While I acknowledge the cool factor, I don't like what Boom is doing. We should be looking at making air travel more efficient, reducing the energy/emissions per passenger-mile flown. We don't need to invent ways to make luxury travel by the rarified few ever more expensive and damaging.
Hmmm. Augmented reality display, Carbon fiber frame, supersonic intakes...
And 3 J85-15 jet engines designed in the 1950s (?)
I remember reading about these J85 engines in an issue of Popular Mechanics roughly 20 years ago. This engine was designed to be cheap and small enough to fit in a carry-on suitcase circa 1955. They are best known for powering the F5 "low-budget fighter" from 1959.
Crazy that a new aircraft is launching with such new tech, but still rocking engines that were fundamentally designed around 10 years after the dawn of jet aircraft.
As I understand it, engine sourcing has been one of Boom's challenges. Rolls Royce was originally working on an engine for them, but cancelled it in '22. Boom announced their own engine design last year but I'm assuming that's not ready.
Apparently newer engines aren't designed for supersonic flight so I'm guessing options are limited for testing this airframe.
Boom announced their own engine design last year but I'm assuming that's not ready
The complexity of designing an engine is comparable to that of designing an airframe.
But supersonic engines already exist, and aircraft manufacturers almost universally buy instead of build when it comes to choosing an engine.
One of the key features of Overture is its planned use of e-fuels.
I think this is almost crucial. Airlines are not going to line up to buy non-renewable, fuel-guzzling, net CO2-gushing supersonic jets for use over the next couple decades.
They will if its cheaper
Not if they're banned, which will almost certainly be the case by the time Boom is commercially available.
We're banning engines now?
We do that with the most polluting car engines.
Airlines are almost certain to face significant carbon regulation or carbon taxes in the next couple of decades. In turn, lots of engines will be effectively banned.
Of course, this is nothing new: noise abatement effectively banned a whole lot of engines, too.
(Almost?) exclusively on military planes which have different return on investment needs than commercial aircraft that need to be efficient first and foremost (ask Convair and BAC/Sud Aviation how many airlines valued speed over efficiency).
They announced they're building their own because the regular engine OEMs showed little interest. Even if required modifications to historic or military turbojets are minor, there's a lot of expense in certifying them for use for a new type of passenger aircraft, and modern economical turbofans were not designed for supersonic flight...
Only for military applications, which have much lower reliability and serviceability requirements.
I believe they are thinking that one is a solved problem (Jet Engine) and the other is a novel problem (Airframe with reduced supersonic noise). There has been some work done on the sonic boom problem, but not nearly as much as the jet engine problem.
They will probably just iterate from an existing engine design rather than trying to re-invent one. Just because no one is manufacturing them doesn't mean the designs are not there to be used.
Jet engine is a "solved" problem for like 4 Western companies (GE, Pratt-Whitney, Rolls-Royce, Safran) plus some Russian and Chinese state-owned enterprises that mostly do military work. These organizations guard their secret sauces vigorously. Designing a cutting edge jet engine from scratch (i.e. with competitive fuel efficiency) is NOT a trivial task.
> Jet engine is a "solved" problem for like 4 Western companies (GE, Pratt-Whitney, Rolls-Royce, Safran) plus some Russian and Chinese state-owned enterprises that mostly do military work.
Time to mention Williams International
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_International
They're on light jets from Cirrus and Cessna. Boom probably needs something a bit larger - seems like an opportunity for a development program.
There's actually quite a few companies that make small turbojets especially for military purposes and up to a certain point, you can even DIY your own from spare parts (there are some Youtubers that have done that). That's the first tier and includes companies like Williams, usually producing <5,000 lbf engines.
Then you have companies like Garrett/Honeywell that can make engines that output tens of thousands lbf like the TFE731 for mid-range jets and fighter jets. These can power big jets but not very fuel efficiently; that's the second tier.
The next tier up is the high bypass turbofans producing tens of thousands lbf used for commercial aviation and afterburner engines for last gen fighter aircraft are a completely different story. The GP is right there are only a few players in the game. Due to scaling laws, at this point it becomes less about the design and more about the metallurgy and material science. Magic like single crystal alloys are critical here and are very closely guarded secrets because the knowledge unlocks everything from ICBMs to gaseous centrifuges to nuclear reactors.
Heh. If I were a startup I wouldn't be relying on Williams International to build me a novel engine:
Ha jet engine that can be certified maintained and is efficient is barely solved by GE. That’s it nobody else can make a modern commercial aircraft engine that isn’t a total money pit.
Jet engines are a "solved problem" like "moon landing" is a "solved problem"
maybe more so.
