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Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership
- ggm 4y agoDoesn't this say more about the RR engines company than Boom?
- bombcar 4y agoThe semi-snide comments from the Boom side is, as the kids would say, "sus".
- slater 4y agohaha right? "Boom meanwhile added, “We are appreciative of Rolls-Royce’s work over the last few years but have mutually concluded their proposed engine design and legacy business model is not the best option for Overture’s future airline operators or passengers.” ssssssnap!
- zardo 4y agoThey should partner with a jet engine startup that has produced nothing but renders to match their business model.
- 650REDHAIR 4y ago“Legacy business model” = ???
- solarkraft 4y agoMaking money
- MichaelCollins 4y agoSpecifically, making money by making products, rather than grifting investors.
- daniel-cussen 4y agoYeah everyone these days is saying "OK, first we have very nice policies generous no-questions refunds, get a good word going. Then traction, then investment. Then, revenues, it's revenues all the way, growth man. And then you get a good multiplier on revenues because we can say we're tech for some fucked up reason. Like coupla degrees here n there some PhD's (this is why there's big-name university focus, there's better PhD's in Georgia Tech, but it's marketing) maybe then we can say it. Then...liquidity event. Then just juggle forever."
- kylecordes 4y ago= Actually making engines?
- bambax 4y agoYeah that struck me as odd; it's unprofessional and weak; I think it's a very bad sign for the future of the company.
- ulfw 4y agoWait... does anyone believe they have a future? How? If this was doable and there was a market for it, what on earth would stop Boeing and Airbus from building one with 1000x more experience in designing and above all manufacturing airframes. (Airbus even has the inherited legacy of Concorde through Aerospatiale/Sud Aviation)
- detaro 4y ago> If this was doable and there was a market for it, what on earth would stop Boeing and Airbus Boing and Airbus have lots of things to choose from to focus their (large, but still limited) resources on. Even if they think it is doable and has a market, they'd probably also think that improving what they have is less risky and a bigger market.
- bambax 4y agoI don't know, but it's certainly the first question every investor asked, so we can assume they have (or at least had) a pretty good answer, no?
- namirez 4y agoI know some people involved in Boom. They simply have no understanding of the physical limitations of supersonic flight. Surprise, they’re all software engineers.
- ulfw 4y agoAnd supersonic flight is really a hardware / physics / materials science problem than a software one. (again: see Concorde)
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- kurthr 4y agoThat seems like it would slow things down a bit, which is a problem in a higher rate world. Not sure business travel is going to stay on the same trajectory either. Of course weirder stuff is happening: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/israel-ban-boeing-747s-other-4-engine-planes-amid-environmental-concerns-2022-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/israel-ba... Banning 4 engine aircraft from Israel means no more 747 freighters or new leisure supersonics.
- LadyCailin 4y agoOr visits from US presidents.
- paulgb 4y agoI would have to assume that falls under the “special permit” allowance. > Operation of aircraft with four engines will be allowed in exceptional cases and only with a special permit.
- jaywalk 4y agoLast sentence of the article: > Operation of aircraft with four engines will be allowed in exceptional cases and only with a special permit. I'd imagine that Air Force One will not have any trouble obtaining the special permit.
- daniel-cussen 4y agoFor now. 2022. Yeah no in the future too.
- solatic 4y agoActually, they carved out an exception for Air Force One.
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoThis was probably to protect the flag carrier from a very attractive and more comfortable rival who were rumored to be considering a380 flights to the country
- topspin 4y agoThere are perhaps 3 companies on Earth that could conceivably provide engines for this application. RR was one of them. Where to now?
- keepquestioning 4y agoCouldn't SpaceX or Rocket Lab's engine be repurposed for this task?
- echelon 4y agoJets vs rockets: Jets breathe atmospheric air for combustion because they operate in an atmosphere where oxygen is readily available for combustion. They have an air intake nozzle. Rockets carry their own oxidizer because they must. They only have an exhaust nozzle.
- bombcar 4y agoSpaceX engines can clearly get you to supersonic speeds, but they're not "jets" and are much more expensive to run.
- adastra22 4y agoThose aren’t jet engines.
- keepquestioning 4y agoIt's a pity there aren't more jet engine providers.
