[HN Gopher] A supersonic engine core makes the perfect power tur...
___________________________________________________________________
A supersonic engine core makes the perfect power turbine
Author : simonebrunozzi
Score : 105 points
Date : 2025-12-09 15:51 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (boomsupersonic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (boomsupersonic.com)
| scblock wrote:
| This feels cynical and ugly, and I am pretty disgusted by the way
| things are going in this space. I don't see any reason to trust
| Boom based on their history, and I am sick and tired of the
| "solution" to bad ideas being more bad ideas. We need renewables
| and grid infrastructure, not yet more fossil fuels.
|
| Additionally,
|
| 1) Aeroderivative gas turbines have been around for decades. "Oh
| but we have supersonic engines" does not change the fundamental
| equation
|
| 2) They're proposing burning more fossil fuels dug up from the
| ground to feed a beast that in my opinion is destroying the
| entire world economy, and certainly harming freedom
|
| 3) Where are they even getting the fuel? Magic? Someone has to
| build the pipelines, and someone has to supply the fuel.
|
| Note: edited for civility
| dang wrote:
| Whoa - no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are, or
| how strongly a topic makes you feel, you can't post like this
| to Hacker News. It's vastly against the site guidelines.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
|
| Edit: you've unfortunately been doing this repeatedly lately -
| for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46166929 and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45836368 - and we've
| already warned you once
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44682844). If you keep
| posting like this, we're going to end up banning you. I don't
| want to ban you because your account also posts good things, so
| if you'd please fix this, we'd be grateful.
| noosphr wrote:
| >someone
|
| https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/boom-yc-w16-is-building-
| an-...
| dang wrote:
| Yes, Boom is a YC startup, and the GP comment was
| unacceptable and the sort of thing we ban accounts for.
| Both are the case, and that doesn't change depending on who
| a comment is talking about.
| scblock wrote:
| Edited for civility. But the sentiment remains.
| msandford wrote:
| Today I learned a thing! It makes sense that subsonic engines and
| supersonic engines would be different in retrospect but upon
| reading the headline I thought for sure it was going to be some
| kind of weird "jump on the AI hype train" article.
|
| Good for them for trying to find a profitable proving ground for
| their engines.
| rgmerk wrote:
| Seriously? This couldn't be more "jumping on the AI hype train"
| if it tried.
| d_silin wrote:
| It is at least 50% AI slop.
|
| Siemens power-generating turbines are designed for -50C/+50C
| temperature envelope. All jet engines lose efficiency at higher
| ambient temperature due to thermodynamics, no matter how good
| their HP turbine blade tech.
| teeray wrote:
| > About three months later, we had a signed deal for 1.21
| gigawatts and had started manufacturing the first turbine.
|
| Great Scott!
| rje99 wrote:
| I think we had the same though at the same time. Did you also
| hit your head on the toilet?
| cortesoft wrote:
| That is clearly an intentional reference.
| bitwize wrote:
| They probably did that deliberately, like when Google IPO'd for
| $2,718,281,828.
| npodbielski wrote:
| What is strange about it? Normal power plants have 2-3
| gigawatts. Gas turbine having 300MW is probably just below
| average. What am I missing? Is it some US thing where G scale
| is not 10^9?
| foxglacier wrote:
| It's a joke about the movie Back To The Future and 1.21
| Jiggawatts.
| npodbielski wrote:
| Ah now it makes sense.
| rje99 wrote:
| 1.21 jigowatts? Great Scott! the only power source capable of
| generating 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning
| lawlessone wrote:
| all this for predictive text, not even robotics. Not protein
| folding, not simulations of the early universe. Not even some
| embodied AI learning from a simulated environment.
| plorg wrote:
| Selling shovels
| whatsupdog wrote:
| Great, that's what we need. More fossil fuel powered, CO2
| emitting, supersonic turbines polluting our environment. Unless I
| see a sea of solar powered carbon capturing machines,somewhere in
| the Saharan desert, churning the CO2 back to natural gas to power
| these turbines, I hate this.
| kwanbix wrote:
| Hey, but imagine all the nano banana images we can create!
| plorg wrote:
| I think you're missing the point. Once we've bruteforced the
| computer god into being he will absolve us of all the sins of
| destroying the place we live and magically create for us a
| utopia of so much free energy that we won't have to worry about
| having an atmosphere.
| whatsupdog wrote:
| I wonder how these elites (you are one, if you can reach San
| Altman by text) are so detached from reality, that they think
| that bragging about a gas powered turbine, in this day and
| age, in the given environment, for something as ludicrous as
| predictive text generation is a such a flex!
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| We will create computer god and ask it how to save our
| environment and climate and it will look at all the data we
| have fed it over the years and say "You've known the answer
| for decades, you just didn't like it. Not building me would
| have been a good start."
| oersted wrote:
| > I texted with Sam Altman--who confirmed power was indeed a
| major constraint.
|
| Such a cheap flex right up-front, and with an em-dash to boot. I
| get it, it's powerful to boast about such a connection. It's just
| not very classy.
| plorg wrote:
| It's also a kind of ideological signpost.
| salt4034 wrote:
| Here's how academics do it:
|
| > Sam Altman confirmed power was indeed a major constraint [1].
|
| > [1]: Personal communication.
|
| Or even better:
|
| > Power is a major constraint (Sam Altman, personal
| communication, December 9, 2025).
| georgefrowny wrote:
| It's also such a stupid question to ask. No one doubts AI needs
| fuckton of power. Not the fanboys or the haters or even the
| don't-cares.
|
| What next? "I emailed Donald Knuth--who confirmed software does
| mostly run on computers"? "I at-ed the Pope who confirmed that
| he is currently a Catholic"?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I asked Florida man if there's a gator in the nearby lake, he
| said prolly
| wombatpm wrote:
| But if it wasn't AI it would be something else. Remember when
| Bitcoin was consuming all the energy and destroying the
| environment?