If China is anything to go by, immensely more so, and you are not significantly helped even if you had all the documents and industry secrets required to design and build a modern engine!
my spider sense is already tingling from reading this!
do we know the reason for why rolls royce pulled out???
"After careful consideration, Rolls-Royce has determined that the commercial aviation supersonic market is not currently a priority for us and, therefore, will not pursue further work on the program at this time. It has been a pleasure to work with the Boom team and we wish them every success in the future."
Guess it was a cost thing. Wasn't worth their time. Not enough customers probably.
Do they have the metallurgical expertise to manufacture their own engines? That would seem like a stretch… but who knows…
Agreed I’m sure GE development very special material systems
Yeh, although on https://boomsupersonic.com/flyby/inaugural-first-flight-xb1-... they say 'Supersonic intakes: XB-1’s engine intakes slow supersonic air to subsonic speeds, efficiently converting kinetic energy into pressure energy, allowing conventional jet engines to power XB-1 from takeoff through supersonic flight.' - so perhaps the engine design problem is not as tricky as it would otherwise be.
Hermeus is starting with the engine [1].
Personally, I'm far more bullish on hermeus than I am Boom.
They have a bigger addressable market
And military payloads don't complain about cramped seats, nor is the sticker price as much of a concern.
Can we get LLMs to design the engine?
Where would the LLM get the training data? It's not as if supersonic jet designers commonly post easy-to-ingest design data online.
Besides, most countries couldn't build a modern jet engine even if they had the exact engineering drawings of an existing one available. From fashioning single-crystal turbine blades to establishing a supply chain capable of the quality controls needed, the amount of hours spent is unreal.
As a corollary to AI taking up easy jobs like CRUD apps and spreadsheets, will human work be pushed to making things like silicon chips, nuclear reactors, jet engines and space elevators?
Edit: I replied to the wrong comment. Hermes chose to start with the same engine as Boom - The J85. I'm assuming Boom chose it for similar reasons.
I like their explanation of the choice from a recent tour:
(Youtube transcript)
"So these are out of production, the J 85s. So we didn't work with GE at all. It was all just us working with, we were really working with the maintenance, repair and overhaul shops for them. That's really where the expertise and knowledge lies. These engines were, I think originally designed in the fifties. There's not a lot of electronics on board. There's no firmware we have to work through.
And really, it's a pretty elegant but hydro mechanical system for all the controls. So really it was about understanding the configuration of it and you can kind of chase down all the different tubes and everything to understand how it works. And then there's a suite of documentation out there. So it was really on us to learn how it worked."
J85s are old technology. They're a turobjet, not a turbofan, nor do they have any electronics on board. This makes them highly inefficient engines. They're cheap, there are plenty lying around from old 4th gen fighters, and plenty of old guys who know how to work on them.
I suspect they used these just to get the XB-1 airborne, making progress while they find a better engine.
Smart - if you fail to develop an airframe, you can still sell engines. The other way around is much more difficult.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyKtxsdI0z8 but even they're using relatively old engines as the starting point. Because they're simple and well understood.
Yet still based on GE J85 turbojet https://www.hermeus.com/chimera
> Augmented reality vision system: Two nose-mounted cameras, digitally augmented with attitude and flight path indications, feed a high resolution pilot display enabling excellent runway visibility. This system enables improved aerodynamic efficiency without the weight and complexity of a movable nose.
(Cough) Don't tell the passengers it is all because the pilot literally cannot see the runway during landing.
because the pilot literally cannot see the runway during landing
ILS solved this problem for airline transport pilots [1].
ILS generally still requires manual visual approaches from the minimum altitude to the ground. Only ILS Cat III-C is a true autoland that can take the aircraft down all the way to the ground.
Even then, aircraft certification requirements even for Cat III-C capable aircraft requires that pilots be able to conduct a visual approach because the ILS system can fail.
An aircraft that has literally no recourse when ILS Cat III-C capability goes down (either on the aircraft side or the airfield side) does not seem like a good idea, especially because in this case large categories of emergencies are positively correlated with avionics failure.
For example an engine failure may cause power loss to avionics, so your fancy AR webcam feed is more likely to go down in that situation just when you need to make an emergency landing.
Not impossible to overcome of course - you certainly can ensure your avionics have its own isolated (and multiply redundant) power source so that it does stay up in the event of many kinds of emergencies, but personally I'd need to really see the homework on that before I'd feel safe flying in that kind of setup.
The category of of ILS does not dictate its autoland status. You can do an Autoland on nearly any ILS provided the FAC is aligned with the RWY.
