[HN Gopher] How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware develo...
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How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware development
Author : flabber
Score : 52 points
Date : 2025-08-10 19:37 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (bscholl.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bscholl.substack.com)
| Aurornis wrote:
| > XB-1 is the world's first independently-developed supersonic
| jet, breaking the sound barrier for the first time in January,
| 2025. It was designed, built, and flown successfully by a team of
| just 50 people
|
| This is a great headline and very impressive. However, it's also
| somewhat puzzling to see the company spend so much investment
| money to build a small prototype plane that doesn't resemble a
| commercial airliner in any way, break the sound barrier 6 times,
| retire it, and then conclude they're on their way to delivering
| commercial supersonic passenger planes in five years
|
| Boom Aero is one of those companies I want to see succeed, but
| everything I read about them tickles my vaporware senses. Snowing
| off a one-off prototype that doesn't resemble the final product
| in any way (other than speed) is a classic sign of a company
| spending money to appeal to investors.
|
| Retiring the plane after only a few flights is also a puzzling
| move. Wouldn't they be making changes and collecting data as much
| as possible on their one prototype?
| jandrese wrote:
| My take is that they felt like they were already pushing their
| luck with the prototype and didn't want to scare investors away
| when it inevitably crashed.
|
| I share your skepticism, especially with their timeline. It has
| been some time since I looked at them closely, but they
| originally pitched developing their own supersonic capable
| turbofan to power their eventual production model. Especially
| with such a small team that seemed overly ambitious to me.
| exabrial wrote:
| Hah.... in the back of my mind: announce they're going to
| crash it before the fly it.
|
| "This flight we're validating our model by pushing the real
| world to the limit. It should explode about 38s into the test
| and crash. We've cleared the expected area"
| _moof wrote:
| I work in aerospace and I don't find this development strategy
| unusual _prima facie_. I don 't know if Boom is explicitly
| doing rapid spiral development, but this is what it would look
| like from the outside - a development vehicle that doesn't
| resemble the final vehicle design in many ways, but does have
| strategically selected commonality to validate and buy down
| risk on specific subsystems and operational concepts. They may
| be retiring XB-1 simply because they got the data they needed.
|
| That being said, I share your skepticism of Boom as a company.
| As far as I know, they still don't have an engine for their
| production aircraft design.
| notahacker wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| The demonstrator was to validate some basic concepts they
| were promoting about being able to achieve supersonic flight
| without supersonic booms. It achieved that at _relatively_
| low cost, and gave them something to brag about, an
| indication of baseline competence at certifying airframes and
| possibly ticked off some investor boxes. There wasn 't much
| more to be learned about large passenger jets using their
| intended custom engines from a small GEJ85 powered platform,
| so its not surprising they haven't gone to the expense of
| continuing to fly it. It's not going to be useful for most
| other stuff they might want to test, apart from perhaps their
| intended custom engines which are probably years away from
| being certified for flight tests, never mind hitting
| performance and reliability targets.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I wonder what kind of liability it would be to sell a one-
| off prototype plane like that. Guessing it would also have
| more value has a model in the lobby or on a pole outside
| headquarters one day than they would earn in selling it.
| rjsw wrote:
| The HP.115 [1] and BAC 221 [2] were not exact scale replicas
| of Concorde.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handley_Page_HP.115 [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Delta_2#BAC_221
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| The market for Boom is not commercial passenger flights. So
| much time is wasted with security, boarding, taxi-ing, waiting
| at the destination for a gate to unload, etc. that the flight
| speed is not a big deal. Existing commercial passenger jets
| could already go faster without going supersonic and save some
| time, but it doesn't matter. Even if you fly commercial
| passenger jets at the absolutely face-melting Mach 3.3 of the
| SR-71, you don't really save enough time to matter. The maximum
| speed in flight doesn't do anything to address ground delays.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _time is wasted with security, boarding, taxi-ing, waiting
| at the destination for a gate to unload, etc._
|
| Airlines can optimise for this. Digital ID virtually
| eliminates security lines. Paying up for gate, t/o and
| landing spots takes care of the latter. There is a cost
| tradeoff for service in the airline business. An all-business
| airline flying Booms would almost necessarily have to pay up
| to negate these issues. (That or fly out of the FBO
| terminal.)
