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Can Boom Supersonic Succeed Where the Concorde Failed?
- modshatereality 5y agoi'm not boarding a craft made by a company called BOOM...
- credit_guy 5y agoIf I were a VC, Boom wold be the easiest investment decision ever. Here's the 3 questions I'd ask myself: 1. can they make it? 2. can they sell it? 3. if they make it and they sell it, could others copycat them, then out-execute and take the prize away from them? The easiest to answer is 3. Out of all the unicorn startups of the last 2 decades, this one is the by far the one with the highest barriers of entry for the competition. The only ones coming close are SpaceX and Tesla. Why? Let's say Boom makes the first sale in 2025. If anyone wants to enter the market, they won't have a product for at least 10 years, and Boom can already be at jet 2.0 by that time, well into the R&D cycle for 3.0. The first question: can they make it? Concorde was introduced in "prod" 45 years ago, but had the first flight 7 years prior. Technology has made huge advances in half a century. Obviously computers in general, and computational fluid dynamics in particular are many, many orders of magnitude above what was available in the mid-60's. But other things experienced impressive progress as well: theoretical CFD, materials, manufacturing to name just a few. Jet engines are also much more efficient, and what's super-important: Boom need to just buy them form some suppliers, they don't need to invent them as was the case with Concorde. There are basically only 3 suppliers out there (General Electric, Pratt&Whitney and Rolls Royce), but their competition is fierce, which means the engines are both extreme quality and reasonable price. Finally, if they make it, will they sell it? Yes, the market for business jets can't wait for a supersonic jet, no matter what price level. A Gulfstream G700 comes at $75MM, and it goes without saying that it is subsonic. Think of all those billionaires who spend hundreds of millions on luxury yachts. A supersonic private jet would be the most exalted form of conspicuous consumption. Do you gather Abramovich will sign up for one? Concorde could not target this market segment, since it was made with government money. But a VC-backed startup most surely can.
- panick21 5y agoTheir sub-scale prototype was claimed to be ready in 2019 at one point. And as far as I know its still has not flown. So as for the 'can they make it', I am very skeptical. Even assuming they can make it, can they make enough of them fast enough to actually be a return on investment. Even assuming that, is the market large in-enough that a real manufacturing line is going to be possible? Could the company exist maybe, will it be widely profitable, questionable. In my opinion the coming revolution in Electric airplanes is going to be 100x more disruptive and with a much larger importunity for profit. I don't think Musk competencies (Tesla, SpaceX) have any interest in Supersonic Jet engines. Musk himself has often talked about wanting to build a Supersonic Electric Jet for shorter domestic route. Something that could really fundamentally change the industry. The competition for Boom from that direction is actually rocket power transport in the form of Starship.
- eaenki 5y agoRocket power transport it’s nonsense once you consider how much time the on boarding and outboarding is
- fragmede 5y agoThere are some technical details to work out, but 1 hour to anywhere in the world is feasible with a ballistic missile, and impossible to beat with a supersonic aircraft. Whether those details can be ironed out to provide it commerically remains to be seen, but ballistic missile technology was proven in the 1970s. The ridiculous part isn't because of how long it takes to get on and off a spaceship. Even if it took 3 hours to get on and three more to get off, 7 hours would still beat 17 hours in a plane going Sydney to London.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoBut would it be comfortable? edit: I meant 7 hours of which experience exactly compared to 17 hours of whatever class at whatever price per flight?
- 5y ago
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoBe clever and smart. Ride your own shock wave forever and hard. Use compression lift [1], as the Valkyrie [2] did. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_lift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_lift [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie Less boom, more lift, can it be that hard?
- henrikschroder 5y ago> To put that into perspective, a Tesla travels at 250 miles per hour Is this how you write super-relatable PR pieces now?
- short_sells_poo 5y agoI'd also like to know which Tesla can get to 250mph (400kmh). The 100PD tops out at a "measly" 155. Only the most extreme hypercars can reach 250mph, and even out of those, a small handful are road legal.