| groby_b wrote:
| [flagged]
| codyb wrote:
| So many cults of personality these days between Musk, Trump,
| Altman, Neuman (WeWork guy)...
|
| Maybe it started with Jobs, maybe it's always been a thing in
| other spaces (politics, religion...) and is now coming to
| business and these uber wealthy individuals who put their
| pants on two legs at a time
| oersted wrote:
| It also seemed to be like that 100-150 years ago, with all
| the big-name robber barons, oil/steel/rail tycoons and
| inventor-industrialists like Edison or Ford.
|
| There are times when concentration of capital leads to a
| disproportionate influence of personal relationships and
| one-on-one deal-making. The same can be said of political
| or attention capital, not just wealth.
|
| To be fair, that's also what Aristocracy always was, they
| were just less active in forcing their mad visions onto the
| world.
| wombatpm wrote:
| We're looking at classy as a small dot in the rear view mirror
| with this current generation of elites.
| lowkey_ wrote:
| I didn't read it that way because Boom went through YC while
| Sam was president of YC. The connection makes a lot of sense,
| and dates back to pre-OpenAI days.
|
| I would assume he's just telling the story as it happened.
| trehalose wrote:
| How loud are these turbines? Where will they be used?
| jdc0589 wrote:
| I can't wait for the town hall meetings in areas where a
| datacenter is coming "you want us to live next to supersonic
| jets powering a datacenter?"
| wmf wrote:
| Already happening: https://www.memphisflyer.com/southaven-
| residents-raise-conce...
| fyrn_ wrote:
| Managed to talk about china's energy buildout _without_ mention
| of renewables? I think this pivot is 100% designed to get
| government money: - natrual gas turbine - china is scary -
| something something it's a race - china energy is good because no
| regulations, totally not because they are lapping the world on
| renewable buildout
| marze wrote:
| If China had "no regulations" and was building out 100% coal,
| no one would be worrying that China industry would have an
| advantage due to low electricity cost vs rest of world.
| AuthAuth wrote:
| China's energy buildout is still mostly coal. Go look at the
| last 20 years how much energy they've added for coal vs solar.
| Dont fall for the "solar has increased by 500%" trap.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| You're absolutely correct.
|
| China didn't start adding much in the way of solar prior to
| about 2020, whereas they added _lots_ of coal generation in
| the past 20 years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| They are replacing old coal plants with more efficient
| cleaner designers. National security wise they still have
| lots of coal to work with, while most renewable energy is
| generated in the west where ongoing grid upgrades are
| needed to use it where people live (in the east).
| fpoling wrote:
| The newer plants not only more efficient going from
| 30-35% of peak efficiency to something like 45%, they can
| also operate efficiently over wider range of power output
| and are faster to turn on/off.
|
| This is very helpful to deal with variability with
| renewable output.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Coal consumption has peaked there. Solar is growing
| explosively.
| specialist wrote:
| Yes and:
|
| Recent Volts episode has great overview of China's electro-
| tech build out, world is at or near peak fossil fuel across
| all sectors and countries (with 1 notable exception), etc.
|
| Clean electrification is inevitable - A conversation with
| Kingsmill Bond of Ember Energy. [2025/11/21]
|
| https://www.volts.wtf/p/clean-electrification-is-inevitable
| AuthAuth wrote:
| Dont you think its a bit naive to be saying something
| peaked when it hasnt even been a year?
| rgmerk wrote:
| The economics are pretty strikingly in favour of
| renewables and batteries, and one thing China does not
| have is cheap natural gas.
| dzonga wrote:
| China alone this year has added 221GW of Solar Energy, which is
| about 2x the rest of the world combined.
|
| it's a nice pivot though - turbines are just turbines.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Turbines are useful even in a 100% renewable powered world.
| gridspy wrote:
| Perhaps not in a 100% world, though I'll give you the point
| that they are useful now.
|
| In a 100% renewable world we would not be extracting or
| refining oil. Natural gas (used by these turbines) is a
| byproduct of oil drilling. Were we not burning the oil, the
| natural gas might be too expensive alone.
|
| Also, in a 100% renewable world we would (by definition) have
| enough generation all the time - (covered by batteries and
| good baseload sources) that turbine power was no longer
| required to cover peak loads.
| rgmerk wrote:
| It's not clear (yet) what a 100% clean energy powered world
| would use to cover the last couple of percent of demand
| when loads peak and/or variable generation troughs for
| extended periods.
|
| It'll be some combination of demand management (which isn't
| nearly as horrifying as people make it out to be), pumped
| hydro, long-duration batteries like iron-air, but also
| possibly burning hydrogen or hydrogen-derived synthetic
| fuels (produced by electrolysis when hydrogen is abundant)
| and/or biofuels in turbines.
| mannykannot wrote:
| There is a time- honored, straightforward way to deal
| with the last two percent problem, which is to overbuild
| by a couple of percent or so.
| rgmerk wrote:
| That's not how the maths works unfortunately.
|
| Basically, you end up having to overbuild to crazy
| levels, or build insane amounts of battery storage, which
| only gets used a few days a year.
| mannykannot wrote:
| That is right (if rather exaggerated, and I will note
| that it was you who originally picked the figure of two
| percent), and in practice, we accept a certain risk that
| we will not always have all the capacity we want, even
| though (or because) we cannot precisely predict how big
| or often these events will be. There is no particular
| reason to think this specific case is any different.
| plantain wrote:
| Why can't we predict how big or how often those events
| would be? We have clear understandings of the
| distribution of probabilities for all kinds of weather
| scenarios - see for example 1-50/100/1000 year
| flood/droughts.
| rgmerk wrote:
| We can and do, and there are detailed plans based on
| those weather scenarios (eg for the Australian east coast
| grid; there is AEMO's Integrated System Plan).
|
| Things in the US are a bit more of a mixed bag, for
| better or worse, but there have been studies done that
| suggest that you can get very high renewables levels cost
| effectively, but not to 100% without new technology (eg
| "clean firm" power like geothermal, new nuclear being
| something other than a clusterfumble, long-term storage
| like iron-air batteries, etc etc etc).