A CAT IIIB ILS will permit in most states a landing with a radio altitude of 0.
To be fair, they do need an alternate with a better visibility. But if the computers are not working, you're not in for a good time in a modern airliner anyway.
Maybe not a 'good time', but a safe one. Commercial airliners have standby instruments and a VHF radio that works on a battery. Which is all you need to get it on the ground in one piece.
Didn’t the Concorde have a droop snoot for the same reason?
Yes and no. Line of sight was one reason, but aerodynamics was another. Pointing the nose into the wind (ie slightly down) is more efficient during landing and takeoff. Boom is avoiding the concept because it would cost tens of millions to develop and test such a configuration.
Large moving parts on an airframe seem to be avoided in general these days. There’s a similar story with swing wings (which I think Boom also considered before ultimately rejecting).
Why did they design it to fit in a carry on suitcase?
Because you have to be able to take them on the plane, obviously. /s
But seriously I think 'fitting in a suitcase' wasn't the design goal, per se, but an approximate description of the design goals. The engine was designed to go in a missile.
That’s interesting actually - and a lot of 1950s era ‘small enough to fit in a suitcase’ descriptions (computers, nuclear warheads, jet engines…) make more sense if you realize they are a euphemism for ‘small enough to fit in a missile’. Makes me wonder what ‘small enough to fit in a cigar box’ was a euphemism for.
Eh, maybe. The suitcase itself is also, more simply, literally just something designed to be a reasonable amount of stuff that a human could carry. Many early portable PCs (e.g. Osborne) targeted a suitcase form factor just because it was a reasonable form factor for people to carry around.
And the comparison is something colloquially convenient. "The device was the size of a suitcase" is just more illustrative than "the device was 50 liters in volume"
Like I’m going to take advice from someone called ‘kube-system’ about container sizes :D
I write all my comments
FROM scratchThat's a euphemism for cigar boxes; smuggled cigars get through borders with a little rake-off at each inspection. The fact that they are actual cigars on the top layers allows all the boxes to get past slightly bent but nonetheless patriotic guards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_Symphony aren't ready yet.
Meh... I'll take whatever supersonic passenger transport is offered, but Mach 1.7 is disappointing.
If it ain't broke...
It warms my heart seeing old designs still working just fine.
Well since Rolls-Royce abandoned the project that might be why? This seems like more of a proof of concept of the airframe itself.
Crazy that a new aircraft is launching with such new tech, but still rocking engines that were fundamentally designed around 10 years after the dawn of jet aircraft.
Their goal is to prove the design's aerodynamics WRT sonic boom, not the engines.
This is their 1/3-scale test/demo airplane. Spending big on engines for it would not make sense.
Falcon 9's Merlin engine is really just based on a NASA reference design for a simpler low cost rocket engine. Raptor is new tech, but that was long after SpaceX had proven itself and had the capital and talent to invest in building something like that.
It makes total sense to use flight proven engines like this off the shelf at first.
Probably a good engine choice because it's plentiful, and used on other similar aircraft, for example their T-38 chase plane uses the same engine.
They are not testing the engines here (which they will not be manufacturing anyway), but the aerodynamics and the systems.
If they work, I don't understand the issue. Not everything has to be modern to be useful.
I don't think people here understand how old a lot of the designs are that they use everyday.
Old Design + New Materials can still be cutting edge
High tech manufacturing at scale is often equally as challenging as development work. Starting with a proven design let's teams focus on leveling up their manufacturing capabilities prior to introducing the double complexity of manufacturing a part that just made it out of CDR.
A bit of a tangent, but this is the genius of Musk's Merlin engine. Simple design utilizing RP9 allows the manufacturing staff to hit their stride before introducing the raptor (methalox).
The swarm of negative comments here is both disheartening and unwarranted. How many of you are building ad networks or chat-with-PDF while these folks are working on truly difficult problems?
Flying supersonic is awesome, actually. Count me in for one at the first opportunity (25% of the cost of a Concorde ticket would really be something)
Congratulations for a successful launch to Boom!
I don't find giving rich people a way to make loud banging noises in the sky more inspiring than building ad networks. Not all difficult challenges are worthy.
Shame on you.
We will not have supersonic transport for average people unless outsiders do it first. There are only two meaningfully large manufacturers now, Airbus and Boeing.
Boeing and Airbus both cannot financially afford a technologically promising but possible failure now. Boeing built the 737 MAXX because they couldn’t afford a clean sheet update of 70-year old technology despite the savings. Airbus lost almost as much as the entire company was worth on the A380, kept afloat by EU subsidies.
All new technology happens for the wealthy first - we would not have smartphones today if Apple was forced to price them at the median price of cell phones in 2004.