- Jabbles 5y ago> Boom plans to use fuel made from carbon removed from the atmosphere, meaning that supersonic travel will be carbon neutral from day one. If this is economically viable - say, within a factor of 3 of current fuel prices - it sounds like it would be the solution to climate change. I am skeptical.
- thedrbrian 5y agoIt’s not BOOM but Rolls Royce have an idea of using one of their Small Modular Reactors to generate synthetic aviation fuel at only double the cost of normal stuff. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-on-track-for-2030-delivery-of-UK-SMR https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-on-t...
- panick21 5y agoI love nuclear energy more then 99.9% o people and even I don't believe this will happen.
- rbanffy 5y agoSo, if you remove the nuclear and couple it with wind or solar, it may end up cheaper than the liquid dinosaur stuff.
- qayxc 5y agoUnlikely. The cost involved would still be substantially higher than fossil fuel. The required energy scales quadratically with speed. That's just basic physics and there's no way around it. The real question we should ask ourselves is whether it's even worth it just to shave off a couple of hours on a trip that shouldn't be a regular occurrence anyway? If you take the entire trip - that is door-to-door - into consideration, the time savings you pay for with about 6.25x the energy use comes down to 30% or so: • 1 hour to get to the airport • 1.5 hours security checks, check-in, getting on the plane • 6 hours flight time • 1.5 hours security checks, customs, getting out of the airport • 1 hour airport to destination That's 11 hours total for the subsonic flight and ~7.5 hours for the supersonic flight (assuming >mach 2.2 for the entire duration of the flight). That's a net time saving of 3.5 hours or ~32% faster for >6.25 the energy expense. How does that make any sense?
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago"...where Concorde failed?" Hold on, when did Concorde "fail"? Concorde was profitable: https://simpleflying.com/did-british-airways-make-a-profit-flying-concorde/ https://simpleflying.com/did-british-airways-make-a-profit-f... ---- The reasons for Concorde's discontinuation are legion - I think even if it weren't for the 2000 Air France crash it would have been discontinued simply due to the age of the fleet, what other airlines are still running 50+ year-old airframes today? Let alone those with very inefficient engines by today's standards.
- Sebb767 5y agoBut it didn't refresh its fleet, either. The Concorde itself might've been successful, but supersonic flight mostly died with it.
- rbanffy 5y agoPoliticians are notoriously impatient people with short attention spans that seldom go beyond a term. Concorde 2, which was more efficient, was cancelled while the planes we can think of prototypes were put in commercial service.
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoMass tourism began in the 1970s. Airliners needed something that could carry 350 tourists to Spain or Hawaii cheaply.
- reflect 5y agoAmbitious project, it’s great to see people going big even if it’s a long shot. Name is a little off putting, plane go boom is usually a bad thing.
- reilly3000 5y agoRight?! I also did a double take when he say he ‘crashed’ the Virgin Galactic event.
- Stratoscope 5y agoI will never understand why Boom chose such a terrible name. Of course it is a novelty to hear a sonic boom once or twice, but who wants to hear them repeatedly? I imagine they will fly mostly overwater like Concorde, but why remind people on the ground of the most annoying thing that a supersonic flight does? Much worse, as safe and reliable as they can build and fly these airplanes, eventually there will be a flight that does not make it to a safe landing. When that happens, there will be a loud...
- simonebrunozzi 5y agoFor me it's instead a really cool name.
- golemotron 5y agoSV edginess
- rbanffy 5y ago> I will never understand why Boom chose such a terrible name. It’ll be the core of countless jokes. I remember a TV series called “Fireball XL5” about a spaceship with that name and I always found it amusing someone would want to board something named like that.
- jdavis703 5y agoIf powered flights were invented today it would have been banned for noise and safety concerns. Just look at how upset people in SF get about the once a year Fleet Week aerial demonstrations.