| fpoling wrote:
| Somebody calculated that a home in UK needs 1 Megawatt-
| Hour battery to backup solar energy during the winter. I
| suspect in 10 years that may cost below 25K, a small
| fraction of the property cost.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Particularly with the development of fracking, natural gas
| production is no longer a just a byproduct of oil
| production, and can be (and is) pursued independently.
| Nevertheless, I agree that we developing renewables should
| be our priority.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Burning more fossil fuels in noisy, polluting ways is not a good
| tradeoff considering most "AI" itself is questionably a net
| positive, and certainly not worth the current levels of
| investment.
| allenrb wrote:
| Notice as well that no mention of efficiency was made. Perhaps
| I missed it, but I'm somewhat familiar with power generation,
| and _usually_ efficiency is front and center.
|
| Fact seems to be, nobody doing "AI" gives a damn.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Hear me out... we could just stop building enormous AI data
| centers for money suck products with no actual net positive
| revenue.
| teach wrote:
| Normally I try to go with the most charitable interpretation, but
| this article makes it difficult.
|
| > Meanwhile China is adding power capacity at a wartime pace--
| coal, gas, nuclear, everything....
|
| China is adding solar. Mostly solar. The word "solar" does not
| appear even once in this press release, and that seems
| disingenuous.
|
| I _do_ think there's a place for more efficient use of the fossil
| fuels we do have. People are going to continue to burn natural
| gas for a while, so we might as well do it better I guess. But
| America isn't going to make up the energy deficit with fossil
| fuels, no matter how "clever" we are.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| This is designed for "fast" and "high power", but not for
| efficiency: it's not a combined cycle plant.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Yeah, its totally inefficient - according to Wikipedia a
| simple cycle gas turbine can be up to 43% efficient - with a
| combined cycle (you boil water with the first stage jet
| engine exhaust and then run a steam turbine off that) it can
| get up to 64%.
|
| So like this there is possibly about 20% of (a lot of)
| energy/fuel just wasted. You can get even better, running
| something like a city wide district heating off the waste
| heat from the steam turbine - potentially reaching 100% in
| the sense that people get heating, warm running water or
| possibly also process heat for industrial use.
|
| Or you can do none of that and power a datacenter of
| questionable utility with it at about 40% efficiency. :P
| delichon wrote:
| > China is adding solar. Mostly solar. The word "solar" does
| not appear even once in this press release, and that seems
| disingenuous.
|
| On the contrary, check out this graph:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...
|
| Solar is a tiny portion of new energy capacity in China
| compared to coal, oil, and gas. But it is similar to nuclear as
| of 2024. New coal production swamps everything else combined.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| are we looking at the same graph? if you look at the past
| decade or so, the "solar" slice is clearly widening the
| fastest
| delichon wrote:
| In the graph I'm looking at, with no extrapolating, solar
| energy is a tiny sliver of coal. If I extrapolate, crossing
| of the lines looks like something in the far future.
| pfdietz wrote:
| So, if you ignore obvious trends, you can reach a
| conclusion you like.
|
| Have you considered working for the IEA?
|
| https://x.com/RARohde/status/1989447673108410835
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| They already have well over double the US solar output (US
| solar output is about 750 Twh according to this source, while
| China's is a bit over 2000 Twh) and their YoY solar increase
| is about 4x the US (600 Twh increase in China vs 150 Twh
| increase in the US)
|
| They are also increasing coal usage, you are correct, however
| in the past 2 years, their solar output has increased
| significantly, to the point where it increased more than
| their coal output in 2024.
|
| My point is that the comment you are quoting is actually
| technically correct, if you compare 2023 and 2024 in that
| graph for example, solar was the largest increase in output.
| delichon wrote:
| It may be huge someday, but now it is niche, and a tiny
| fraction of new capacity. Coal is king and not about to be
| dethroned.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| In the last year of that graph 2023-2024, the increase in
| solar was greater than any other source, including coal, it's
| 15x greater than nuclear.
|
| And unless people are shoveling coal directly into the data
| centres this electricity generating gas turbine is intended
| to be used for the electricity generation mix is more
| appropriate to conapre:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-
| by...
| AuthAuth wrote:
| why are you fixating on 1 single year? Look at the past 10
| years or past 5 years and its the complete opposite.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| Why are they looking at the most recent year when
| discussing the changing trend of exponential differential
| growth to point out it has now surpassed others, instead
| of the prior years where that differential was slower and
| the other was still growing faster?
|
| I mean... Seems obvious, no?
| AuthAuth wrote:
| No because they are highlighting a single year where
| solar was exceptionally high and when you look at a 5
| year period it tells a completely different story. If you
| look at future investment there is still 60 trillion
| being spent on new coal and while thats smaller than the
| future investment in solar you need to account for the
| fact that there current power is already 60% coal.
|
| Even if we give China the most charity and take their
| 2025 results at face vault(even though they NEED to be
| independently verified) China is at best average when it
| comes % of gridpower that is renewable. Off the top of my
| head I think they are like 27-30% renewable. But its
| actually worse because they are the biggest polluter by a
| mile. Bigger the next 6 biggest polluters combined.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Solar is a tiny portion of new energy capacity in China
| compared to coal, oil, and gas.
|
| That graph shows production, not capacity, nor installed
| capacity in each year.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Well good, those are the correct numbers focus on because:
|
| Solar capacity and say nuclear / coal / gas / hydro / fuel
| oil capacity
|
| Are different beasts.
|
| When solar advocates _bang on_ about adding X gigawatts of
| capacity, they're being dishonest. What they really mean is
| they added X /4, because, obviously, it's sunny only about
| 25% of the time throughout a year.
|
| Adding batteries doesn't change that. Still have to over
| build.
|
| So let's focus on the numbers that reflect actual
| production, so we can have an honest conversation.
|
| Nuclear / coal / gas / hydro / fuel oil, even biomass have
| capacity factors typically about 80%, often about 90%.
|
| Wind and solar are never going up ro those capacity
| factors, even with batteries (including pumped hydro).
