits."
| notahacker wrote:
| The key point is that the seven aircraft (two of which
| they paid PS1 for!) spent very few hours per week in the
| air, because whilst it was profitable on one
| transatlantic route at very high prices, it would have
| lost money on just about any other route or with more
| frequent operation. And to have a profitable _airframe
| programme_ you need your customers to be able to operate
| more than a couple of routes.
|
| (the 40% figure is more an indication of BA's sometimes
| thin margins than massive unfulfilled potential)
| wongarsu wrote:
| My understanding is that it was profitable if you got the
| aircraft for free and already had pilots capable of
| flying them.
|
| If the Concorde had been an actual financial success they
| would have developed it further and made a successor. And
| if BA and Air France had thought that the Concorde would
| continue making them money they wouldn't have retired it
| after one tragic accident in 30 years of operation. The
| 737 Max is still being made after much worse.
| alex_duf wrote:
| If I recall correctly, that's one of the well documented
| places where I had understood the fact that the concorde
| wasn't profitable, and would more or less never by in its
| current context:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBvPue70l8
|
| Which isn't to say Boom may not succeed.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| By understanding that it'll take over a decade, maybe
| multiple decades, to break even (because it's not a tech
| company) and planning accordingly.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Could this thing take a polar route from New York to Hong
| Kong?
| Full_Clark wrote:
| That's over 8,000 miles. An aircraft with that kind of
| unrefueuled range could go pretty much _anywhere_ from New
| York, except Australia, SE Asia, or the tips of Africa and
| India.
| thombat wrote:
| Planned range for the Boom Overture is 4900 miles, so only
| a little better than the 4500 miles of Concorde, which
| occasionally had to make a refueling stop going westward
| over the Atlantic. So it won't have the capability for
| transpolar or Trans-Pacific flights.
| crowcroft wrote:
| Airbus won't do anything until someone proves the economics of
| it make sense.
| drysine wrote:
| Won't do things like A380?
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| More of the same but bigger? While it is a feat of
| engineering to make an aircraft the size of an A380 it is
| essentially the same design as every other commercial
| airliner, not revolutionary.
| crowcroft wrote:
| Super impressive, but I agree with this, it was an easier
| project to plot on a spreadsheet and forecast a path to
| profitability.
|
| Using current technology and looking back at the Concorde
| to make any predictions on supersonic passenger travel
| generates a spreadsheet with a lot of red on it.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| If somebody wants to burn their time and money trying I
| am totally cool with it. If they succeed in their vision
| they will be handsomely rewarded and transport gets
| faster. If they fail they still tried to make the future
| more amazing.
| crowcroft wrote:
| Hell yea brother
| IndrekR wrote:
| Without A380 there would be no A350 XWB.
| papertokyo wrote:
| Why is that? (These are my favourite planes to fly on,
| curious how the A350 is derivative given the apparent
| difference in packaging.)
| panick21_ wrote:
| That's kind of a ridiculous statement. With the money
| spend on A380 they could have developed a whole lot of
| different things.
| chgs wrote:
| Probably not again given what a commercial failure it was
| Intralexical wrote:
| Boeing proved "Big Plane" was profitable with the 747.
|
| Unfortunately for Airbus, it also stopped being profitable
| before they finished the A380.
| sofixa wrote:
| They won't do supersonic jets in particular, but they already
| have a ton of moonshots to try make sustainable aviation
| possible and with economics that make sense. Stuff like
| hydrogen propulsion, hydrogen electric, and battery electric
| designs, with a variety of weird shapes and forms. They're
| the only big aircraft manufacturer with such a wide array of
| potentially groundbreaking (if they make it) research. And
| theirs is drastically more important than Boom - time and
| time again, it has been proven that mass aviation is all
| about economics, not speed. Soon it will be economics +
| sustainability, speed being a niche which might not even be
| profitable (Concorde, Convair and many others have tried
| differentiating themselves on speed and failed).
|
| https://www.airbus.com/en/innovation/energy-
| transition/hydro...
| ksec wrote:
| This is slightly off topic, but why cant we start rebuilding
| Concorde?
|
| Wouldn't it be much easier to rebuild using modern technology?
| And try to get Mach 3 over the Atlantic so London to New York
| could hopefully be under 3 hours including take off and
| landing.
| nradov wrote:
| For Concorde the entire supply chain is long gone. A clean
| sheet design based around currently available parts would be
| cheaper than trying to resurrect an old design.
|
| As for speed, Mach 3 is really tough because of extreme
| airframe heating. Mach 2 is about the highest sustained speed
| an airplane can manage without using really exotic materials
| or active cooling.
| panick21_ wrote:
| You are contradicting yourself.
|
| You can either a) rebuild the Concord or b) use modern
| technology.
|
| If you use modern technology, its not a Concord anymore.
|
| And you can't magically go Mach 3 just because you say its
| 'modern'. What existing engine can do that? And even if you
| had an engine, a Concord will not do that anyway.
|
| So really you are talking about developing a whole new plane.
| And that's gone cost 10-20 billion $ and including the engine
| like quite a bit more.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| So why is this happening but SST got pilloried due to noise,
| vibration, moisture in the stratosphere, ozone layer, etc. Did
| these issues get solved with the Boom aircraft, or is the
| solution to route around them via marketing and hope no one opens
| a history book?
| stego-tech wrote:
| Watched the livestream. Haven't gotten that excited over a
| performance test since the early days of SpaceX, before the dark
| times.
|
| Wishing them all the best! Beautiful aircraft, beautiful
| demonstration, and hopefully more beautiful datasets that exceed
| their expectations.
|
| Just don't Milkshake Duck this.
| dang wrote:
| Previous thread in sequence:
|
| _Boom Supersonic to break sound barrier during historic test
| flight today_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42852077 -
| Jan 2025 (99 comments)
| thepaulmcbride wrote:
| The angle of attack at both takeoff and touch down is pretty
| wild!
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I can't let go of the suspicion that this could become some
| kind of military (drone or not) airframe.
| __loam wrote:
| The military has had supersonic aircraft since the 1950s, why
| would they care about this?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| If it's cheap to produce.
| __loam wrote:
| The F16 is already cheap, proven, integrated with
| everything, and available in great numbers. The Air Force
| also has a super sonic bomber in the B1 lancer, and a
| mass produced supersonic stealth fighter/bomber in the
| F35, which is actually pretty cost effective despite its
| public perception. Maybe there's a place for a large
| supersonic transport but the Air Force also has a lot of
| very heavy logistics aircraft already.
| nine_k wrote:
| F-16 is a beauty, but it can't do Mach 2 for a prolonged
| time; it actually can't even do Mach 1.1 for a prolonged
| time.
|
| F-22 is a marvel, and can fly supersonic for much longer,
| but its cost is exorbitant, and it's not even produced
| any more.
|
| F-35 is more economical but it literally can fly
| supersonic for a minute or two with the currently
| installed engines.
| Sammi wrote:
| Also the last B-1 was produced in 1988. The US hasn't had
| a long range super sonic bomber in production for 36
| years.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| You should be asking yourself why the US would buy a
| supersonic military aircraft when they've spent the last
| 70 years moving AWAY from higher speeds because it
| doesn't provide any value.
|
| Why would you spend a single dollar on making your launch
| platform go a little bit faster when the thing you are
| launching goes faster than Mach 4? And that was true in
| the 80s.
|
| Power output is important but top speed is not a
| priority. The B1 Program was cut partially because you
| could just buy 100 stealthy cruise missiles for the price
| of one B1 bomber which the Air Force did not think was
| more survivable than a B52. In the 80s.
|
| Every country has built slower planes entirely because
| higher sustained top speed just means a more expensive
| engine, more fuel usage, and more frequent maintenance.
|
| Boom insists they will somehow magically overcome all of
| those problems.
| two_handfuls wrote:
| If Boom succeeds in making a supercruise engine that can
| stay supersonic without needing afterburners, then the
| military may be interested because that will be cheaper
| than their current engines that need afterburners and use
| more fuel.
| echoangle wrote:
| How is that special? The military already has the F-22
| which can supercruise just fine. Or the Eurofighter if
| your military isn't the USAF.
|
| And also, fuel cost is probably the last concern of an
| Air Force. Maybe logistics of supplying fuel in an actual
| war is important, but I think the money for buying the
| fuel itself is basically zero compared to maintenance and
| getting the plane in the first place.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| F22 isn't produced and fuel is more about range than
| cost.
| dralley wrote:
| The point is they know how to do it and they have the
| designs. Supercruise is also more about the design of the
| whole system and not just the engines.
| two_handfuls wrote:
| Thank you, I did not know that.
| nradov wrote:
| The military has never had an operational supersonic
| transport aircraft. It's not a high enough priority for
| them to fund development of one from scratch, but if it's
| available on the civilian market then they'll probably buy
| a few. There are a few potential missions such as dignitary
| transport or rapid delivery of special operations teams.
| __loam wrote:
| Good argument.
| benced wrote:
| I can't think of a single aerospace company that is not dual-
| use. I doubt Boom is building with that in mind but if
| they're around in 50 years, I'd be shocked if they did not
| have a thriving defense business.
|
| (which I think is good but ymmv)
| sofixa wrote:
| > I can't think of a single aerospace company that is not
| dual-use
|
| Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are pretty squarely
| military only.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Is there a shortage of those?