- bell-cot 5y agoWikipedia notes that a 1/3 scale Boom demonstrator plane is expected to begin flight testing in 2021. Otherwise, it sounds like they've produced zero planes that actually fly so far. Even the hype-ridden article admits that their founder/CEO has zero experience delivering real-world physical products. Then there's the huge "SPACEX KILLER" banner at the top of that article...which has zero logic behind it, and is followed up by zero meaningful mentions of SpaceX in the article's text. I'm sensing a really fawning fan-boy (writing the article), and/or a company that's absolutely desperate for credibility.
- panick21 5y agoPretty sure at one point that demonstrator was supposed to fly in 2019 if I remember correctly. The same kind of delay for the main plane would put it close to 2030.
- willyt 5y agoAnd the whole thing is full of factual errors as well. I’m not in aviation, but I’m quite interested in it and I know enough to get the sense that the only research this article was based on was some notes taken during a drunk hyperbolic conversation with the founder in a bar.
- bell-cot 5y agoConfession - once the article opened by comparing a 250MPH Tesla (maybe true, for short periods, in a few extreme-high-end models, on certain test tracks) to Boom's 1000MPH+ speed (which all their products will need to routinely & economically sustain, in the real world), I stopped caring whether the article's "facts" were true or not. If somebody is telling me that their radical new physics theory is true "because I'm an assistant examiner in the Swiss Patent Office, just like Albert Einstein was..." - then I don't see much point in fact-checking their Swiss Patent Office employment claim.
- j-pb 5y ago> Boom is building for reliability from day one, and by simplifying the design of the plane and using software solutions wherever possible, they should be able to avoid many of the pitfalls that the Concorde faced. Oh boy. Given softwares track record when it comes to reliability and safety I think that's a mistake. I do trust engineers, I don't trust software engineers.
- sofixa 5y agoWhat do you mean? Airbus planes have been using software very heavily ( fly by wire for instance) since the first models, and recent ones ( A350) have pretty serious server rooms onboard. Just because Boeing are incompetent and criminally negligible doesn't mean that airplanes shouldn't use any software.
- tomatocracy 5y agoThere's a view that over reliance on software contributed to the total loss of flight AF447 (since pilots were not sufficiently experienced in how to fly the plane in the various fallback modes to be able to react appropriately in an emergency).
- j-pb 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72 We still don't know what went wrong there.
- hannob 5y ago"Boom is leveraging advances in engine design that yield greater fuel efficiency, which will mean cheaper ticket prices. But they aren’t stopping there. Boom plans to use fuel made from carbon removed from the atmosphere, meaning that supersonic travel will be carbon neutral from day one." You can have cheap tickets and don't give a shit about the climate or you can claim you use extra expensive synfuels made from carbon removed from the atmosphere. You can't have both, except if you're talking bullshit.
- sweetheart 5y agoWhy not? Can you explain?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- qayxc 5y agoEven today's airline industry is unsustainable and can only continue to function because it's heavily subsidised. Fossil fuel for airplanes is tax-free and cheaper than petrol, e.g. $3.31/gal w/o taxes in California [0] vs. $2.06/gal (average) for jet fuel [1]. Using atmospheric carbon to generate fuel is significantly more expensive than that as even just capturing the CO² costs more than the crude oil used for jet fuel [2]. The claim of "carbon neutral fuel" basically rests on super optimistic assumptions already. The cost can only be competitive if a world-wide carbon tax on the order of $200/metric ton is implemented, which is very unrealistic. [0] https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/transportation-energy/estimated-gasoline-price-breakdown-and-margins https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/transp... [1] https://www.iata.org/en/publications/economics/fuel-monitor/ https://www.iata.org/en/publications/economics/fuel-monitor/ [2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/carbon-en...
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago"Fossil fuel for airplanes is tax-free and cheaper than petrol, e.g. $3.31/gal w/o taxes in California [0] vs. $2.06/gal (average) for jet fuel [1]." This is total insanity, why are we doing this
- D2man 5y agoAm I the only one here thinking this is an unwanted future ? Aerospace is already profiting to few rich people on earth and represents 2% of global emissions and this is saying "well we need to go faster consuming yet huge amount of fuel" for the wealthiest. Please stop these technos solutionists gadget and start to think real problems like the climate crisis.