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| > China is adding solar. Mostly solar. The word "solar" does
| not appear even once in this press release, and that seems
| disingenuous.
|
| They are adding everything. They know baseload is important so
| they build nuclear. They know they can't fill the hole fast
| enough, so they are still building some coal.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Does it make anyone a little sad that we could have actual
| abundance with solar and wind and nuclear?
|
| Also, this is only commercially viable because this regime has
| rendered the EPA functionally powerless.
| infecto wrote:
| Not really. Makes me hopeful. The constraint right now to
| renewables in America is connecting them to the grid. The lead
| times are still in the years.
|
| I am hopeful that these constraints breed innovation and new
| solutions to the space.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Just vomited in my mouth a little bit. A supersonic aerospace
| company doing a half-assed pivot into fossil fuel electricity
| generation to, what, try to simultaneously capitalize on AI CAPEX
| while also soliciting government handouts?
|
| Come on, get serious.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| And it started by browsing X, as most things do, of course.
| foxglacier wrote:
| What are you trying to say? That no company that makes money
| from the market can also try to get government funding, even
| for a different part of their business? Or is this only
| supersonic aerospace companies, not conventional aerospace? Or
| only if it's fossil fuel. What a bizarre list of conditions to
| make you vomit. You can't possibly have thought of that in
| advance. I suspect you don't know what you're saying at all.
| stego-tech wrote:
| I'm not going to bother formulating a serious response to
| such an incredibly insane attempt at shoving words and
| positions into my mouth to fit your own preconceived
| narrative.
|
| Be better.
| foxglacier wrote:
| I tried my best to understand your position but the more
| details I included from your statement, the more ridiculous
| it became. You should just say what you mean instead of
| that.
| tomhow wrote:
| Please don't post snarky, shallow dismissals on HN. You may not
| owe aerospace startups any better, but you owe the community
| better if you want to participate here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| AI data centers still consume a lot less than most other things
| on the grid. In percentages it's less than 1%. Much less. It
| might get to a percent in a few years. The energy demand growth
| from other sources is much more significant. Things like
| industrial heating, domestic heating and other domestic usage,
| transport (car and truck charging), etc. are growing much more
| aggressively than even the most aggressive growth scenarios for
| AI.
|
| Electrification of the economy, which is a thing that at least
| the US is way behind on, is going to be a massive driver of
| electricity demand across the world. And a lot of countries are
| going to benefit from cost savings there. Not having to import
| expensive oil and gas in favor of cheaply produced solar/wind
| energy is going to wipe out quite a few billions from the trade
| balance of countries across the world. China is leading by
| example here. Their diesel imports are declining sharply already.
| Investments in renewables are rising accordingly. This is not
| driven by green washing but by raw economics.
|
| For the same reason, oil and gas prices usage is predicted to
| enter a steady decline pretty much everywhere. The IEA (known for
| overly conservative oil biased predictions) is predicting this
| will be in decline by 2030. They are probably wrong again and it
| might be a few years sooner. In China next year is a better
| estimate.
|
| Most growth on the grid (80-90%) is driven by renewables +
| battery addition to the grid. It's actually not even close in
| most countries. Including the US. Gas turbines are hard to get in
| a hurry. Most of the ones that are realistically going to be
| installed soonish were ordered quite some time ago. Same with
| nuclear reactors. Supply of those is even less elastic (decades
| rather than years).
|
| In the mean time, there are hundreds of gw of clean energy (which
| can be ordered and brought online with very short lead times)
| coming online every year. Think a few dozen of nuclear reactors
| worth of capacity. In the US alone. Every year. Vs. a handful of
| nuclear reactors over the next decade. And a sprinkling of gas
| plants barely replacing lost capacity (closures of coal and older
| gas plants). All at great cost of course and typically after long
| delays.
|
| A lot of the AI related fossil fuel usage growth is increasing
| load on existing infrastructure; which for cost reasons was being
| under utilized. As soon as cheaper power can be secured, that
| capacity will revert back to being underutilized. That's just
| simple economics.
|
| Whether the US will be able to adapt to other countries doing
| things cheaper and better than them remains to be seen. It looks
| like it will have lots of expensive and obsolete gas
| infrastructure pretty soon. And a lot of debt that financed that.
| And a lot of data centers operating under high gas prices
| competing with data centers built close to ones with access to
| cheap renewables might become a thing as well. Some people are
| predicting a bubble. When that bursts, the more economical data
| centers might have a higher chance of surviving.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| It's funny to portray "USA need more power for GPUs" and then
| contrast China getting the power to _actual industry_ making
| _actual stuff useful to people_
| nickff wrote:
| We're all too busy filling out forms to manufacture anything in
| the West. They don't have to declare their conflict minerals
| contents (which seem impossible to verify), or even try to
| measure the PFAS in their products (good luck figuring out the
| PFAS contents of complex products like electronics).
| King-Aaron wrote:
| More like we've spent decades offshoring every step of the
| manufacturing pipeline - from material processing to
| manufacturing tooling and all the skills and expertise in
| between - and now it's reached a state where even _if_ you
| wanted to spin up manufacturing on the same scale locally,
| you need those decades again to bring every part of the
| economy back to support it.
| Propelloni wrote:
| That's true, but the GP still has a point. Manufacturing is
| easier in countries with less regulation about it. Yet we
| have to ask ourselves, how do we want to live?
|
| I mean, we have those regulations because nobody wants to
| live in Lahore, Pakistan.
| deadeye wrote:
| 100%
|
| Personal experience: In my town a public parking lot could
| not be built due to it possibly being "endangered moth"
| habitat.
|
| There are places where you can still build things in the US,
| but they are more and more scarce.