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| They have some interest in a "special mission" version, a
| common aerospace euphemism for militarized.
|
| They also claim to be a potential candidate for a next gen
| Air Force One.
|
| That's the game with aerospace startups though. The CEO gets
| everyone wrapped around a "vision" for some gonna-save-
| humanity green peace machine (insert obligatory disaster
| response mission) and then once everyone is hooked you look
| up one day from your cruise missile design and wonder WTF
| just happened...
|
| Source: have worked for several of these kinds of startups,
| have seen this happen pretty much everywhere.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Reminded me of a goose landing on a lake.
| jameslk wrote:
| Boom (YC W16) - Supersonic Passenger Airplanes:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11329286
|
| I remember seeing this post about Boom going through YC, 9 years
| ago. It's really cool to see the founder laying out what he
| wanted to accomplish in the comments and then seeing it happen
| today. Especially fun looking back at those comments saying it
| couldn't be done and all the haranguing over the name "Boom" :)
|
| Congrats to the Boom team! Such a great accomplishment.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| I've been one of the skeptical commenters (under another
| username), not because I think it's technically impossible, or
| because I hate innovation or bold bets, but because I don't
| think the economics make sense, and their original timelines
| and cost estimates were off by an order of magnitude, at least.
| Aviation is littered with startups that burned through hundreds
| of millions over the course of a decade or two and then
| disappeared.
|
| And as others have pointed out, this is cool, but hardly novel,
| and after nine years and hundreds of millions, they've only
| accomplished the _easiest_ part of what they need to accomplish
| in order to carry commercial passengers on supersonic flights.
| Regular passenger jets built by the most experienced companies
| in the world take tens of billions and decades to go from
| conception to flying. Boom has decades ahead of them before
| they're going to reach the finish line.
| ghaff wrote:
| Not that I care as much these days, but would I have liked
| routine Mach 2 flight that my company would have paid for
| when I was traveling a lot? Absolutely. But that wasn't in
| the cards.
|
| And the relatively fewer flights I take today for relatively
| longer trips in general, I mostly look at paying an extra $5K
| and think "I could do a lot more interesting things with that
| money than be more comfortable for some hours" (or
| hypothetically, save a few hours). And I suspect most people
| here would be in the same boat if it came to putting cash
| down on the barrel.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I guess the target market is those who feel about the
| opportunity cost of another $5,000 the way you and I do
| about another $5.00
| wongarsu wrote:
| For companies with executives that travel a lot (visiting
| different offices or store locations or lots of in-person
| client visits across the country) it might be literally
| saving them money. And even if it doesn't save them
| money, the prestige and the fact that the people who
| approve the purchase are the same people who get to use
| it help justify the cost
| ghaff wrote:
| Lots of companies have execs who do those things that
| still don't fly private jets today and may not even have
| execs who always fly business class unless they have the
| status to routinely get upgraded. Certainly no company
| I've ever worked for and I've worked for some pretty
| large ones.
| runarberg wrote:
| Honestly if that is all they are hoping for, I sincerely
| hope they fail spectacularly. The world is unequal as it
| is and I certainly don't want the rich flexing their
| wealth with vanity like this, especially not considering
| the climate cost of all this, and the fact that we are
| already in a climate catastrophe that is
| disproportionately caused by the rich while harming the
| poor.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even _if_ (a big if) Boom can come out with a supersonic
| passenger jet that is economically viable, you can be
| pretty certain it will be for people who routinely buy
| business /first tickets (or fly Netjets/other private)
| today.
| ghaff wrote:
| Or $50 anyway. I have used miles to upgrade trans-Pacific
| and reluctantly even paid a few hundred $ co-pay out-of-
| pocket if I couldn't expense it. But I agree with your
| basic point. I'm almost certainly not going pay a few
| thousand extra even for a long flight out of pocket. I
| _could_ but my money is limited and there are a lot
| better experiences I could purchase with $5K.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| This is a long way from a supersonic passenger flight, isn't
| it?
| pembrook wrote:
| Endless pessimism, even in the face of evidence to the
| contrary is a hallmark of HN. Thank you for continuing the
| tradition. May you never hold out hope for anything positive
| in the future.
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| Blind optimism is just as obnoxious as blind pessimism -
| both are based on ignorance. Boom still hasn't solved the 2
| hardest problems after nearly a decade. Currently
| regulations prohibit supersonic flight over land. It's a
| total guess whether or not they'll be able to overcome
| this, but I remain skeptical both of their noise claims and
| their ability to overturn legislation. Also they don't have
| a real plan for an engine...9 fucking years later (because
| all the big engine manufacturers refuse to work with them).
|
| If anything the pessimists are being proven right.
| kaonwarb wrote:
| Disagree that blind optimism is just as obnoxious. Blind
| pessimists are much less likely to reach beyond what's
| currently considered possible. We need irrationally
| optimistic folks.
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| Irrationally optimistic people will tell you they have a
| device that defies the laws of physics (I mean hard laws,
| like conservation of energy or the speed of light), and
| investors will give them money. I have seen this happen
| enough times I'd actually have to stop to think of the
| correct number.
|
| The point is both are disconnected from reality. What we
| need are people that aren't full of shit. There is a
| place between "everything is impossible" and "everything
| is possible" that works better for getting things done.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| > There is a place between "everything is impossible" and
| "everything is possible" that works better for getting
| things done.
|
| Exactly, and we know for sure that Boom are definitely
| NOT in that place, how?
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| Well, it's hard to fly a plane without an engine. Just a
| minor detail though. How hard can the hardest part really
| be? Also you should always save the hardest part for last
| if you want to be sure you'll succeed.
|
| It's only been a decade, they're only behind by an order
| of magnitude on their timeline, and they don't even have
| a concept of a plan for the critical component. It's
| fine.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| "Over land" in this case is just the US. and that was
| driven more to hamstring the uk/euro Concord. Sell this
| to rich playboys in the mediterranean or middle east.
| pembrook wrote:
| Yes, I'm sure for the rest of human history we're never
| going to break supersonic flight commercially, after
| having done it already for many decades. Because
| "regulation." It's not like we'd have the power to change
| that if we wanted.
|
| Now let us chant the HN pessimists rejoinder in unison.
|
| _LLMs are a fad. Bitcoin is a fad. Saas is a fad.
| Dropbox will never work as it can be trivially replicated
| on Linux using FTP, curlftpfs, and SVN..._
| beeflet wrote:
| The regulation exists because of the sonic boom sound
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Shhh, if you educate him he can't remain blindly
| optimistic!
| yard2010 wrote:
| How about non-judgmental, down to earth pragmatism?
| pembrook wrote:
| There is no such thing. Humans are giant bags of emotion
| and pain avoidance.
|
| Pessimists get the warm satisfaction of knowing their
| choice to not try anything interesting and never take
| risks in life was correct...most of the time. They cheer
| on failure from the sidelines so as not to suffer the
| ego-death of comparison.
|
| Optimists...as the saying goes...they don't get to be
| right most of the time. But they do get rich.
| stouset wrote:
| I don't think you fully appreciate the number of obstacles
| in the way of new entrants building commerically-operable
| airplanes. Flying a supersonic prototype is amazing. But it
| is a depressingly-small amount of the overall work
| necessary to simply _start taking passengers_ , much less
| make something economical, and even less to make something
| _succeed_.
| pembrook wrote:
| Yes, I'm fully aware the market for building commercial
| jets is probably one of the most locked-down on the
| planet.
|
| But hard things have been done before. Throwing rocks at
| the people trying doesn't do much to help them. They're
| fully aware of the reasons they might fail.
|
| Would you rather these folks just not try at all, so you
| don't have to feel jealous if they actually succeed?
| stouset wrote:
| I _hope_ they succeed! It's not throwing rocks at them to
| point out the obscene numbers of and size of obstacles
| they need to overcome to others on the sidelines who seem
| to think that this is anything more than a very, very
| early step along the way of a still-unlikely future
| product.
| idlewords wrote:
| It's not pessimism to correctly describe reality.
| yard2010 wrote:
| There is no such thing as correctly describing reality,
| the way you describe your reality affects your reality.
| Reality is mostly perspective.
| idlewords wrote:
| When people say stuff like this I like to test the claim
| by kicking them in the shin.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| Yes! Where did enthusiasm go in this world? It's easy to be
| a critic but when blanket pessimism is the default answer
| its very tiresome reading the comments.
| echoangle wrote:
| It's a good start but I wouldn't say the critics are proven
| wrong already.
|
| Even getting the full-scale version flying won't be enough, you
| need to make the whole operation economically viable so it
| actually makes sense to operate it.
|
| I'm not saying they won't manage to do it, but they haven't
| proven that they will be able to do it today.
| ergocoder wrote:
| Basically, the critics: "unless you build a 100B company, we
| are not wrong"
|
| I mean, yeah, sure.
| Retric wrote:
| It's hard to argue a startup succeed until profits >
| investment.