- user-the-name 5y agoThis is 100% correct. The last thing we need is more inefficient aviation for the super-rich.
- ignoramous 5y agoHistorically, things that were only meant for the super rich eventually got commoditised for everyone. And: Under current capitalist regimes, this is how humans push the envelope of possibilities, like it or not. Climate crisis is urgent but token efforts to strike down nascent businesses on the cutting-edge such as Boom is not how the world solves it (discounting the fact that Boom has a path forward to be carbon-neutral: https://boomsupersonic.com/sustainability https://boomsupersonic.com/sustainability)
- user-the-name 5y ago> Historically, things that were only meant for the super rich eventually got commoditised for everyone That would make the situation much, much worse. > Under current capitalist regimes, this is how humans push the envelope of possibilities, like it or not "Not" would be the choice there. This is exactly the reason why we are in this crisis.
- mrfusion 5y agoWould you have said the same thing about the Tesla roadster 20 years ago?
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
- sofixa 5y agoOne of the main reasons the US banned supersonic flights overland is that the only plane capable of them wasn't American. The ban came only after Boeing abandoned their plans for a competitor.
- cnlevy 5y agoIt's rather more a consequence of the very bad handling by the FAA of the sonic booms campaign over Oklahoma City in 1964, and subsequent bad PR associated with supersonic aircraft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_tests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_tests
- evgen 5y agoYou ignore the fact that sonic booms are really fucking annoying, so I will dispute your claim and say that there is no way to put lipstick on this pig and say it was mishandled by the FAA. The booms annoyed everyone. This issue is further compounded by the fact that there is no useful purpose served by supersonic passenger flight; it causes little inconvenience for a small benefit to a infinitesimal fraction of the population when done over water, it cause an ongoing inconvenience to a large group for that same small gain for a tiny group of wealthy people when done over land.
- panick21 5y agoIts still an insane dumb regulatory response to ban all super-sonic travel. Its totally unnecessary and restrictive and will block and hinder many of the technologies that could overcome the initial problem.
- evgen 5y agoDon't care. No one is banning supersonic travel, just supersonic travel over land. If it can't be made to work economically over the long oceanic routes then it is a dumb idea that deserves to die. Again. If it works over water then it can stay there.
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoWasn't the Concorde a failure because of noise pollution? It could only do trans Atlantic flights.
- pfdietz 5y agoIt was a truly massive fuel hog.
- sgt101 5y agoThese kind of projects remind me of elaborate fronts for money laundering... why?
- wutbrodo 5y agoPresumably because you're too reflexively cynical? There's an option between rabid optimism and wild conspiracy theories, and it's just "mild optimism/pessimism + wait and see"
- torginus 5y agoThis is an entirely substance-free article. I'd recommend you save your time and not read it.
- johncoogan 5y agoAuthor here, what do you think would give this kind of content more substance? Still very new to this and genuinely looking for feedback!
- ethbr0 5y agoHN probably isn't the ideal audience for your article. Your content would be novel to someone who wasn't following Boom, but... that person isn't here. Because [0]. Parent could have put that more gently. That said, if you did want to target HN readership (which is non-representative of general readership!), you could drill down into each of your points. How is Boom doing these things? For example, their struggles to find a moderate-bypass engine (even uprated and recertified) without having to fund novel engine development is critical to the entire endeavor, and is still an open question [1]. In short, recommendation would be to (1) know your audience, (2) research prior art (previous HN Boom stories), and (3) bring something novel in your article, either through new reporting or synthesis. [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=boom https://hn.algolia.com/?q=boom [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_Overture#Engines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_Overture#Engines
- ant6n 5y agoI wonder hot financing works for a project like this. How can one push up the valuation of the company if it´s just doing R/D for years? Aren´t all the original investors and the founder diluted to nothing after two round of funding? Or did the founder start with a couple of million of his own money, meaning he still owned 100% after the first investment rounds? Also, how would this work with YC - don´t they take like 8% for a relatively small amount of funding?