| lovemenot wrote:
| Are you arguing that USA can no longer build parking lots
| due to environmental concerns? If so, that would indeed be
| remarkable since parking lots seem to be the facility that
| almost every US town has been able to build more than
| enough of.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'd like to see parking lots go extinct.
| hinkley wrote:
| They're still scrubbing the scorch marks out of the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPS_Airlines_Flight_2976 tragedy.
|
| I understand that turbines are very handy in power generation but
| we don't use gyroscopic power storage because the inertia gets
| scary at high RPMs. Turbines lake the momentum but make up for it
| by being entirely made of knives. You lose an engine mount or
| throw a blade and you're deep in the shit.
| krisoft wrote:
| I don't understand your point about UPS 2976. You make it sound
| as if people there were hurt by the engine parts hitting them.
| But in actuality it is the airplane crashing into them which
| killed those unfortunate.
|
| Even aviation turbines are quite safe and uncontained engine
| mallfunctions are very rarely a problem. On top of that there
| is every reason to think that ground based power generating
| applications can be even safer. There weight is much less of a
| constraint, so you can easily armour the container to a much
| higher assurance level. The terrestrial turbine is not jostled
| around so you have less of a concern about gyroscopic effects.
| And finally you can install the power generating turbine with a
| much larger keep out zone. All three factors making terrestrial
| power generating jets safer than the aviation ones.
| hinkley wrote:
| The plane suffered an engine mount failure, which tore a hole
| in the wing, sprayed shrapnel into engine 2, which caused a
| compressor stall reducing thrust past the survivable level.
| Then it crashed into a fuel recycling plant with a full load
| of jet fuel.
|
| The scary part of the mount failure is that the mounts
| cracked in an unexposed part where visual inspection did not
| reveal the damage. It wasn't due for a teardown and
| inspection until it had traveled 25% (80% of the maintenance
| window) farther. That's why they grounded the entire fleet.
|
| Takeoffs are dangerous because they run the engines hard, and
| parts are operating in the supersonic range.
| dpifke wrote:
| We _do_ use gyroscopic power storage, see e.g.
|
| https://h-cpc.cat.com/cmms/v2?f=subfamily&it=group&cid=402&l...
|
| https://www.activepower.com/
|
| ...and probably others.
|
| (A couple of decades ago I worked for a company that was a
| tenant at a datacenter that used these instead of batteries;
| it's not new or particularly exotic technology.)
| ggm wrote:
| Gas turbines have a role in energy production worldwide. If this
| means they can run more efficiently, then there's a place for it.
| If the intent is to run 24/7 then it should replace existing Gas
| 24/7 service deployment, not add new, unless there is a reason
| wind+solar+storage and a (smaller? different configuration) gas
| peaker cannot do the job.
|
| If this works as a rapid start gas peaker, it could help in the
| shift off coal and diesel. It depends on the CO/CO2 burden.
| pdx_flyer wrote:
| There are already quite a few rapid start gas peakers not only
| being produced but in-service. Nothing about Boom's stands out
| as being significantly different.
| ggm wrote:
| thats kind-of what I thought. GE sell a lot, so maybe this
| introduces some supply chain diversity and has a different
| maintenance burden and duty cycle. Thats about it.
| kreelman wrote:
| It could be a good, relatively portable gas peaker. Though I
| would have thought batteries might be a better step for peak
| load management?
|
| This might sit somewhere between peak load and base load?
|
| Since the CO/CO2 exhaust from this turbine should be able to be
| captured fairly well, would it be possible to capture it on the
| spot into tanks of some kind? There are most probably some
| large thermal issues to deal with here.. I also wonder about
| the MIT COF-99
| (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exotic-powder-
| pul...) that eats up CO2 very efficiently.
|
| If simply CH4 is being passed to the turbine, is the water
| generated from the combustion being captured anywhere?
|
| What about the sound characteristics of this beasty? There are
| cases in the US of people noticing the new AI data centre fans
| whining at all hours.
|
| There'll be an engineer/physicist out there somewhere who'll
| come up with a generally efficient way to move heat around
| (Graphene ?) and he'll start a multi-billion dollar business.
| kristianp wrote:
| > Superpower is sort of like our Starlink moment
|
| Great analogy if it pays off.
|
| I'd wonder how it competes with nuclear for scale and existing
| gas turbines for cost and efficiency.
| namirez wrote:
| Well, even Blake knows that Overture is highly unlikely to
| survive as a product. Best of luck to him with this pivot. I
| really wish him success. He has spent more than a decade of his
| life on this project.
| pdx_flyer wrote:
| Grifts really have become mainstream.
| maxglute wrote:
| Now deliver 500 turbines by Q2 2026... oh you can't because you
| need 4-5 years to build and scale up manufacturing and train a
| skilled workforce? Well that's better than 5-10 years to build
| centralized power plants... or just truck in a shit load of low
| skilled Mexicans to build out island solar and battery to
| alleviate bottle neck and throw in a bunch of diesel/gas
| generators.
|
| The problem isn't better turbine, it's lead times that can
| satisfy data center demands at current rollout timeline. America
| being america makes large scale centralized infra difficult,
| building supply chains for essentially aviation turbines may be
| faster, but not more than just slapping down renewables and
| diesel/gas generators. You can get all the commodity generators
| and solar tomorrow.
|
| Like ~85% of of PRC's new power generation this year growth is
| mostly renewables. It's a new distributed tech stack that can be
| spung up at scale incredible speed vs centralized generation
| infra. PRC built out about 300GW of renewables this year, US data
| centre needs projected at 100GW by 2035 with no sign centralized
| plants will be online in time. Combine with some dirty generators
| and US datacentres can survive on islanded utilities until the
| bubble burst.
| qwe----3 wrote:
| > It's a new distributed tech stack that can be spung up at
| scale incredible speed vs centralized generation infra.