| rsanek wrote:
| if your only measure of success is monetary profit, then
| sure. i think that shouldn't be the only metric, and in
| fact, the focus on that so completely is a big part of
| the problem with what people term "late-stage capitalism"
| Retric wrote:
| Start a social club/co-op/non-profit/religion or whatever
| and the metrics are different.
|
| However, when you're asking for investments your goal
| better be profit or you've just committed fraud.
| scrumper wrote:
| I'd say the opposite actually, that the idea that an
| established company can lose money and still be
| considered a success is absolutely a hallmark of late-
| stage capitalism - and not a very healthy one either.
|
| (I know Boom isn't gigantic, and of course it's losing
| money at this stage which is right and proper. However
| losing money in aviation is extremely easy and so I think
| we call it a successful business when it's profitable.
| Today, it's proven itself a successful prototype
| engineering endeavor.)
| aeturnum wrote:
| This is only true from the point of capital - if a
| startup changes the world in a way you like it can be a
| success to you. Profitability brings a certain approval
| and sustainability, but don't confuse that with your
| goals in what you are working on.
| Retric wrote:
| It's fine to have multiple aims, but _asking for
| investments_ without trying to be profitable is fraud.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think that depends on what you say to the investors!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Sort of. There's a class of startups that's _not meant to
| be profitable_ , except maybe by happy accident. Many
| (most?) tech startups are like that now. After all, the
| investors don't care about creating profitable companies
| - they just want to make money, which they're positioned
| to do in many ways. One of them is to help create
| profitable companies. Another is to help grow companies
| to be sold to other companies and/or to the public for
| maximum value, giving the investors back a large multiple
| of initial investments, after which... they don't care
| anymore.
|
| It's like with modern husbandry: you can make money
| selling milk, eggs and meat by sustainably raising
| animals living comfortable lives, but you can make _more
| money_ by sticking them in cages, pumping them up with
| antibiotics and optimized fodder, to maximize production
| rates and minimize costs. The two approaches are
| inherently incompatible with each other. And I dare to
| say, modern startup ecosystem kind of entered the era of
| "factory farming" some time ago now.
| Retric wrote:
| Aiming to build a company to be bought by Microsoft or
| whoever is still aiming to be profitable, the product is
| simply the company's assets (IP, customer list, etc).
|
| It's unsustainable in that the profit is a one time
| event, but that doesn't mean you're not to turn cash into
| something worth more than what you spent and then sell
| that thing.
| brookst wrote:
| That's... not true at all.
|
| Cooking books and falsifying projections is fraud.
|
| Asking for investments with a clear disclaimer that the
| goal is a social good that won't be profitable? If that's
| fraud, then every major arts institution everywhere is
| guilty.
| Retric wrote:
| If you want money to provide a social good without the
| expectation that the money will be paid back, you're
| asking for a donation. You can also ask for money as a
| loan, fee for service, etc.
|
| But an actual investment isn't "investing in our
| community" it's asking for money in exchange for to
| potential to gain more money etc.
| stouset wrote:
| In what way do you think building a new but still-
| uneconomic supersonic plane is going to change the world
| for the better?
| nine_k wrote:
| Uber and Lyft are largely still unprofitable, but they
| definitely have changed the landscape, as many would
| argue, to the better.
| stouset wrote:
| The cost of putting a single car and driver-for-hire on
| the streets is a handful of dollars, so it's easy to do
| many of them at a loss. The cost of putting a single
| instance of a new airplane design of this scale into the
| air with even a single paying passenger is in the range
| of billions if not tens-of-billions of dollars.
|
| This is not even remotely comparable.
|
| But just for comparison, Aerospatiale and BAC actually
| built a real supersonic plane (Concorde) and managed to
| fly and operate that plane for decades. It's hard to find
| much measurable impact on the world at all. What do you
| propose would be different here, given that the
| discussion is already presuming a world in which they
| haven't succeeded economically?
| meiraleal wrote:
| Uber is not unprofitable, there are so many people that
| got rich off it, they just max out salaries and
| compensations.
| buran77 wrote:
| Success should be measured against the stated objectives,
| the promises made to investors, or general positive
| influence on society. In this case the objective was "
| _supersonic flight in our lifetime. Not just as a private
| jet, but something most anyone can afford to fly._ " [0]
|
| > Basically, the critics
|
| You're being uncharitable and hyperbolizing the criticism
| to more easily dismiss it. Would you hyperbolize any praise
| as "identifying another way this won't work is also a
| success in itself"?
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11329286
| wongarsu wrote:
| My metric for success is simply making more money than they
| spent.
|
| Supersonic planes are already proven technology. We made
| the Concorde and the Tu-144 in the 70s, and have plenty of
| supersonic military planes in active service. The
| assumption was simply that you can't make a profit by
| selling them as civil aviation planes. That's the
| assumption Boom is challenging, and to be proven correct
| they have to turn a profit. And not just an operating
| profit by selling planes for more than they cost to make
| but make back the research and development costs as well
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Neither of those planes made more money than they cost.
|
| The Tu-144 was famously not reasonable at all.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Hence why everyone thinks supersonic passenger planes are
| a bad idea. Lots of profitable military supersonic
| planes, but every existing example of a civilian
| supersonic plane is only justified as a Cold War dick-
| measuring contest.
| fastball wrote:
| How do you measure the profitability of military
| aircraft?
| chii wrote:
| Taxpayers willing to pay for it, and at a cost that's
| inclusive of the profit for the builders.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Wouldn't that make the Tu-144 a success? And make every
| government purchase ever, successful?
|
| Could we at least limit it to choices made by elected
| governments?
| chii wrote:
| > And make every government purchase ever, successful?
|
| yes. From the POV of the supplier, every gov't contract
| is going to be profitable.
|
| That's why the military industrial complex is so big, and
| profitable. It's why some people go into politics to
| extend it. Esp. in america.
|
| > How do you measure the profitability of military
| aircraft?
|
| what you truly meant is how to do you measure the value
| obtained from a purchase of a military aircraft. And
| scholars have studied this for centuries and not arrived
| at a true answer.
| duxup wrote:
| I assume that's the source of the doubs about Boom.
| brucehoult wrote:
| Concorde at least made more money than it cost to operate
| (and maintain).
|
| The TU-144 made 102 commercial flights, with 55 of those
| carrying passengers -- the others I assume were cargo.
|
| Not 102 flights per day or month -- 102 flights TOTAL
| between the first commercial flight in December 1975 and
| retirement from passenger service in 1978 and from all
| commercial service in 1983.
|
| With 16 built, that's an average of 6 flights each in
| their lifetime.
|
| SpaceX has Falcon 9 rocket boosters with 4x as many
| hypersonic flights on them.
| tobinfricke wrote:
| What cargo would justify a supersonic flight?
| mattclarkdotnet wrote:
| Anything high value and perishable, like sushi grade fish
| for example. Or did you mean morally justifiable?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Flying fish that are increasingly not sustainably
| harvested on insanely fuel in-efficient supersonic planes
| is exactly humanity deserves to go extinct.
| bcatanzaro wrote:
| They often flew mail on it as their cargo. But the plane
| was more a matter of national pride than something that
| made sense.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Concorde at least made more money than it cost to
| operate (and maintain).
|
| This overlooks development costs. Wiki says:
| > Delays and cost overruns increased the programme cost
| to PS1.5-2.1 billion in 1976, (PS11-16 billion in 2023).
|
| That is an astonishing price for 20 aeroplanes!
| michaelt wrote:
| PS16 billion in inflation-adjusted development costs is
| peanuts.
|
| You should look at the costs of the F-35 :)
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| But of the F-35 there are >1000 planes to amortise the
| costs over. Which is two orders of magnitude larger than
| the concorde
| brucehoult wrote:
| I didn't overlook development costs, I _SPECIFICALLY_
| excluded them, and SAID that I was doing so.
| echoangle wrote:
| If the claim is ,,we're going to make supersonic transport
| available to everyone", that's what they chose.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It only needs to be economically viable for billionaires
| bored with collecting yachts and $100 millionaires who want
| to flex with charter flights. Scheduled commercial service is
| a pipe dream but not a requirement for success.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Please keep building yachts jets and rockets then.
| Otherwise they may get into politics.
| justmedep wrote:
| Concord was actually a cash cow for all airlines who had
| them. The only reason why airlines stopped using Concord was
| because of the crash and the inherent safety issues that were
| found. But the actual business model worked - limited in
| scope but it was highly profitable.
|
| "That said, the airlines that flew the Concorde did make a
| profit. Concorde was only ever purchased by two airlines: BA
| and Air France. While the concept of the Concorde might not
| have been a worldwide hit, it was certainly a good market fit
| for these two airlines at the time."
|
| Overall it was obviously a money looser because of the high
| development costs (paid for by the governments).
| anovikov wrote:
| It worked because not just the development costs were paid
| for by the government, but acquisition costs were, too.
| Planes were given to the airlines for free, completely paid
| for by the states.
|
| Also, only be BA made good profit on it and only after
| mid-1980s. Air France could barely break even.
|
| If not the PR effect that put those airlines above all
| others as the only ones flying supersonically, they'd never
| make any sense to either of them.