- yawaworht1978 5y agoCan supersonic aircraft be as big as the 747 etc jumbos without much worse energy requirements? Or does the fuel consumption rise by a factor? I can see the Concorde had almost mach2 as top speed? Is there another Sonic boom at mach2,3 etc? Unless it's a fuel efficient mach3, there's not much point to it, most flying time improvements should be done on checking in and boarding, the flight itself for flights less than 2 hours in duration can't be optimized , a supersonic plane wouldn't even accelerate to top speed before it has to slow down on short flights like paris-london.
- chiph 5y agoGoing that fast requires significantly more energy. You start to worry about things like the cross section of the aircraft (which is why fast plane commonly have knife-edge wings) and smooth airflow over the fuselage. One of the advantages of the composite construction being used by Boom is you don't have those thousands of rivets sticking out. And panel gaps. Which is why the 787 is as fuel-efficient as it is compared to traditional aluminum bodied aircraft.
- AlexAndScripts 5y agoThere is only one boom, when you cross the sound barrier.
- Reventlov 5y agoNo. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_boom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_boom
- azernik 5y agoThe boom isn't from crossing the barrier; it's from being at that high speed. A plane traveling at Mach 1.5 cross-country will leave a boom at every point along its travel
- captainmuon 5y agoCan anybody tell how such a plane will sound like over land? Growing up in Europe in the 90s, we regularly saw fighter jets doing maneuver and we called the noise they make a sonic boom: a loud, scratching and thundering noise that seems to come from the wrong direction. But I've also heard that planes almost never flew supersonic over civilian areas and an actual sonic boom sounds like a double clap, and is much more terrible. So is the noise I remember a sonic boom or not? I think I could live with the kind of booms we heard as kids, as they were not worse than "regular" airport noise and the double- or triple-glassed windows common here block them out mostly. Especially since a civilian plane will have >30 years of technological advantage and will take noise into consideration, which military designs likely don't.
- chiph 5y agoFormer USAFE member here. You weren't hearing a sonic boom, just the normal engine noise. If I recall correctly, we would do supersonic training off the coast of Spain. Flying supersonic over populated areas would do things like break windows in people's houses and that's not good. The engine noise you heard was loud because military aircraft are normally exempt from sound level limits (when non-supersonic). And the engines for the F-16, Tornado, etc. were designed in the 1970s. Even for modern military engines, performance comes first. So they are still going to be loud. The chart in this PDF shows that for the F-16, the allowed exposure time could be as short as 21 seconds with the older "muff + plugs" hearing protection. They're just LOUD (and I have the tinnitus to prove it) https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/aam/cami/library/online_libraries/aerospace_medicine/sd/media/McKinley.pdf https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/av...
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoLol, dude, you would have loved flying in Germany in the 80ies. Nosuch nonsense having to care about broken windows. Officially, maybe. In practice it was very, very different, and loud.
- chiph 5y ago
- jafo 5y ago> but there’s a good chance that engineers could lower the boom from 105 decibels to just 70 decibels. At that volume, US lawmakers might revisit the speed limit if it means getting from California to Washington DC in half the time. "good chance"..."might revisit" Talk about a wing and a prayer...
- OldHand2018 5y agoYeah, sure, the 20 flyover state Senators whose constituents will have to hear the plane pass by (and never land) are going to vote in favor of a plan to make life more convenient for 2 Democrats from California.
- beardyw 5y agoI remember Concorde coming over in London, below supersonic, and even then it was very loud. Also, I may remember incorrectly, but Concorde never went into a holding pattern. All other flights were put on hold. Not sure if it was due to manoeuvrability or noise. I suppose you can do that with government help.
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoCould also be lack of fuel. Concorde had barely enough range to fly to New York.