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Airlines do not dictate airport security.
|
| You cannot simply add gates to airports with even an
| infinite pile of money. It doesn't matter, unless you're
| going to make flights from nowhere to nowhere. Doesn't
| sound like a business strategy to me.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Airlines do not dictate airport security_
|
| Airlines absolutely choose whether to participate in
| various programs. Digital ID was cited for a reason.
|
| And in some cases, the airlines have substantial control
| --Delta One has a separate security line at JFK.
|
| > _You cannot simply add gates to airports with even an
| infinite pile of money_
|
| You don't. You outbid someone else for the existing ones.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > And in some cases, the airlines have substantial
| control--Delta One has a separate security line at JFK.
|
| I'm actually surprised more airports don't have VIP level
| gates that the airlines can pay a premium for allowing
| them to charge a premium to their passengers. It'd be
| interesting to see where the price could be that would
| guarantee enough passengers willing to pay the premium
| for much reduced airport headaches.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| That may be true for domestic coast-to-coast flights, but not
| for transoceanic ones across the Atlantic, or especially the
| Pacific, or north-south across hemispheres, that can take 8+
| hours. Flight time is a higher portion of the total travel
| time in those cases, and seems like the main market for Boom,
| especially if they initially target Business Class flyers who
| do those kinds of trips regularly.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Boom XB-1 did 750 mph air speed. If I've got an 8 hour
| flight at 561 mph in an A380 that's a reduction to 5.984
| hours when I move to the Boom XB-1. Who cares about saving
| 1.1 hours on a transatlantic flight. There is a reason why
| Concorde's cruise speed was 1,341 mph.
|
| So when Boom makes a commercial airliner that hits 1000+
| mph with the same availability and turnaround time as a
| typical passenger plane then I'll pay attention. Until
| then, it's for rich people who can buy their own plane.
| signatoremo wrote:
| XB-1 is only the demonstrator. They aim to produce
| commercial airline that can cruise at 1.7 Mach. NYC to
| London in 3.30h instead of 6h.
|
| Rich people can already buy private jet that is much more
| comfortable than supersonic one.
|
| https://boomsupersonic.com/overture
| dylan604 wrote:
| 8 hours - 5.984 hours = 1.1 hours? My math works out to
| just over 2 hours of time saved.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Not disagreeing with you at all.
|
| What is the market for Boom?
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| I think part of it was that they were testing a new aerodynamic
| design that eliminates or minimizes sonic boom, so they can go
| supersonic over land almost immediately after takeoff, and
| operate over populated land routes. It makes sense to test that
| kind of thing with the smallest possible model first, then see
| if you can scale it up to passenger size without losing that
| quiet acceleration. Their timeline for doing that may be
| optimistic, but what they're doing makes sense.
| dingaling wrote:
| The XB-1 doesn't have any boom reduction shaping. That's the
| NASA X-59, though that aircraft is pretty much a dead-end in
| that it's not scalable to a passenger configuration.
|
| The XB-1 made use of an atmospheric trick to minimise boom
| propagation to ground level on one test flight, so well-known
| in fact that Concorde sometimes used it to accelerate as it
| coasted-out without an audible ground-level boom.
| Unfortunately that trick runs out at about M1.17.
| dingaling wrote:
| It's also largely PR guff. The first privately-developed
| supersonic aircraft was the Northrop N-156F, forerunner of the
| F-5, that first flew in 1959. Funded entirely from company
| funds with no military contract. And it went supersonic in its
| first flight with no drama.
|
| In fact the chase plane for the Boom XB-1 is a T-38, derived
| from the N-156F. It can outrun the XB-1.
| bangaladore wrote:
| I'm not sure how strictly privately developed the N-156F is
| given you could easily argue that reuse of design, knowledge
| and relationships from existing contracts saved them a lot of
| money.
| Twirrim wrote:
| > Together with a few other optimizations, these tweaks yielded
| over 1,000mi in increased range--enough that we could now afford
| a remarkable passenger cabin without sacrificing fuel efficiency
| or range.
|
| Honestly, the way the narrative reads, they're still sacrificing
| 1,000mi of range in the interests of an improved cabin
| experience. They've just found an optimisation that enables them
| to reach a net neutral state.
|
| Given we're effectively talking about fuel efficiency here, it's
| hard to imagine airlines wanting an improved cabin vs less fuel
| consumption. All the incentives are on them already to meet a
| "barest minimum" cabin experience that they can get away with,
| because every bit of luxury costs them in numbers of passengers,
| and fuel costs.
| wayne wrote:
| It might be a fad, but the current trend in US public aviation
| is increasing premium cabins and premium revenue:
| https://simpleflying.com/why-us-carriers-doubling-down-premi...
|
| This is the reason Delta and United and doing well right now
| and Southwest and the LCCs are struggling.
|
| It wasn't true just a few years ago, but if this continues as a
| trend, I could see an airline sacrificing fuel efficiency for a
| dramatically improved onboard experience.