|
| These days, they'd certainly not be viable as private
| planes are now much more available and much cheaper than
| they used to be back in the day and these save a lot more
| time than supersonic flights. BA fare for LHR-JFK roundtrip
| was 10K pounds back in 2000, $15.2K at the average exchange
| rate, that's $28K inflation adjusted! Who'd pay that kind
| of money today for a commercial flight?
| Jakob wrote:
| Not taking away from your point, just for comparison:
|
| A British Airways first class LHR-JFK roundtrip is $10K
| today for an 8h flight. Supersonic would be 3h.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Is Boom aiming to be faster than the Concorde? I don't
| think so.
|
| Their website says: > Overture will
| carry 64-80 passengers at Mach 1.7
|
| Concorde flew NYC<->LON in 3.5 hours. I guess Boom will
| fly the route in about 4 hours. Also, regular commercial
| flights on NYC<->LON are currently 7 hours.
|
| Also, using Google Flights, I priced LHR<->JFK on first
| class about T+1month for 7 days (Mon->Mon). It is about
| 5.3K USD round trip. I am surprised that it is so cheap.
| I guess that route is very competitive.
|
| I don't understand the excitement on HN about Boom. The
| market is tiny. This is a terrible investment. What is
| the global demand for this aeroplane (if they ever build
| it)? Maybe... max 200. Look at the order book from the
| 1960s when the Concorde first flew. Less than 100 total
| orders. Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud
| is a sonic boom? It is unlikely that it will get rights
| to fly over land, just like the Concorde. Also, it is
| terrible for the environment. The Concorde burned fuel
| (passenger miles per liter) at roughly twice the rate of
| non-supersonic aeroplanes.
|
| (Various edits.)
| anovikov wrote:
| They claim they have sonic boom solved by modifying the
| airframe shape. Otherwise, i agree with you. It will be a
| thing of no real consequence just like the original
| Concorde.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a
| sonic boom?
|
| Is it? I lived in Kansas in the 1960s. Sonic booms from
| the AF base were common. They weren't that loud. Electric
| storms (a regular in Kansas) were considerably louder.
|
| > The Concorde burned fuel (passenger miles per liter) at
| roughly twice the rate of non-supersonic aeroplanes.
|
| 5-7 times as much.
|
| My dad said when he pushed his jet supersonic, you could
| watch the gas gauge unwind.
| barney54 wrote:
| Also, sonic booms are awesome. I don't know that I want
| to hear them every 15 minutes, but they are cool.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| > My dad said when he pushed his jet supersonic, you
| could watch the gas gauge unwind.
|
| Did your dad fly military jets? Most older jets can't
| supercruise, i.e. go supersonic without using
| afterburners, and afterburners consume unholy amounts of
| fuel. Concorde did consume quite a lot of fuel per
| passenger mile, but it could supercruise.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yup, military fighters.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a
| sonic boom? It is unlikely that it will get rights to fly
| over land, just like the Concorde._
|
| Remember a few years back when the Canadian-made
| Bombardier C-Series was selling well, so Boeing got their
| allies in the US government to impose a 300% tax on them
| as an "America First" policy?
|
| Well, the rules around sonic booms were similar. Were
| there sonic booms? Sure. But the real reason for the ban
| was that they were _foreign-made_ sonic booms.
|
| Now the world's only supersonic passenger plane is being
| made in America, you might find Congress is much less
| worried about sonic booms.
| myrmidon wrote:
| Sure, being a domestic enterprise might help _here_ , but
| you will have to deal with regulations abroad, too (and
| Concorde had arguably the edge there because it had both
| London _and_ continental Europe as home court).
|
| I'm also fairly sure that softening/undermining noise
| regulations in general has become harder (less tech
| enthusiasm, more NIMBYism, especially in Europe).
| InTheArena wrote:
| This isn't true. The backlash to sonic booms grew well
| before Concorde and was part of why the US government
| canceled its support of the SST program. Boeing canceled
| their part of the 2707 because of the (extremely)
| unexpected success of the 747 program (a larger plane
| slower addressed a larger market) and the 737 success.
|
| Sources:
|
| Joe Sutter, Creating the worlds first Boeing Jumbo Jet
|
| Thomas Petzinger, Hard Landing
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >But the real reason for the ban was that they were
| foreign-made sonic booms.
|
| You are wrong.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_te
| sts
|
| This was done to prepare people and gauge the reaction to
| BOEING sonic booms, for the SST. Everything about a
| supersonic future was scuttled when it became obvious
| that people clearly suffered when planes flew supersonic
| above them.
|
| Keep in mind that the US Air Force still does not go
| supersonic over populated areas except when absolutely
| necessary, like during 9/11.
|
| This study mind you was done with SCHEDULED sonic booms.
| Now imagine, instead of being able to set your clock to a
| loud, disruptive noise and plan around it, you must deal
| with completely unpredictable and variable EXPLOSION of
| sharp noise (130ish decibels is standing 100m from a
| jumbo jet as it spools up or a trumpet being blasted
| directly into your ear from a couple feet away)
|
| People already hate the noise of cities when that noise
| is an occasional quiet siren heard from a mile away a few
| times a day. Imagine instead if the noise was completely
| unpredictable explosions. Also imagine you can't move out
| of the city to get away from it, because the sound
| blankets an entire flight corridor.
|
| Unless NASA finds a way to magically evaporate all the
| energy in a sonic boom such that it makes almost no noise
| at ground level, we would have to literally depopulate
| mile wide corridors of the US just so a bunch of stupidly
| rich people can get from NY to LA in an hour? Nah
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Concorde flew NYC<->LON in 3.5 hours. I guess Boom will
| fly the route in about 4 hours.
|
| I feel that you're getting diminishing returns at the
| point of reducing 4 hours to 3h30, given that flight time
| is just a part of the whole "door to door" time, there
| are several hours at least that aren't flight time, and
| that the expensive tickets all come with an hour or three
| in an airport lounge.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a
| sonic boom?
|
| One of the unique selling points of their proposed
| aircraft is that it won't be so loud:
|
| > Boom says Overture will be a lot quieter than Concorde
| and the supersonic military aircraft that were flying at
| the time the FAA ban
|
| https://www.freethink.com/energy/boom-supersonic-flight
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That's a claim without evidence. A sonic boom is a direct
| outcome of moving through the air faster than the air can
| move through itself.
|
| How have they demonstrated that they know how to cause
| quieter sonic booms?
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Firstly, my claim that they say this is evidenced by the
| link. I did not assert it as historic fact that this
| thing works, just that this is what they say. The words
| "Selling point" and "proposed" are in that sentence for a
| reason: it's not actual yet. But if you think it's a
| deliberate fraud, then say so.
|
| Secondly: Although the final proof of it is in the full
| scale aircraft for sure, a lot can be done with software
| modelling (1) and wind tunnels these days. And with the
| scale model that just flew, to be followed by "checking
| the actual performance that was demonstrated against what
| our models predicted, and how we expected it to fly." (2)
|
| Thirdly, I point you to other "quieter supersonic"
| aircraft work in progress, the X-59. Some of their
| evidence-gathering process is detailed at the Wikipedia
| link, "development" section. (3)
|
| It will be interesting to see how these work out; but if
| they do not, then it's a failure of modelling and design,
| not because they missed the directly obvious. But if you
| are an aerospace engineer and know more about this
| subfield, then say so.
|
| 1) "Boom has perfected its aircraft's efficient,
| aerodynamic design using computational fluid dynamics,
| which "is basically a digital wind tunnel"."
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/28/travel/boom-
| supersonic-fi...
|
| 2)
| https://www.livescience.com/technology/engineering/boom-
| supe...
|
| 3) https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-
| us/products/x-59-quiet-sup...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-59_Quesst
| InTheArena wrote:
| The one new factor is the route fragmentation that
| occurred over the Atlantic with the 757 and 767 and the
| fragmentation that occurred over the Pacific with the 777
| and 787. These changed from a model where only hub to hub
| flights where every seat had to be sold to be viable from
| a financial point of view to enabling many city pairs to
| work, and airlines still to make a profit, even if the
| business class seats are not fully sold. This led to a
| much larger market, which plenty of room for 3-10k
| "business class" tickets on these flights.
|
| If boom can hit that same number, they will have success
| out of the USA <-> Europe market and premium intra-asia
| flights - the two most profitable route systems in the
| world.
| avn2109 wrote:
| You should write more about this on a blog or something,
| it's interesting and you seem knowledgeable.
| nukeman wrote:
| I think the real advantage would be for transpacific
| flights. San Francisco to Tokyo is currently about 11.5
| hours, assuming a similar ratio (maybe slightly better
| due to flying supersonic for longer), Boom's time would
| be around 6.5 to 7 hours. Savings would be more
| significant for East Coast flights, ATL-HND would go from
| 14.5 hours to under 8.5.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial
| flight?
|
| Government people. I remember Kissinger flying on it.
|
| A first class ticket on the Titanic would be $50,000
| today.
| michaelt wrote:
| The problem with $50,000 tickets is a higher price means
| fewer customers, and at a certain point that means less
| money coming in overall, worse economies of scale, and
| less ability to cover your upfront engineering costs.