|
| When you get too much renewables solar/wind you can get
| blackouts like spain did. Fast grids fail fast. It's also
| important to have grid inertia to resist changes in frequency
| (which you get from due to the kinetic energy stored in
| spinning generators)
| maxglute wrote:
| Hence Islanded i.e. skip grid because US incompetence is
| inability to hook up grid with multiyear lead times due to
| skilled labour shortage. The entire point is to skip the grid
| or rather, due to US constraints, hook up to grid not really
| an option to meet rollout timelines.
| phh wrote:
| You can make frequency inertia with solar (even without
| batteries if you accept running with a constant reserve so
| with reduced efficiency). Spain showed that there is a
| learning curve, that's for sure, but their issue was a
| "simple" oscillation problem that can be fixed by adjusting
| frequency-follow rate and grid-disconnect rules. It wasn't
| like a peak of energy consumption or loss of energy
| production that only a rotating mass could compensate.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| "AI didn't just need more turbines--it needed a new and
| fundamentally better turbine. Symphony was the perfect new engine
| to accelerate AI in America."
|
| I completely hate that we can't just motivate this in terms of
| _making electricity_ , the stuff we all use every day for a
| hundred things. No, it has to be about AI. Bah!
| bradfa wrote:
| It's interesting that this implies that building natural gas
| pipelines to data centers is easy, at least easier than building
| out substations and transmission lines. Because you don't run a
| (or several) 42MW natural gas generator without a big fat natural
| gas pipe.
|
| Why is it so much easier to build the pipelines than to bring in
| electric lines?
| pwarner wrote:
| Transmission loss in gas pipes is probably lower than electric
| transmission? Underground probably easier than above ground.
| Lastly I think they are building data centers near natural gas
| fields...
| stephen_g wrote:
| I wouldn't expect so, because it's not just fugitive
| emissions we're talking about, but that you need to run a lot
| of big compressors to run pipelines. But often that cost
| isn't really counted because they just burn more gas to power
| them.
| mNovak wrote:
| I'm guessing it's not just the overhead lines, but you need the
| actual power plants somewhere.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > Why is it so much easier to build the pipelines than to bring
| in electric lines?
|
| It's not necessarily easier to do one or the other. It's about
| which one is faster.
| johnsmith1840 wrote:
| They want to build them near the oil fields in texas. As of now
| most of those fields already run without much if any power
| infra in place on top of that they would be right by the
| natural gas generation.
|
| Add that the manpower and expertise of running generators is
| abundant there and it's a prettt solid idea if they can
| actually make it.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| WA state has the advantage of cheap electricity due to hydro
| projects, and before they were able to ship off their surplus
| to CA, they did a lot of aluminum production here to take
| advantage of it. I can see natural gas working similar, but
| I've also heard data centers want to take advantage of cheap
| hydro and wind power in western states.
| trhway wrote:
| >Because you don't run a (or several) 42MW natural gas
| generator without a big fat natural gas pipe.
|
| at 40KWh/kg and 50% efficiency you'd need 2 tons/hour for a
| 42MW generator, which is a one large tanker per day. Thus you
| can do without gas pipeline which is a big advantage over
| electric wires and other static infra when you need to scale
| power quickly.
|
| Sidenote - it all brings memories of how 34 years ago i worked
| couple months in a Siberia village powered by working 24x7 gas
| turbine from a helicopter.
|
| Vs. the original article - i doubt that supersonic core is the
| best. Supersonic engine is designed to get a significant
| pressure from ram effect. Until supersonic speed reached, such
| an engine has bad efficiency due to low compression - that is
| why Concorde was accelerating to supersonic speed on
| afterburners (atrocious efficiency just to get to efficient
| speed as fast as possible). The modern engines from say 787 -
| they have high compression and best high temp mono-crystal
| blades, etc. - would be much better.
| fpoling wrote:
| In Texas a lot of natural gas is wasted/burned away as it is
| not profitable to collect and transport it from all oil fields.
| These days quite a few places put small turbines to generate
| electricity to do cryptocurrency mining.
|
| This will serve a similar use case just on a bigger scale.
| fortranfiend wrote:
| Hmm curious as to how loud it will make the data center.
| tintor wrote:
| How much pollution would this generate?
| tikimcfee wrote:
| This is all I can think of and it depresses me how exciting the
| video is about turning more materials into emissions. I get I
| have no power over these people building this, but I just wish
| they didn't make it. I don't want the world to keep building
| more amazing ways to burn things I or my neighbors will
| eventually have to breathe in.
| javascriptfan69 wrote:
| This article feels like the perfect distillation of a uniquely
| American problem.
|
| Some weird tech startup proposing a novel solution based on a
| product that isn't even in it's production phase yet. Lots of
| pretty 3d renders and a wall of (what appears to be AI written)
| corpo-speak proposing some crazy technology that will
| revolutionize x.
|
| It looks cool -- don't get me wrong -- but how is this going to
| get power online faster than just installing solar and batteries?
| shrubble wrote:
| You get 42MW inside the footprint of what looks like 2 truck
| trailers, that you can park in the parking lot next to the
| electrical transformers. Virtually no permitting or
| installation required.
| javascriptfan69 wrote:
| I think a 42MW turbine might run into some permitting issues
| regarding safe noise levels.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Possibly, but I suspect mobile turbines (aircraft) are
| unquietened (noisy) by design because they don't really
| need to be quiet at 35000ft.
|
| Presumably a static turbine is minimizing noisy thrust in
| exchange for torque while also exhausting through an
| expansion chamber surrounded by deflective earthworks or
| some other shielding. (Although the one in the article is
| indeed all outside in the open.)
| mattmaroon wrote:
| No, they've been intentionally designing them to be
| quieter for decades because they are in hearing distance
| for quite a lot of miles during takeoff and landing. I
| suspect you can better insulate one on land though since
| you're less constrained on size and weight.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| actually they've down much quieter in the past 40 years.