| notahacker wrote:
| Premium cabins tend to be a very small proportion of overall
| seats and are about overcharging for a little extra legroom
| and service rather than trading off operational flexibility
| for unique luxury though. Big difference between charging 3x
| economy rates for 2x the space for a carefully estimated
| proportion of seats in a mixed configuration (no brainer) and
| hoping your layout is so good it justifies thirstier, less
| flexible aircraft to operators (tough sell)...
|
| That said, Boom's customers - if they ever exist - will be a
| new business class _pay extra for supersonic flights_
| category anyway.
| bombcar wrote:
| But that's just it - the airlines have finally (lol)
| realized that a huge price "Delta" (lolx2) between normal
| cattle class and first class was a mistake.
|
| People aren't usually paying 4x for first, but they will
| pay $10 more for Y, $30 for Z, etc.
|
| The future of airlines is fully adjustable planes!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Premium cabins tend to be a very small proportion of
| overall seats_
|
| Most of the profit on a plane is made in business class. If
| airlines could fly an all-business configuration, they
| would. The problem is the smallest planes that can do high-
| paying routes like LON-NYC are bigger than that customer
| set. So the airline throws in economy seats, often barely
| breaking even on those, to fill space.
|
| In a world with small airliner planes that can make those
| transoceanic and transcontinental journeys, I suspect we'll
| see more all-business class flights.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Business Class trades well above 3X tourist class.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| It isnt a trend. This is marketing. Thirty years ago, the
| a380 was pitched as having room for luxury too. The new plane
| is always going to have more legroom, wider aisles and better
| air conditioning than anything before. But it never happens.
| The pitch to actual operators is the square-feet of
| floorspace and how many seats can be crammed into that space
| at given price points. Just like concord, this thing only
| makes sense with quazi-economy seating. Do not expect to nap
| on a nice lie-flat seat.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It isnt a trend. This is marketing_
|
| They're citing historic data. It absolutely is a trend that
| premium travel is an increasing slice of post-Covid
| American air travel.
| cogogo wrote:
| Saw a Jet Blue plane wrapped in Peacock livery today... selling
| the planes themselves as billboards sure does feel like
| scraping the bottom of the revenue barrel.
| highfrequency wrote:
| > We can literally define an airplane parametrically in a
| configuration file and press a button. In a matter of minutes we
| have a complete quick-and-dirty analysis of how the whole
| aircraft performs--as mkBoom flies the aircraft through a full
| simulated mission (takeoff, climbout, acceleration, cruise,
| descent, landing). Overnight, mkBoom can run higher-fidelity
| simulations for a more exact understanding of performance.
|
| Awesome stuff! Allows large scale exploration across all
| dimensions of plane design to jointly optimize all components and
| their interactions.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I wonder if they run this through an optimizer then?
| signatoremo wrote:
| Boom's potential customers wouldn't be able to put more seats
| on their planes even if they want to. I suppose the targeted
| performance affords very little margin for customization
| theptip wrote:
| As an aside, anyone care to speculate on the "secret seat
| configuration"?
|
| I guess maybe it's a recliner with feet pointing to the outside
| (maybe just two seats per row)? That's the only new configuration
| I can imagine that would require reshaping the hull.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I'll be very disappointed if the big secret isn't the smart-
| fella-fart-smella configuration.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Forget luxury. Forget speed. Hands down, the best flying
| experience I've ever had was on a dirty, slow, late and _loud_
| C-130. After an announced delay on the ground, I wedged myself
| between a cargo pallet and the wall, threw a ratchet strap across
| as a "belt" and passed out on a metal floor with a backpack for
| a pillow. No in-flight meals. No safety briefs. No entertainment
| systems. No drink service. Nothing. I don't even remember the
| takeoff. The only thing anyone said to me was "Uh, sir... We are
| about to land. You have to get up." THAT is what I want from
| flying. Give me a bit of peace, a chance to sleep, and I couldn't
| care less how fast or slow the journey.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| You're describing a lay-flat seat. (If you let them know you
| don't want to be disturbed, they won't.)
| vosper wrote:
| Of if you are on Air New Zealand and can't afford business
| class you can get a Skycouch in Economy. They're pretty
| great, actually, unless you're over 6ft tall or can't sleep
| with you knees bent a bit
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Are you kidding? On a commercial flight, between the safety
| briefs, seatbelt warnings, and "turn on/off your devices"
| there are constant announcements. And the stupid
| entertainment systems you cannot turn off, or at least that
| spring to flashing life again after each pointless
| announcement. I wore my ear defenders on united once, and was
| woken mid-flight by a steward informing me they were not
| allowed as i wouldnt be able to hear announcements.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _on united_
|
| Yeah I found your problem :P.
| dgunay wrote:
| I know it's due to safety but I really wish there were an
| economy version of the lie flat seat. I'd gladly sleep in a set
| of bunk beds stacked 3-4 high for an 8 hour flight.
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