- topspin 4y agoThe last thing you want in your turbofans is a lot of variety. That's why everyone relies on a handful of producers.
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- bell-cot 4y agoMy understanding is that the only profitable part of being a modern commercial jet engine manufacturer is service contracts - on actually-in-service jet engines. Vs. Boom Supersonic has never built a plane which actually managed to take off. And even their 1/3-scale "technology demonstrator" plane is 5+ years behind its original schedule. (And has yet to taxi along a runway, if I read Wikipedia right.) My guess - Boom wanted RR to sign a new money-losing or zero-profit R&D deal. RR wasn't interested in the "maybe, eventually, there might be some actual profit for us" economics of that.
- nimbius 4y agommm, yes, the 'legacy business model' of demonstrably competent business decisions at the interest of shareholders that produce quantifiable return on investment and further industry growth through innovation strikes again.
- benj111 4y agoYes I liked that quip too. It's was 'mutually agreed' to which I infer it wasn't.
- ajross 4y agoWhich is to say: Boom is aimed at the wrong product. The High Tech part of efficient supersonic transport is the engines, not the airframe. If there was an off the shelf engine solution, they could just buy it on investor money. The dirty truth is that there isn't.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThe engines are actually hard to design, though. Most startups (even hard tech ones) try to avoid doing the hard part.
- nickff 4y agoEngine manufacturing is much more profitable, and seemingly challenging than airframe manufacturing. The engines they'll use are unlikely to be very different from those in other applications, so I'm not sure there's room for a new entrant. Keep in mind that the R&D and capital costs of becoming a turbine engine manufacturer are immense, and likely much higher than the costs to develop a new aircraft.
- keepquestioning 4y agoAt this point I'm convinced the only way industry can actually produce something game-changing is if the government spends a huge amount of R&D on it first. On the other hand, scrappy SaaS startup could parse your logs and send alerts for cheaper, yes.
- MisterTea 4y ago> is if the government spends a huge amount of R&D on it first. This is how it has always worked.
- jeffreyrogers 4y agoOnly for a few industries, mostly the ones that took off around WWII.
- 650REDHAIR 4y agoUh… DARPA, In-Q-Tel, etc…
- oivey 4y agoEven things like semiconductors benefitted massively from government research and funding. They’ve certainly taken off from there, though. I’m trying to think of what industries this might not be the case for. Research thin industries like entertainment and media? Has the development of things like OLED mostly been by private companies? I guess finance? Seemingly if it involves engineering the government at least made the seed investment.
- sdflhasjd 4y agoNot sure I'd call OLED game changing in the same way the Internet or Jet Engines are.
- jjk166 4y agoJust because the government has at some point invested in something doesn't mean it had to for it to take off. Once something is already going strong, it's to be expected that everyone who might stand to benefit will want to hop on the bandwagon, especially once the utility is proven. For example the government was not particularly involved with aircraft development until WW1 when it proved to be of considerable military importance. It's also worth noting that many developments are unintended spillover from other efforts. For example a lot of US government money went into producing high purity germanium, which would ultimately enable the development of the solid state transistor, but the government wasn't directly trying to produce solid state transistors, they instead were concerned with producing diodes for radars. In either case, I would not describe it as seed investment.
- trollied 4y agoJust last month they were saying they'd be manufacturing the first aircraft in 2024. This company just looks like another huge investor scam at the moment.
- purim 4y agoThink I remember lot of comments here criticizing Boom being downvoted and flagged. Is Boom part of YC by any chance?
- randtrain34 4y agoYC '16 https://www.ycombinator.com/library/5Q-on-starting-and-scaling-boom-yc-w16 https://www.ycombinator.com/library/5Q-on-starting-and-scali...
- purim 4y ago
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- dang 4y agoThat's a clever insinuation, and since you've had many HN accounts in the past, and used them to abuse the site in similar ways, I'm going to be a notch less charitable than usual and conclude that you meant this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32771519 as an innocent-sounding smear. For anyone worried about this kind of thing: what the commenter is insinuating is, in fact, just what we don't do. Here's tons of past explanation about this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20%22less%2C%20not%20more%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... In particular, we flagged zero comments in this thread and unkilled a bunch of comments that users had flagged.