Boeing built the 737 MAXX because they couldn’t afford a clean sheet update of 70-year old technology despite the savings.
Boeing ABSOLUTELY could afford a clean sheet replacement of the 737. They chose not to because it would have opened them up to competition and reduced short term profits. Anyone claiming otherwise is blowing smoke.
I agree with your sentiment, but not the reason - instead of concern about competition/short-term profitability, Boeing has always thrown huge amounts of money into stock buybacks, even while development is running over budget. This article is a great window into the institutional rot at Boeing, and I think it highlights the problems caused by large companies' decisions being dominated by their own stock price: https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-invest...
Just wrong. Read about the 7J7. The 787 cost something north of 20 billion to develop. The clean sheet 737 would have cost much more in today’s dollars. Boeing makes an average of less than 5% profit margin from the 1970s to now. It was a relatively obvious financial decision from Boeing’s perspective.
I assume you never lived under the Concorde flight path.
There will never be supersonic transport for normal people simply because the technology is unsuitable for use near people. Most people want to fly between cities and cities tend to be inhabited by people, hence the essential tension.
Supersonic flight only works for a few specific flight paths where you are flying entirely over the ocean between two coastal airports. The moment you have to fly over people those people are going to get very angry and ban you from their airspace.
I cant imagine where we would be if people were having this mentality back in the early 1900s when rich people were trying to fly using loud, terrible airplanes. Fwiw I don't think super sonic travel is going to succeed any time soon, but it's crazy how prevalent this type of NIMBY mentality has become.
There's nothing wrong with people finding sonic booms annoying. Even Boom conceded this by naming itself after its worst externality, and pretending (in its early startup phase) that it was pursuing technology to make supersonic flight less loud.
I'm sure they had mumbling nobodies back then too which the world passed by.
Their grumbling was just more limited compared to internet noise.
first airplanes were also only for rich people, fortunately it has continued to progress and gotten more economical
Yes - now cattle can afford to fly. Soon we’ll have standing room “seats” and we will truly be like cattle.
Supersonic flight over land has been banned in the US since the 1970s. Boom isn’t going to be making “banging noises in the sky” anywhere you’re going to hear them.
This airliner will draw the kind of people who fly business and first class today, which will reduce demand for those tickets and depress prices for everyone.
Boom is actively lobbying to relax those restrictions. It's not clear supersonic commercial flight is viable otherwise.
I work on chat-with-pdf and still find this awesome!
What the heck is chat-with-pdf? :)
gpt enabled pdf summarizers
I totally agree with you, only that Boom's hype-laden announcement doesn't help build confidence.
That's the game though. Unfortunately, there's no room for subtlety once you get to a certain audience size, and you need to make as much noise and project as much confidence as possible to stand out. While us HNers might appreciate subtlety and humility, I don't think it translates very well to the average person.
It is most definitely warranted. This idea is horrific for the environment and sonic booms are bad for residents. It solves a "problem" nobody but rich elites have. This company is a zero-interest rate phenomenon. I wish people would work on impactful projects instead.
This is as impactful as it gets.
Flying supersonic is awesome. Living near people who fly supersonic is awful. Since there are far more people in group B than group A, a ban is warranted.
Also, now we have the climate crisis to deal with, commercial supersonic flight should be consigned to the history books where it belongs.
HN lives in a closet world of React/Angular/Docker/Kubernetes/etc and is so thoroughly jaded and burnt by bland, bloated business technology apps that they have zero affinity or understanding of what kind of exciting technology is happening in other sectors.
Agree. In years past the negative comments were because it was 'vapor', just an empty overhyped startup. But It is not just vapor now, they have a flying prototype.
From wiki:
"On June 3, 2021, United Airlines announced they had signed an agreement to purchase 15 Overture aircraft with an additional 35 options, expecting to start passenger flights by 2029.[14][15] On August 16, 2022, American Airlines announced an agreement to purchase 20 Overture aircraft with an additional 40 options.[16]"
later on...
"On December 13, 2022, Boom announced that it would develop its own turbofan engine after "Big Three" engine manufacturers Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney and General Electric, as well as CFM and Safran previously declined to develop a new engine due to high capital costs.[29][30][31][32] Named Symphony, (see § Engines below) the engine will be developed under partnership with three entities: Kratos subsidiary Florida Turbine Technologies for engine design; StandardAero for maintenance; and General Electric subsidiary GE Additive for consulting on printing components.[33]"
So not only do they think they are going to finish designing, prototyping, testing, certifying, and moving to production an entirely new aircraft, they also think they are going to design a brand new engine, that the big three didn't think made sense and also get it through all those efforts? All in the next 5 years?