|
| The Toyota Camry is a $30,000 car that sells 300,000
| units per year. The Lamborghini Huracan is a $300,000 car
| that sells 600 units per year. Much easier to cover the
| costs of developing a reliable electrical system, or a
| new hybrid drivetrain, when you're Toyota.
|
| Concorde couldn't repay its development costs for the
| same reason.
| ghaff wrote:
| In fairness, there's little practical benefit (and, in
| fact, a lot of downsides) to a supercar whereas a plane
| that does trans-oceanic in half the time is useful--of
| course, if you can build it, and sell tickets
| economically for maybe today's business class prices--
| keeping in mind that a lot of people flying business are
| doing so on upgrades/miles.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| ...and yet, despite your lamentations, Lamborghini
| operates a profitable business.
| zabzonk wrote:
| I used to work for a big 6 accountancy and audit firm.
| their senior partners used to fly concorde, wheras us
| underlings flew virgin upper class (like first class on
| other carriers).
| usrusr wrote:
| > Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial
| flight?
|
| People willing to throw money at connecting with others
| who do the same thing. That was the main value
| proposition back then I think, getting from continent to
| continent in a short time has never been more than a
| tangential benefit. Of course this type of business only
| really works when everybody involved claims the opposite.
| anovikov wrote:
| Today these people hang out at private jet FBOs.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| > Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial
| flight?
|
| Nobody. That's part of Boom's plan: they want to make the
| Overture jet cheap enough to fly that tickets will cost
| about what business class costs on regular
| intercontinental flights. They're keeping the problems of
| the Concorde in mind as part of the design process.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I don't disagree that it's proof they will succeed, it is
| however proof that they can build a supersonic aircraft. That
| is no small thing.
|
| Given that they can, they now need to build a larger one,
| which with more surface area will be more difficult than this
| one.
|
| In terms of 'risk stacking'[1] they are definitely a big step
| closer to being in successful.
|
| [1] Risk Stacking is the set of risks a company faces between
| the current time and being operational. Technology risk is
| always level 1 (can they build what they say they can build),
| after that comes market risk (will people buy it with enough
| margin for both continued operation of the company as well as
| further development), and the third is execution risk (can
| they operate efficiently enough to create a net positive
| economic product.)
| user_7832 wrote:
| Is risk stacking a commonly used term? I couldn't find
| anything relevant on google and I'd love to learn other
| similar concepts.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| It is in the venture capitol / startup world, not sure
| how much it is used outside of that which was why I took
| time to explain it. A VC looking at a pitch is trying to
| understand the risks (a VC investment is basically
| pricing that risk) and each kind of risk has a different
| method of evaluation.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _Given that they can, they now need to build a larger
| one, which with more surface area will be more difficult
| than this one._
|
| Not only that, but the XB-1 uses "stock" engines, while for
| the full-scale Overture they want to develop (and build) an
| all-new supersonic-capable engine. So one more challenge to
| put on the stack...
| postexitus wrote:
| If that's the case, what was the point of the test flight
| anyway? What were they exactly testing?
| notahacker wrote:
| They were testing (at a different scale, with a different
| powerplant) their air intakes for the engine which are
| designed to enable conventional turbofan engines to
| operate at supersonic speed, plus some control systems.
| And no doubt demonstrating to investors that they could
| fly _something_ at supersonic speed before they ask for
| the funds to design and build a new powerplant and
| airliner-scale airframe...
|
| It was originally envisaged as a maiden flight that would
| happen within a couple of years of founding, but
| aerospace is hard.
| rob74 wrote:
| When taking another look at the Wikipedia articles for
| the XB-1 and the Overture, I also noticed that both of
| them mention the fact that the XB-1 still uses the
| original trijet engine configuration planned for the
| Overture, which has however since been changed to a quad-
| jet (https://airinsight.com/boom-supersonic-radically-
| changes-ove...). So the XB-1 is even less representative
| of the full-scale Overture than I thought...
| notahacker wrote:
| they're early enough in their program to switch the
| Overture again to twinjets :) (only half joking, if it
| turns out that adjacent engines in the quadjet
| configuration have a negative impact on their intake
| technology, a twinjet would work more similarly to the
| trijet...)
| seltzered_ wrote:
| You also have to make it environmentally sustainable like
| they did when they talked about a partnership with Prometheus
| fuels back in 2019, even then what's the point compared to
| regular planes if these "are likely to burn between 4.5 and
| 7.5X more fuel than subsonic aircraft in 2035." [0]
|
| [0]: https://bsky.app/profile/rutherdan.bsky.social/post/3lgs
| twvv... -> 2021 NASA assessment
| https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20205009400
| steveoscaro wrote:
| You don't "have to" make it environmentally sustainable...
| consp wrote:
| The next generation will love your idealism.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Aerospace is hard, one step at a time. Every generation
| knows that.
| willlma wrote:
| I'm so glad that buried deep in the HN commments in an
| individual who cares about the environment. In the other
| conversations I've seen about this no one mentions or
| thinks about fuel consumption. I feel like I'm taking crazy
| pills sometimes. It's like "Yay! We figured out another way
| to accelerate the disastrous consequences of climate
| change. Go us!"
| metacritic12 wrote:
| I would say the critics are already on average proven wrong
| in the sense that they were betting on something that had a
| prior of 90% chance of being true. And now those odds might
| be say 50%. If they were betting people, they would have lost
| half their money already, while the people betting it would
| come true have already made 4x. In that competitive sense,
| they're already wrong.
|
| It takes little skill to predict something like "it won't
| snow on New York on 3/15/2025". Whereas if you said it will
| snow on 3/15/2025, and it's true, that's skill.
| echoangle wrote:
| You think there's now a 50% chance of boom bringing access
| to supersonic air travel to everyone? I'll give them 10%.
| johncalvinyoung wrote:
| Probably optimism talking, but I'd put Boom's chances of
| bringing to market an airliner capable of supersonic
| travel at equal-to-first-class-ticket-prices at 60%.
|
| Now I'd put their wilder hopes of eventually taking over
| the subsonic economy market at considerably below 1%.
|
| But I'm hopeful for that $5-10k ticket to London within
| the next twenty years.
| yard2010 wrote:
| This is one of the precious little gifts of living in the
| future. You get to see what (some) people want to achieve and a
| few actually make this. It's literally people turning their
| time and resources into magic. Sure, most of the time they fail
| and you never hear of them again, but the few that can make
| something that seems virtually impossible happen are a living
| standard.
|
| To me, life is a sand box. And my dream is that it would be the
| reality for everyone.
| ant6n wrote:
| I have been very critical because the environmental impact of
| possibly affordable supersonic flight is very concerning. The
| fuel usage per airplane should be much higher than conventional
| flights (due to extra drag and extra km flown per day), and
| they want to have 1000 airpalnes of those one day.
|
| Booms own calcluations [1] show that there is 2-3 fuel
| consumption per seat compared to conventional airplanes, but
| that's multiplying the conventional seats with a factor that
| corresponds to the relative floor area of business class vs
| economy class. I guess compared to economy class, the factor is
| probably more like 6-10x. But you'd have to take into account
| induced demand of such an offering and the long distances
| involve. It's literally possible for people to blow through
| their whole annual carbon budget in a day, possibly even in a
| single flight.
|
| Even their talk of sustainable aviation fuels is pretty much
| bullshit. The greenhouse-effects (radiative forcing) of flying
| is generally around 3x the co2-emission alone. I doubt the
| effect is reduced for a supersonic airplane. So even if you
| removed the co2-emissions itself due to flight, you still get
| all the extra emissions - which are multiplied in this
| offering.
|
| Further, consider that sustainable aviation fuels are still hot
| air at this point, that they use either too much energy, are
| too expensive, or don't sufficiently reduce co2 consumption in
| their production (or even two or three of those), it appears
| that their talk about environmental concerns is really just hot
| air. I mean read the executive summary of their fuel
| consumption document: 4 long paragraphs about how they're super
| environmentally conscious, then one short paragraph where they
| admit, oh well, even our own calculations show we're 2-3 times
| worse than flying conventionally, which is already super bad.
|
| Some back of the envelope calculation show that those 1000 Boom
| planes may emit 300 Mio Tons of Co2eq emissions, representing
| about 1% of global emissions. Or the emissions of countries
| like the UK, Italy or Poland.
|
| [1] https://boom-press-assets.s3.us-
| west-2.amazonaws.com/Boom_SS...
| class3shock wrote:
| Taken from the first doubtful comment I found in the post you
| linked.
|
| "Sorry, this is ridiculous, it just wont happen (not ever, just
| this company). From my experience in the aerospace industry,
| having a manned prototype aircraft of this scale fly within 2
| years, supersonic no less (!!), is an impossibility. It is
| simply not possible, at least with any sane regard for safety."
|
| Many of the comments related to Boom about them not being able
| to do what they say are about the timeframes they give. I know
| I've commented on their unrealistic dates before and likely
| will again. In 2016 they said they would be flying it in
| 2017-2018. And they did in fact completely fail to do that as
| the above commenter predicted. Unless you are saying being off
| about your schedule by 7 years is achieving your goal?