- purim 4y ago
- lacker 4y agoI'm rooting for you, Boom. The world needs supersonic planes and you're so close. Good luck.
- AustinDev 4y agoI want it to work but, the hard part is the engines and without a partnership it's going to be difficult to get off the ground.
- it_citizen 4y agoGenuinely asking: Of all the possible efforts that the aeronautic industry can make in 2022, do you think supersonic planes is making the top of the list of what the world need? If so, why?
- mchusma 4y agoNot OP but I think advancements are not exclusive. Going faster is one of the big advancements, but probably not the biggest. Going 2x faster is obviously a good thing, everything else being equal. Costs can potentially go down as you can run 2x the flights per day. People enjoy flights more. The difference between a 2.5 hour and 5 hours flight is a lot. A 6 hour and 12 hour flight, a lot. Making flights cheaper is something people consistently prefer. The main flight costs are fuel, pilots, staff, and airport capacity. Electric flights are interesting for short hauls but are a long way away from long haul use (much further away than supersonic). Automating away pilots is something that technically is easier than driverless cars, but hasn't seemed to be a priority yet. Progress there would be helpful. Removing staff on planes is a legal requirement and seems harder to do for larger flights for human reasons. Airport capacity is probably best helped by increasing turn time. Honestly, the easiest way to improve the flight experience is to (effectively) get rid of all security on flights. Once planes can't be made into missiles (door locks were a good post 9-11 change), they are no higher risk than many other enclosed spaces that have no security. This would help speed of travel AND cost, and really means "just do less". But it's a political issue.
- smachiz 4y ago
- BryLuc 4y ago
- rocket_surgeron 4y agoRegarding Boom there are only two reasonable conclusions one can reach: 1. They are a Theranos-style operation 2. They are a Madoff-style operation I, a lone aerospace engineer working out of my garage in my spare time, have a better chance of achieving supersonic flight than Boom does. Even their technology demonstrator is an obvious scam. It demonstrates nothing. It does not demonstrate the ability to design, build, or maintain a supersonic passenger airplane, and it doesn't demonstrate any new technologies or materials. The bloatiest of bloated old-school defense contractors can throw together a supersonic prototype for less than $100 million, in fewer than 7 years.
- AustinDev 4y agoAs an aerospace engineer do you know what kind of thrust they'd need and why they can't just use something like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_J58#Specifications_(JT11D-20) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_J58#Specific...? My guess would be that the military engines are not at all designed to be economical on either fuel or unit cost.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoThose haven't been made for a long time and there's nothing presently in use like them. Also those were turbojets; Boom wanted to use turbofans for fuel efficiency.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago> 1. They are a Theranos-style operation If they were that, they'd be lying about having their own engine in development that is an order of magnitude better than the competitions but won't show it to anybody.
- rocket_surgeron 4y agoMy angle was the "charismatic and overambitious leaders who think that gumption and sticktoitiveness can overcome any problem and who aren't afraid to start lying when they find out that solving science and engineering problems isn't like the scammy adware/SEO/social network they made their first chunk of money on" aspect. I just can't believe people keep falling for it. I'm willing to bet most of the $100m+ they've raised went right into executive compensation and that their engineers have been making do with peanuts since the beginning. And I eagerly await the dueling Netflix/HBO documentaries to come.
- galgot 4y agoHow surprising... Developing a specific supersonic jet engine for this kind of plane would not be cost effective anyway, the fleet would be too small to worth the investment. Even starting from a military jet engine, the way they are run and maintained is very different from civilian jet engines.
- AustinDev 4y agoOn the maintenance side it's night and day, I used to work upstairs in the hanger building but not on the floor of a base with f-22's and before that f-16's and they rebuild those engines like clock-work there is always at least one being rebuilt if not a few.
- hef19898 4y agoAlso good luck getting government approval for using a military engine derivate for commercial flight to Asia, or basically any country other than the origin of said engines. And even that will be difficult. Export control can be a bitch.
- MichaelZuo 4y agoTo put this in perspective, developing a modern high-efficiency supersonic engine requires an order-of-magnitude more money than the airframe itself.