| e.g. the 787 dreamliner has wavy bits on the exit of the
| nozzle that reduce efficiency by 1% in exchange for
| quieter operation because making the engine quieter
| reduces the amount and weight of noise insulation in the
| cabin
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yes yes, we will surround entire turbine in piezoelectric
| substrate and extract energy from vibrations. It is solved
| problem. Then we use energy to distill fuel from CO2 in
| air, making it carbon neutral. Resulting fuel we will put
| in turbine. Zero loss generator. Can build it in cave with
| scraps.
| sevenoftwelve wrote:
| Look, you can't write stuff like that any more. It took
| me three minutes to figure out you where joking.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| Yes...ish, I largely agree that the footprint is smaller per
| MW and quite a boon.
|
| But 42MW energy doesn't come from nowhere, fuel needs to be
| considered. And there everyone has their own constraints.
|
| The AI companies will likely care about $ and little else.
|
| Engineers will point out that 42MW fuel takes up space and
| supply on an ongoing basis.
|
| Other people will be worried about the externalities of
| burning 42MW of something vs solar panels and batteries etc.
|
| You can't please all of the people.
| ehnto wrote:
| Decent for large scale backup perhaps? Or remote plants
| (almost always mining in the middle of nowhere). Remote
| plants have fuel logistics already.
|
| Another fit might be somewhere like singapore which is very
| space poor but very trade connected. But they're currently
| building a ocean power cable to Australia where they will
| tap a massive solar farm or existing grid.
|
| It probably fits some use cases better than any
| alternatives, but for powering cities and suburbia I think
| renewables still make heaps of sense when space is
| available somewhere that can join the grid.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Virtually no permitting or installation required.
|
| I hope that isn't correct.
|
| Noise, emissions, fuel storage, heat. There are issues that
| would have me annoyed if that thing appeared next door.
| sho_hn wrote:
| > This article feels like the perfect distillation of a
| uniquely American problem.
|
| I think at this point LinkedIn culture is fairly globalized.
| Though America may be to blame for getting it there, largely
| via Deloitte & co originally. It's originally the language of
| managerialism.
| rgmerk wrote:
| To be fair, you end up needing insane amounts of batteries if
| you want to run 24/7/365 just on solar, particularly if you
| insist on building your data centres in places with dark
| winters.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Wind is better than solar in many places and somewhat reduces
| the need for batteries
| butvacuum wrote:
| From ERCOT's stats- wind is complimentary. But, I can't
| find any hard data on intraday/hourly power usage for AI it
| seems reasonable to assume that night time use will be
| lower though.
|
| And so it doesn't have to be looked up: Wind seems to peak
| at dawn/dusk when solar is not delivery much power, solar
| peaks in line with air-conditioning load, and there's a
| miniscule amount of grid scale battery to hold up the grid
| during a short gap between solar and wind. The batteries
| are recharged with solar. At least that was the pattern
| this summer- I need to check now that it's winter.
| ruined wrote:
| by the way, china achieved the trendline in that comparison
| graph by installing solar and batteries
| Xylakant wrote:
| Did I miss something or does the article not even say how much
| gas they need as an input to generate the 42MW? I see they
| deride conventional turbines for needing cooling, but the
| reason they do is to increase the temp differential between hot
| and cold end of the turbine because some clever fellow named
| Carnot figured out that the amount of energy you can extract
| depends on this. Instead it seems that they just full-tilt run
| a supersonic turbine and blow the hot exhaust with all its
| energy into the air. So what's the efficiency of this?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > Some weird tech startup proposing a novel solution based on a
| product that isn't even in it's production phase yet
|
| It's not even a novel solution, jet engines as stationary
| emergency 'power stations' goes back to at least the 1950s
| (e.g. search for TURBOLEKT here:
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEB_Entwicklungsbau_Pirna).
| rob74 wrote:
| Pah! Solar and batteries?! Have you been living under a rock
| for the last 12 months? Any startup that dares to suggest
| solutions based on solar and batteries (not to mention
| windmills) is sure to attract the ire of the Trump
| administration, so they'd better keep quiet and hope he doesn't
| notice them!
|
| Actually, renewables seem to be such a no-no that the Boom blog
| even avoids mentioning them in the sentence " _Meanwhile China
| is adding power capacity at a wartime pace -- coal, gas,
| nuclear, everything_ " - even though China added overwhelmingly
| more renewable capacity last year than anything else: according
| to https://climateenergyfinance.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/03/..., solar increased by 43% from Feb.
| 2024 to Feb. 2025, wind increased by 17.6%, hydro by 3.5%,
| while thermal and nuclear increased by 3.9% and 6.9%
| respectively.
| conradev wrote:
| It is thought up to 35 turbines were present on the site of
| xAI's existing data center, generating 422MW of power.
|
| That is a few square miles of solar panels, which I don't think
| is quicker to install than the 35 turbines.
|
| https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/xai-removes-some-...
| gjrq wrote:
| Oh come on, what is this crap? Absolutely no thermal efficiency
| numbers or anything else you could use to validate any claims.
| Especially if you are claiming that an aero-derived turbine is
| somehow going to be better than a purpose-built unit.
|
| The "supersonic engines are better because they are designed to
| operate at hotter temperatures" argument is particularly insane:
| turbine efficiency is driven by turbine inlet temperature
| (already 3000ish C), not ambient temperature.
|
| I suppose it's only right that VCs are going to get scammed by
| LLM slop.
| mNovak wrote:
| Unfortunately there's too much distraction regarding the AI
| side of the discussion, to actually look at the generation tech
| itself.
|
| For all their discussion of high temperature operation, it
| seems the only advantage at the end of the day is to eliminate
| water consumption in cooling. I question if that's really so
| valuable?
| gjrq wrote:
| I also don't think it's necessarily true? A jet engine (which
| many many power turbines can run off of) can obviously run
| without cooling water on a hot day just fine.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Meanwhile China is adding power capacity at a wartime pace--
| coal, gas, nuclear, everything--while America struggles to get a
| single transmission line permitted.
|
| I have been saying for years that upgrading civilization requires
| more power output, not conservation and windmills. If we had been
| investing in nuclear since the 1960s we would be ready for the
| needs of next generation technologies and we could do it without
| burning fossil fuels.
| phire wrote:
| I hate the product.
|
| But as a business staggery for Boom Supersonic, it kind of seems
| like a good idea. They get a (hopefully short term) revenue
| stream, and a whole bunch of "real world" testing on their engine
| core.
| shtzvhdx wrote:
| We're using plane engines to generate electricity and my
| residential bill is almost $0.20/kWh because we invested in chat
| bots instead of the infrastructure the chat bots need.
|
| Make it make sense.