|
| They say they will be flying their passenger aircraft in 2030.
| I invite anyone that reads this to check back then and see how
| they're doing. I can tell you right now though, you are not
| going to be able to buy a ticket.
| cubefox wrote:
| So apparently the successor to the XB-1 test plane, Overture, is
| planned to be mainly a luxury airplane, similar to Concorde, just
| somewhat smaller.
|
| I don't see a reason to be excited about this. Their CEO compared
| their test flight to the Falcon 1 rocket, the Falcon 9 precursor.
| But a better comparison would be Blue Origin's New Shepard, or
| Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipOne, because they also mainly offer
| luxury services. By contrast, the Falcon 9 rockets have real (non
| luxury) commercial and scientific value.
| cromulent wrote:
| "Currently, all civil aircraft flights are prohibited from
| operating above Mach one speeds over land in the United States."
| [1]
|
| Mike Bannister's excellent book _Concorde_ talks at length about
| how "handsomely profitable" the BA service was (as opposed to the
| Air France one) from 1984 until the 2000 crash and subsequent
| grounding put them in to a spiral where keeping enough people
| certified was too expensive.
|
| One part of this profitable change in 1984 was surveying their
| customers (who typically did not book their own tickets) to see
| what they thought the price was. About $5000 was the perception.
| It was actually $3000, so they quickly raised the price to the
| perceived one.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ap...
| cromulent wrote:
| Started reading the book again :). The $5k fares were the
| transatlantic ones. They made a lot of money doing day trips to
| Venice, Helsinki, Cairo, etc - places only Concorde could do in
| a day.
|
| "Lord King's edict that the aircraft had to be profitable
| within two-and-a-half years had been realised. There were
| times, in fact, when the seven aircraft in the fleet would
| contribute around 40 per cent of BA's entire profits".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| LA to New York or San Francisco to Honolulu in 2 to 3 hours
| would be a game changer. You could probably fill a plane at
| least once a day on those routes for a handsome profit.
| gopalv wrote:
| NYC to LA in 3 hours would be an 8 AM flight which would land
| at 8 AM, same day.
|
| Just mind boggling to think of, no trouble finding 100 people
| daily who want to do a day-trip to California.
| messe wrote:
| I had a similar experience flying from Dublin to Seattle a
| couple of years ago. Take off around 16:00, land at 17:00.
|
| In that "hour" I'd watched (IIRC) Fellowship of the Ring,
| Sunset Boulevard, and--out of a morbid sense of curiosity
| that I regret--Moonfall.
| jonsen wrote:
| Once I flew north-west at the time of sunset. I had the
| view of the most beautiful big red sun right at the edge a
| sea of snow white clouds for more than an hour.
| bubblethink wrote:
| Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGvYKtiwHlA
| chgs wrote:
| I suspect if Concorde had been made by an American company
| the "overland" issue would have been solved.
| binary132 wrote:
| That doesn't fit with my understanding about the
| cancelation of the Boeing SST project.
| nine_k wrote:
| I suspect many more Americans could potentially sue the
| airline for the noise than English or French, due to the
| structure of the respective legal systems. So the financial
| risk of overland operations over the US, even with the ban
| lifted, could be too high still.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| As a pilot, Americans are incredibly sensitive to aircraft
| noise. And regulators do all sorts of stuff to route planes
| around noise sensitive areas.
|
| It breaks noise regs to fly most subsonic 1960s eras jets
| with their original engines these days, you have to modify
| them with hush kits, etc.
|
| They forced a lot of these very American jets to be quiet
| for the sake of just the landing and takeoff phases. I have
| a hard time seeing that they would/will find a way to make
| sonic booms acceptable to the general public.
| xnx wrote:
| > I have a hard time seeing that they would/will find a
| way to make sonic booms acceptable to the general public.
|
| NASA has a research craft aiming to make the noise
| profile more of a "thump" than "boom":
| https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-lockheed-martin-
| revea...
| TinkersW wrote:
| No chance, far too loud, and I doubt Boom will get approval
| either
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I thought about Hawaii also. Rich cities in Northeast Asia
| might also be a good target: Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul,
| Shanghai, Beijing to Hawaii might be good targets for weekly
| (or charter) flights. The tricky part (except Tokyo) would be
| negotiating supersonic flyover rights. I cannot imagine that
| Japan would be excited to have regular supersonic flights
| over their main island from Seoul or Beijing.
|
| Regarding LA<->NYC, I think you could make a dent in that
| market with an all business class flight that flies slightly
| less than Mach 1 (0.95 or whatever) and has special security
| screening and baggage handling. People _might_ be willing to
| pay 30-50% more compared to business class on a regular
| flight.
|
| Last: Is there a video game like Theme Park or Railroad
| Tycoon that allows for the simulation of an airline market?
| That could be fun.
| sedatk wrote:
| Concorde experiences one fatal crash in 27 years: entire
| product line gets cancelled.
|
| Meanwhile, Boeing 737 MAX... -\\_(tsu)_/-
| jachee wrote:
| Thus is the might of the "Industrial" part of the Military-
| industrial Complex, of which Boeing is a significant part and
| which Concorde was not.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| The product line was effectively cancelled by the oil crisis
| of 1973 and severe economic issues in the mid 70s. It had
| nothing to do with a crash (of an airplane; there was a
| market crash involved).
| sedatk wrote:
| I still feel like it was on the path to repopularization
| when it crashed, and wasn't given a second chance.
| youngtaff wrote:
| The manufacturer withdrew support for Concorde so the
| airlines couldn't it anymore
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Because the 737 Max had type commonality with the old 737s,
| and because of how behind Boeing was on deliveries, the
| pilots could still fly on the old 737s and that stemmed some
| of the loss of money.
|
| Concorde was a very unique plane, the pilots were specially
| trained for it, and having them sit around was expensive.
| buildsjets wrote:
| You don't know what you are talking about. The product line
| was cancelled many decades before the crash due to lack of
| sales. After the crash, the Concorde fleet was modified,
| returned to service and remained in service for another 3
| years before it was removed from service and retired due to
| the high cost of operation.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The Concorde manufacturing was cancelled in the 1970s. The
| crash was in 2000. The last flight was in 2003.
|
| They didn't stop flying due to a crash. It was the money.
| thedrbrian wrote:
| That and airbus didn't want to keep supporting Concorde.
| And they held the type certificate
| Analemma_ wrote:
| My understanding was that, even for BA, the Concord was
| profitable on a cash accounting basis (as in, the tickets more
| than covered the cost of fuel, salaries, etc.) but not when
| accounting for a) the depreciation costs of the plane, which
| were much higher than for an ordinary Boeing or Airbus
| passenger jet since it was a one-off limited run and there were
| few spare parts and b) as you said, training new people to fly
| it, since it was an antiquated plane without a glass cockpit
| and the skills did not transfer to other planes. That's why it
| got harder and harder to justify over time until it was
| shuttered after the fatal crash during the general post-9/11
| aviation downturn.
| cromulent wrote:
| Yeah of course there was always going to be an end date.
| However, there are people saying it was not profitable at all
| and that is not really the truth.
|
| Bannister knows probably more than anyone about the topic and
| tells the story well. Thoroughly recommend the book. His tale
| of a guy called Bill being invited into the cockpit and
| discreetly given the controls to fly supersonic was awesome.
| Of course, later over a beer Bill (Weaver) talked of his
| times flying the Blackbird at twice the speed, and of the
| time it disintegrated around him.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It also had a three person crew, and post 9/11 was the start
| of structurally higher oil prices, both of which were a death
| knell.
|
| The true nail in the coffin was the development of the lie
| flat business seat, which meant that you could cross the
| Atlantic in three hours in a plush but cramped seat, or spend
| less money to sleep for six on a redeye and arrive well
| rested. At that point three hours was not a compelling enough
| time savings, but the Concorde also didn't fly far enough to
| do routes where the speed resulted in more significant time
| savings, like on transpacific routes.
| ghaff wrote:
| London doesn't even require a red-eye from NYC--or actually
| from Boston/Washington although it's a very early star--on
| a conventional jet. I've done it pretty regularly. Not
| pleasant but I can get to London in time for a late dinner.
| twoodfin wrote:
| BA has one daily morning flight from Boston to Heathrow.
| The only non-red eye transatlantic out of Logan that I'm
| aware of.
|
| Always quite busy, and personally I'd much rather not try
| to get a good night's sleep on a barely 6 hour flight.
| ghaff wrote:
| You can fly to EWR and then onto LHR on United which is
| what I usually do. It's a very early AM pickup but it
| works.
| dingaling wrote:
| > and post 9/11 ...
|
| Two-thirds of BA's Concorde regular passengers died on
| 9/11. The service never recovered financially from that
| loss.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Thats a very interesting observation. Do you have a link
| with more details?