- namirez 4y agoSadly Boom is doomed and it’s been a writing on the wall all along. They never had a good engine option. The military engines are not safe enough and developing a new civilian engine makes sense only if you make hundreds of them. Their net-zero emission claim is also bogus. Their pricing model doesn’t make much sense either unless they’re willing to lose money for a decade or so. There is not much innovation in aerodynamics and shock wave shaping either. Their only innovation compared to Concorde is the use of composite materials which is just not enough to hit their targets.
- Melatonic 4y agoCould be that they were hoping to get bought out and had made some actual improvements though no? I would imagine that a plane using new advances in material sciences for the outer skin (maybe something like Quasi Crystals) might have significant advantages over an older design like the Concorde. Heat must be a big issue at those speeds.
- namirez 4y agoI don’t know much about their long term business strategy but what bothers me is that they’re vague about how they intend to achieve the flight mission objectives. This is very different than SpaceX which focused on reusable rockets and landing them. As for materials, the main advantage of composites is the strength to weight ratio but they’re more challenging to work with compared to aluminum and titanium. Heat is one aspect but there are many more challenges. It’s been done though for example B787 and A350 are mostly composite. So Boom has a genuine advance here over Concorde. But supersonic flight is inherently fuel inefficient due to wave drag so the economy doesn’t make sense.
- phlipski 4y agoLuckily for Boom there is a supersonic engine startup in the YC S22 batch! https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/velontra https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/velontra
- namirez 4y ago
- aresant 4y agoIn 2020 COVID decimated Rolls Royce given their concentration of revenue associated with selling & servicing existing aero engines. They have yet to recover from that era which saw a ~10x decrease in enterprise value and record losses. That said I would interpret this news as a "cut the $!@$! R&D bleeding in anything that won't be generating revenue in the next 4 quarters" vs a reflection on the feasibility or health of Boom's very early but very ambitious plans. (1) https://www.barrons.com/market-data/stocks/rycey https://www.barrons.com/market-data/stocks/rycey (2) https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/rolls-royce-boosted-by-return-flying-defence-demand-2022-05-12/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/rolls-... (3) https://simpleflying.com/rolls-royce-record-loss/ https://simpleflying.com/rolls-royce-record-loss/
- cromulent 4y agoSupersonic is still banned over land, even if they can get the engines. We’ll see if overseas flights are a big enough market to be more than a loss leader. https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight (Read the last sentence).
- Melatonic 4y agoThis article says that they are also partnering with Northrup Gruman to develop a "special missions" version for the government. So they very well could be getting a big government investment that so many here are saying would be necessary to pull this off. https://airwaysmag.com/boom-supersonic-refined-overture-design/ https://airwaysmag.com/boom-supersonic-refined-overture-desi...
- 6stringmerc 4y agoStill have my money on Darkhorse showing promise to actually work at least.
- panick21_ 4y agoI think we will have supersonic planes, but they will be electric. But to get there we first need normal conservative electric planes to make electric planes more normal. Battery have to be getting better for this to happen but I think we will get there, some people overestimate how large battery improvements we need by basically thinking they need to match chat fuel. If you look at how far the currently in development electric plans can go you can see lots of improvements that can be made to increase that range considerably. You can also build your air-frame out of batteries. The batteries themselves need to become structural members in the air-frame. Some manufactures are doing that already for cars but for plans it will be even more important. Things like using a PRANDTL Wing and prop blade would make a large difference for example. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCwtcDNB15E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCwtcDNB15E It of course makes sense for startups like Heart Aerospace not to try these things but I think eventually people will. Electric planes will be so operational efficient that there will be huge demand to increase the range.
- benj111 4y agoSo what's changed since Concorde? Concorde didn't fail for technical reasons but AA have put down a deposit for 60. This is limited to < Mach 1 over land so it's going to be most useful on the routes that Concorde could have serviced. Is it just the noise aspect opening more potential routes? But then I would have thought we would be more concerned about noise now than in the 60s making the improvements a wash.
- Kukumber 4y agoThey should have done that a long time ago, Boom never reference RR in any of their PR documents, including their websites [1] This partnership have been running for quite a while and no results in the end Also it is interesting to see only negative comments about RR? i wonder why? :) [2] [1] - https://boomsupersonic.com/ https://boomsupersonic.com/ [2] - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/boom https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/boom