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| Jealous sitting here in MA, where we pay $0.35/kWh and burn a
| ton of methane to get that.
| shtzvhdx wrote:
| $0.35.... wow
| buildbot wrote:
| Meanwhile in Seattle... 0.14$ per KW
|
| https://www.seattle.gov/city-light/residential-
| services/bill...
|
| (Oh wow off peak will be 0.08$?!)
| UltraSane wrote:
| That is some of the most expensive electricity in the world.
| monster_truck wrote:
| Natural gas turbines are pretty common (power plants, large on
| site/mobile generators) and the efficiency levels of these are
| the same as what you'd see in similar use cases. Turbines don't
| really care what they're doing (within reason), these just
| happen to share a lot of parts with a plane engine.
|
| The cost issue is completely unrelated to supply or usage,
| there is a cyclic issue of power companies using their profits
| for lobbying in order to push through measures that allow them
| to further increase their rates. It is often far more than is
| publicly disclosed.
|
| For example, last year in this state my power company made
| billions of dollars and claims they spent less than a million
| on political contributions. But if you look at their donations,
| grants, and development programs there is over a hundred
| million dollars mostly going to companies and nonprofits owned
| in part by the same politicians or their family members, as
| well as the municipalities where the policymakers live.
|
| In my state the combined total of rate increases in the past
| five years for both electricity and natural gas is >1.5x
| compared to inflation. Each time it is framed in the press as a
| good thing "we reached a solid deal, for less than half as much
| of what they were asking!". Every year the profits exceed their
| expectations by a few percent, each year more people are having
| their power shut off.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I can rustle up some environmentalists and we can shutdown some
| more of the infrastructure. Shall I?
|
| To quote one such government official:
|
| > _Sex is good but have you tried having your country shutting
| down its last nuclear power plants in 30 mn?_
| jb_rad wrote:
| This sounds like the "t-shirt printers" of the 90s. While
| everyone was busy trying to invent the future, boring old
| manufacturing got ignored.
|
| Turns out printing t-shirts isn't that different from printing
| silicon. Now Taiwan produces 90% of the world's advanced chips
| and NVIDIA is the most valuable company in the world.
|
| Boom's founder, Blake, comes from a e-commerce background. What a
| legend for this innovation.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I spent years working in aerospace turbines. This is BS. Power
| generation turbines are designed to work at ambient sea level
| conditions. They don't rely on ambient air being especially cold
| for cooling, they can keep cool thanks to the large mass flow
| rate.
|
| There is no technological difference between boom's engine and
| conventional jet turbines. It is still a subsonic turbine, it
| just happens to sit behind a diffuser that slows the air from
| supersonic to subsonic speeds. Genuine supersonic turbines are a
| radically different, and much less efficient, technology.
| Turbines for supersonic propulsion are actually more temperature
| sensitive and less efficient than those for subsonic applications
| specifically because they need to prevent more heating in the
| compression stages to keep their combustion chambers stable.
|
| The other talking points are likewise bogus. The problem with
| aeroderivative turbines is maintenance - planes need to be high
| performance and don't stay up in the air for very long, so their
| engines are designed around frequent maintenance events.
| Powerplants, especially those for datacenters, need consistent
| uptime, not good power to weight ratios.
|
| Boom isn't doing anything special in terms of materials or data
| monitoring. Yes, power turbines have been a thing for decades,
| and in those decades they have been arguably the most advanced
| machines humans have built industrially at any given time. Going
| back to the maintenance thing, turns out people really want to
| know if there's an issue before their $200 million machine fails.
|
| I like Boom, I have friends working for Boom. I presume this is
| just an elaborate way to hop on the AI investment bandwagon. I
| get it, but it's still ugly to see. I hope this doesn't begin a
| string of hype-creep that causes their actual goal to fail.
| chii wrote:
| > elaborate way to hop on the AI investment bandwagon ... hype-
| creep that causes their actual goal to fail.
|
| their current goal might already be "failing" (as in, lack of
| real demand for hypersonic travel). Investment getting hard to
| obtain means they're looking for more/broader investment from
| other investors. Thus, the hopping on of the AI bandwagon.
|
| It doesn't paint a pretty picture tbh.
| exabrial wrote:
| > announcing Superpower, our new 42-megawatt natural gas turbine
|
| Is global warming solved? Last time I checked, I was to throw
| away my repairable ICE vehicle for an expensive unrepairable
| disposable vehicle in order to save the planet. Just curious how
| a 42-megawatt gas turbine is helping the planet.
| rgmerk wrote:
| You missed the iron law of the universe, which is never get
| between a capitalist and the possibility of a bucket of money.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| I found this paragraph very interesting:
|
| > If America wants to build at the speed AI requires, vertical
| integration isn't optional. We're standing up our own foundry and
| our own large scale CNC machining capability.
|
| Yet China, the industrial superpower, doesn't work like that.
| Nothing is vertically integrated and instead a massive amount of
| suppliers are part of a gigantic and flexible supply-chain.
|
| The fact that CCP's China able to have a working market of
| independent industrial actors, whereas Venture Capital-funded
| America can only works with corporation-scale central planning is
| an interesting paradox that I would like to have an in depth
| explanation for.
| fluxusars wrote:
| This to me is the strongest proof that we are in a bubble so far.
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