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| I can see 2/3 quit flying, but died? Seems unlikely.
| mandevil wrote:
| Also, my understanding is that AF was not profitable on
| Concord even ignoring those accounting costs. So AF wanted to
| shutter the plane after the accident, and changing the costs
| of shared maintenance equipment from 50/50 to 100/0 made BA's
| numbers go into the red too, because it wasn't very much
| profit.
| IndrekR wrote:
| Mike Bannister was also one of the commentators on this live
| stream.
| nashashmi wrote:
| If Airforce One presidential plane is assigned to a sound-
| breaker, people will love the sound that comes from it. "Look
| the president is flying above us" people will say in
| excitement.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Air force one is always a safe proven design.
| justicz wrote:
| Just awesome. Congrats to everyone who worked on this! Excited to
| see what's next from you all.
| elamje wrote:
| Do you think SpaceX or similar would be attacking this problem
| space if there was a business to be had here? Seems like a fun
| pet project that will lose money indefinitely, but love seeing
| small teams do big things!
| mrandish wrote:
| I haven't looked into Boom's business plan but I assume they
| wouldn't have gotten this amount of money for this long without
| a plan to make money that at least looks plausible to
| investors.
|
| Products or technologies that launch new markets often look
| like 'bad ideas' until someone figures out a way to make it
| work profitably. Otherwise we'd already be doing them. Paul
| Graham wrote a good essay on this, saying basically a startup
| entrepreneur's job isn't just finding a good idea that hasn't
| been done, because anything that looks like a good idea is
| probably already being done. It's finding something that
| _looks_ like a bad idea (so isn 't being done) and figuring out
| it's not bad if you just do it a different way or add a certain
| innovation. Of course, most things which look like bad ideas
| are actually bad ideas but searching the edges for exceptions
| is the valuable thing entrepreneurs do (along with creating new
| jobs).
|
| Also, you might be surprised there are several companies
| selling high-end transcontinental private jets. One of the
| newer features of the latest generation is that they can fly at
| .9 to .95 mach instead of .8 to .85 mach. That shaves more than
| an hour off a flight. It's a relatively small market but this
| new generation has a waiting list of those lining up to pay
| ~$20M more to save a few hours per round-trip. Sure, it's a
| small market but it's profitable. Note: I have no idea if
| Boost's plan involves that market but paying more to go faster,
| and especially having the fastest option, is usually of
| interest to someone.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| For anyone else who finds the opening music infuriating, it stops
| at 35:50.
|
| If anyone from Boom is reading this, please never do that again.
| Or at least pick better music.
| verdverm wrote:
| Congrats to Boom, but also r/killthecameraman
| ethagknight wrote:
| Seems like there is 0 harm to have a 5 minute delay on the
| whole broadcast in exchange for a more polished production. Me,
| the viewer, will never know. I know SpaceX is doing it, its
| trendy to 'watch us make history in realtime', but SpaceX has a
| couple orders of magnitude more cash to work with.
| verdverm wrote:
| I was more disappointed that the shot went out of focus as
| the plane crossed the barrier. I did find it rather amusing
| that as soon as they started lauding starlink, the feed
| dropped, which is what you are talking about I think
|
| Growing pains for their camera crew
| yapyap wrote:
| holy wow!!
| joemi wrote:
| I wonder if they have cameras to show the pilot everything they
| can't see when taking off/landing, since it looks like it has the
| same forward-visibility issues as the Concorde (without the
| Concorde's moveable nose -- I think?).
|
| Pretty cool though! It was disappointing that the Concorde (along
| with commercial supersonic flight in general) was retired around
| the time I was becoming an adult and could begin to contemplate
| maybe taking a trip on it someday.
| two_handfuls wrote:
| They do, yes. Visible in Scott Manley's video.
| bagels wrote:
| Great milestone, but still pretty far away from taking passengers
| as this is a scale technology demonstrator.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| This thread:
|
| https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question.htm...
|
| which covers over a decade, contains many hundreds of entries
| from Concorde pilots, crew, flight engineers, cabin crew,
| maintenance personnel, and air traffic control recounting
| anecdotes and amazing things about the plane and events
| surrounding it. I started reading it and spent about three
| absorbing hours fascinated and amazed, unable to stop until it
| was time to go to bed.
|
| I'm going to resume when I have a few more hours, it's gold.
| chainingsolid wrote:
| Someone linked this a few days ago on another post and I've
| been reading it scene. It's been a very interesting read. I do
| recommend.
| dang wrote:
| probably https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42835622?
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Yes!
| carabiner wrote:
| There were rumors in the early 2000s of a QSP jet being shopped
| around by LM SkunkWorks to Wall Street. Also really strong rumors
| that Cessna was working on a similar jet. These projects probably
| died.
| hugs wrote:
| I haven't seen anyone directly address it in the comments here
| (or in the video): was an audible sonic boom noticeable on the
| ground during today's test flight?
| scythe wrote:
| Noticeable is certainly a way of putting it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_tests
|
| >However, in the first 14 weeks, 147 windows in the city's two
| tallest buildings, the First National Bank and Liberty National
| Bank, were broken.
|
| If a sonic boom is "noticeable", that's one thing. But the
| problem is that even from cruising altitude they're shockingly
| loud. If the sonic boom is merely bearable, that's quite an
| improvement.
| hugs wrote:
| Right, and making an improvement is a big part of Boom's
| marketing. (It's in their name?!) I'm surprised I didn't hear
| them make any comments about it in the video during the
| flight as they crossed the sound barrier each time. Unless I
| missed it?
| RIMR wrote:
| It's not something they probably want to draw attention to
| (despite the name), because it is a barrier to allowing
| these kinds of flights over land.
| cryptonector wrote:
| No, it's the whole point of Boom. They won't be able to
| keep the sonic boom a secret. They whole company's future
| hangs on making that sonic boom minor enough that
| supersonic flights will be allowed with few restrictions.
| Therefore asking what the boom was is perfectly fair.
|
| Now, Boom might say (have they? I'm not following them)
| that the XB-1 is a demonstrator that they can do
| supersonic flight, and that the sonic boom reduction work
| will follow on. In that case asking what today's boom was
| is not that interesting.
|
| The chase planes also went supersonic, so they would have
| contributed to the sonic boom, which might complicate
| that analysis (well, there would be at most 3 pairs of
| sonic booms, and it should be possible to tell which ones
| correspond to which planes).
| cryptonector wrote:
| GP was asking about _this_ flight 's sonic boom. That's the
| whole point of Boom: to make supersonic airplanes with small
| sonic booms.
| hugs wrote:
| First confirmation I've found so far on this exact
| question: "XB-1 is supersonic! (No boom audible here, as
| expected)" - Jon Ostrower
| https://bsky.app/profile/jonostrower.com/post/3lgsvea6zbs2x
|
| Raises more questions though, because there were two other
| chase planes. Did the other planes stay below the sound
| barrier at all times?
|
| Edit to add: Was no audible boom expected because of the
| planes themselves or because of where the people were
| watching from?
| nine_k wrote:
| With planes being long enough away from the demonstrator,
| and speed of sound relatively low (about 330 m/s), the
| booms of all three planes should be separate enough, e.g.
| a good 100 ms away from one another, even if all three
| went supersonic and were dragging their respective shock
| waves.
|
| The distance between the planes appeared to be around
| 30-50 m at the supersonic transition time, as much as I
| can estimate the size of the planes. A sound recording
| made under the flight path should allow to measure how
| many dB was the demonstrator's boom.
| scythe wrote:
| I don't see the problem? I was just saying that "not
| noticeable" is a really high bar to set for a supersonic
| flight.
| rdlw wrote:
| But your first sentence reads like a direct answer to the
| question:
|
| > Was the sonic boom noticeable?
|
| > Noticeable is certainly a way of putting it.
|
| As in, "Yes it was noticeable, and then some." At least,
| that's how I read it.
| scythe wrote:
| That's not even close to what I intended.
| Etheryte wrote:
| This doesn't say anything about today's flight though?
| skgough wrote:
| this plane doesn't look like it was made to produce a low boom.
| It has a very distinct von Karman ogive [1] fuselage and
| typical delta wings. I would guess that it's shape is primarily
| optimized for fuel efficiency at 1.5 mach or above.
|
| If you take a look at NASA's low boom demonstrator [2], you can
| see that it's much skinnier and the nose is crazy elongated.
| This is intended to break up the bow shock into multiple parts,
| thereby decreasing the amount of energy each one has.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nose_cone_design#Von_K%C3%A1rm...
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-59_Quesst
| yownie wrote:
| Silly question, but would it be feasible to just equip a plan
| with a telescoping nose merely for this effect that could be
| deployed prior to supersonic flight?
| Onavo wrote:
| Weight would kill the economics. It's not a fighter jet.
| But maybe it will be fine for drones. You should apply to
| YC.
| lutorm wrote:
| Given that they were only authorized to fly in the "Bell X-1
| supersonic corridor", I'd wager that sonic booms are fairly
| commonplace there. I doubt there are any residents around.
|
| https://www.afmc.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2003098938/
| nosequel wrote:
| There are residents for sure in that corridor, but the
| residents are on Edwards AFB, and are fairly used to sonic
| booms. When I was on Edwards, there was still the last
| operating SR-71, and that boomed any time it flew.
| spiantino wrote:
| seems too small. where do the passengers go?
| josephcsible wrote:
| The plane they used in this test is a 1/3 scale version of the
| final product.
| justinator wrote:
| Cool! It's always fun to see the model at the Wings over the
| Rockies museum.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Any idea why there was a "knock it off" call on the 2nd
| supersonic pass?
| Plasmoid wrote:
| Probably getting close to the boundary of the allowed area
| ambicapter wrote:
| They had just started the run right after a positioning turn.
| class3shock wrote:
| This is literally a company designed to separate investors from
| money so aerospace engineers can have fun, which I guess is
| better than many startups. At the end of the day though there is
| no way they are designing, prototyping, getting FAA approval for,
| and going to manufacturing on a plane and engine by 2030. It's
| not unlikely, it's just not feasible which literally anyone who
| bothers to look at the FAA website would be able to tell.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/airworthiness_certific...
|
| "By comparison, the certification of a new aircraft type can take
| between 5 and 9 years."
|
| And that is just for the plane, engine certification is its own
| process and just as arduous.
| theodric wrote:
| Wait until they pull out their Trump card
| everfrustrated wrote:
| Yup. Moreso when you realise this scaled down prototype has
| basically nothing in common with their larger variant.
|
| So it's testing/validating nothing actually.
|
| Only makes sense as a gimmick to get the next funding round.
| idlewords wrote:
| Remember that the biggest technical challenge to passenger
| supersonic flight is hacking Congress. People really don't like
| plutocrats in private jets cracking their windows and scaring
| their dog.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Over land, sure, but over the ocean, I don't really see the
| problem? Just wait until you're clear enough of the coast and
| then floor it.
| idlewords wrote:
| That's been the status quo since Concorde. The problem is
| it's hard to make a supersonic jet that has decent subsonic
| performance, you kind of have to pick one flight regime or
| the other to optimize for. And the market for business jets
| that you can only really fly transoceanic is small.
| sfblah wrote:
| I didn't see any data on the loudness of the sonic boom. Isn't an
| important part of the idea here to diminish that significantly?
| blktiger wrote:
| I think you are confusing Boom with NASA's QUESST project.
| https://www.nasa.gov/mission/quesst/
| ballooney wrote:
| The GP isn't, a major part of Boom's initial PR was that
| they'd enable domestic supersonic by solving the sonic boom
| issue through technology. Over the years aviation watchers
| have suggested they might have failed at that and are looking
| to solve it through spending VC money on lobbyists to allow
| noisy supersonic overflights.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| Does Boom have a public roadmap? How much of a jump is it between
| building a fighter jet clone and building a passenger sized
| aircraft? I suspect it's a massive jump. How much of the
| technology and testing is transferable? I also suspect not much.
| They're going to spend an immense amount of money testing this
| aircraft, will it get them closer to passenger service as a
| result?
| macinjosh wrote:
| In the Q&A at the end of the video the CEO said:
|
| - Symphony engine being produced by EOY '25
|
| - 3 years to have first full size Overture roll off the line
|
| - About 4 years to have it in the air for first time.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| There's zero chance they can make a brand new, high output
| jet engine in one year, when zero of the market leaders want
| their business.
|
| Are they going to build the engines themselves? Ask China how
| well that works even when have all the original engineering
| documentation.
|
| Building a jet engine is not a technical or knowledge or
| willpower or anything like that challenge. It is a pure
| engineering challenge. It's about building and iterating new
| engines hundreds of times until you've made enough iterations
| that things stop melting in corner cases. It's about finding
| out, the hard way, every single way your assembly could
| possibly fail, melt, explode, wear too fast, or otherwise
| fail.
|
| Understand that making modern engines often requires
| significant innovation in non-destructive testing to ensure
| the actual parts you are buying/making are up to spec.
|
| Understand that Russia has a portion of decades of experience
| building, designing, and INNOVATING in jet engines and still
| struggles to build modern jet engines.
|
| Understand that China struggles to produce economical modern
| jet engines despite massive funding, huge incentive, and
| literal national security concerns. The C19 jetliner
| currently uses an American engine.
|
| Empirically, building modern jet engines seems HARDER than
| building modern rocket engines! It seems to require
| maintaining literal decades of raw engineering experience and
| patience, and now scale all that effort to a company that in
| 9 years has been told by all existing engine manufacturers
| "Nope, we won't make a profit on this plan", and has instead
| spent their time building a single demo plane that does not
| demonstrate any experience in building engines.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Its not between a fighter jet and a passenger jet. Its between
| those two AND building a new engine. Massive is a huge
| understatement.
| buryat wrote:
| If you're rich and can travel faster, why not? I hope they make
| a coupe version
| Animats wrote:
| It's nice, but it's basically Scaled Composites, Rutan's old
| company, building a supersonic fighter plane sized aircraft.
| That's what Scaled Composites does - build little airplanes as
| test vehicles. Not always little; they built Stratolaunch.
|
| There have been many supersonic bizjet projects.[1] Spike [2]
| seems to be the only one other than Boom still alive.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_business_jet
|
| [2] https://www.spikeaerospace.com/
| mppm wrote:
| This is fascinating. Do you have more info about the Rutan
| connection?
| Animats wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Rutan
| fnord77 wrote:
| They claim this was the first 100% civil aircraft to go
| supersonic.
|
| The Concorde wasn't a civil aircraft?
|
| Also in the 60s a DC-8 was made to go faster than Mach 1
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > Boom revealed the final production design of Overture, which is
| slated to roll out in _2025_ and carry its first passengers by
| 2029.
|
| How is Boom tracking to their timelines?
|
| https://news.aa.com/news/news-details/2022/American-Airlines...
| johncalvinyoung wrote:
| They haven't updated those predictions publicly in a little
| while. Definitely a huge setback from Rolls-Royce dropping out,
| and putting together the coalition that's developing the
| Symphony engine. Latest I've seen on Twitter is Blake Scholl
| stating the first full-size engine core should be making thrust
| by end of 2025.
|
| I'm guessing rollout realistically is more like 2029-2030...
| but even that is a tall order. Unless, of course, they're a lot
| farther ahead on Overture development generally than they've
| revealed.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| I was expecting to see something Concorde scale, but I guess a
| private jet is a start.
| josefrichter wrote:
| Is the word aircraft feminine? They keep saying "she" and it
| sounds weird.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| It's a thing. You can selectively gender a creation or just a
| highly praised piece of property (e.g. boats). It implies
| fondness, respect and pride.
| davedx wrote:
| It's from when the English language had gendered nouns, which
| of course predates aircraft; I think aircraft being female was
| a carry-over from boats and ships being female
| nelox wrote:
| A wonderful achievement, but the camera operator really should
| know how to focus for the money shot.
| fryd_w wrote:
| Boom's real challenge isn't just showing they can go supersonic--
| it's designing an engine and airframe combo that can operate at
| scale, hit reasonable ticket prices, and address stricter
| environmental policies than Concorde ever faced. The XB-1 proves
| they're capable of building a small supersonic jet, but the gap
| between a funded prototype and a viable passenger fleet is
| enormous. Unless they can tackle those regulatory hurdles
| (especially around overland noise), keep operating costs
| competitive, and deliver a new engine that supports their
| performance claims, we're still not much closer to a reliable
| Mach-plus commercial service than we were in the 1970s. It's
| progress, but we shouldn't confuse a cool proof-of-concept with a
| profitable flight network.
|
| Any case - truly impressed by their persistance. Pushing
| something for such a long time despite being so far from any
| commercial traction feels insance to me.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| > Pushing something for such a long time despite being so far
| from any commercial traction feels insance to me.
|
| They must have something that you ain't got...
| Avshalom wrote:
| Extremely generous investors?
| gcanyon wrote:
| I think they were going for "the right stuff"
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >hit reasonable ticket prices
|
| There's much more to this. Their biggest competition may be
| cheaper Meta headsets paired via Starlink. Why travel as fast
| as possible when you can simply be there instantly for a
| fraction of the cost?
| CrI0gen wrote:
| I really don't think that will be competition at all. People
| like to travel and the demand is there for faster
| international flights. For business travel, people either
| prefer to go in person or have to be in person. Also with
| time zone differences, virtual meetings require one party to
| often have to meet at odd times. The ticket price probably
| will be higher than what most people want to spend for
| vacation, but there will still be plenty of people willing to
| pay.
| runako wrote:
| > paired via Starlink
|
| What advantage does Starlink provide here? Isn't it a higher-
| latency, slower connection than most people have access to at
| home?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Their new goal is just 20ms.
|
| https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-tries-again-to-reduce-
| star...
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Good achievement. Also really good PR from them. If this was a
| team from say Switzerland it wouldn't be on every front page.
| kvogt wrote:
| They worked extremely hard on one problem for 10 years straight.
| Incredibly impressed. That's what it takes to create great
| things. Congrats Blake!
| gadders wrote:
| So cool to see this.
|
| I have forever been jealous of a colleague in the 90s that got
| bumped off a business flight, put on the next available Concorde
| flight a couple of hours later, and still arrived earlier than
| his original flight.
| ginkgotree wrote:
| These guys were in my S16 batch. I have worked Aerospace the last
| 6 years, and it is AWESOME to see this accomplishment! Surpassing
| Mach is a massive challenge for a crewed aircraft. Big win for
| the team, congratulations
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