If it doesn't come to anything, which seems likely, atleast it sounds like a fun way to spend lots of money.
One dynamic that may be at play: Designing a new engine is a gamble. For a company who already makes money with existing designs, there may be little upside on a small-volume new product. This is likely the reason the "Big 3" passed on designing an engine they don't have an off-the-shelf option for.
Boom would probably be the primary beneficiary of such an engine existing, so it isn't all that surprising that they will have to fund the development. The second supersonic airframe that can use their engine would be the one to turn that R&D profitable for Boom (and ease the introduction of more supersonic airframe options).
I would agree that the big three didn't think they could make it work, be that for technical reasons, money reasons, limited market reasons, etc. the end result is the same.
Where I would disagree is that Boom can make it work. The amount of specialized knowledge you need in design and analysis as well as test and manufacturing facilities makes it near impossible for an outsider get in the game. Which is why there aren't any in the commercial jet engine space. GE, PW, RR and I guess Safran is pretty much it. You can't just decide you are going to do the R&D yourself and pop out a new engine in 5 years.
SpaceX went from nothing to orbital spacecraft in ~6 years.
Plenty of people discounted them at the time too.
I’m not saying Boom will succeed, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility if they can dedicate themselves to task the same way SpaceX did.
There's significant differences between SpaceX and Boom though.
SpaceX got lots of funding because of military/government potential. The US had no domestic capability to place people into orbit. SpaceX also promised cheaper satellite insertion.
Boom promises... ultra-wealthy people a few hours shorter flights?
Concord failed because of cost - few people could afford the ticker price, and even fewer actually needed to cross the ocean a few hours faster.
There's less than zero percent chance Boom will be able to offer cheap "everyday joe" prices on their aircraft. It will fail for the same reasons as Concord...
Boom promises... ultra-wealthy people a few hours shorter flights?
This along with another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39794935) begs the question: Does everything here have to be a "We Are The 99%" meme?
Practically every bleeding edge advancement is only available to the "wealthy", it's the "wealthy" who pay the First Adopters Tax so eventually the technology might trickle down to the commons.
I say "wealthy" in quotes since those concerned aren't even that particularly richer than most people. Just people with slightly more surplus money in their wallet to throw around.
I get the audience here is primarily FOSS and considers the very notion of money a fucking heresy, but the real world doesn't operate like that.
slightly is doing a lot of work there. I'll admit I'm doing okay myself, and can afford $300 for a commercial plane ticket every once in a while, but there's a gulf between that, and being able to afford a $4,000 plane ticket, and another jump to $10,000 for a plane ticket, to being ever able to afford a to blow $250k on a trip to see the Titanic, however I'll fated that might be.
There's the top 1%, but there's also a .1% and .01% that is, actually, wealthy. But you're right that there's a weird "can't touch money" vibe in some circles that's weird.
Of course not - but this exact idea was tried and failed. What is Boom going to offer that makes it survive? So far, it seems nothing.
There's estimates that if Concord still flew today, Trans-Atlantic ticket prices would start around $10,000. How many people actually want to fly in a cramped cabin for that fee? You can get very luxurious first class cabin space for much less.
Ultimately, Boom will fail just like Concord. After the novelty wears off, there's very few actual customers - and even fewer repeat customers.
I think if we were just talking about the airframe I would agree that is was possible. Not the engines though. Look at some of the costs and timeframes involved in one of the big 3's newer engines:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_PW1000G
Now consider that you aren't starting with existing knowledge base, talent, facilities, etc. (which SpaceX had already started to build up) but from scratch. SpaceX also had nearly a billion in Falcon 9 and Dragon, Boom in its totality looks like it's worth a few hundred million? Lastly SpaceX had 150 employees in 2005 and 1150 in 2010. Boom has 150 and Florida Turbines (the part of Kratos working on this) has 100.
All of that is to say they need more money, more people, and more facilities very quickly if they were to have any chance of hitting any of those timeframes.
It took them almost 20 years to do a manned flight though. And that's with professional astronauts knowingly taking the kind of risk you can't do with a passenger aircraft, unless you want to do a OceanGate.
That's the tricky bit. I guess they can put something together in that amount of time. But making sure it's safe? More skeptical on that. Look at the recent woes at Boeing for example, and while Boeing's organisational issues are at fault for no small part, it does show all of this is tricky business. Also many other aircraft have had serious design issues, including Concorde.
Also not convinced on the economic potential on all of this. There may be also issues with increased noise, environmental impact (possibly via regulations), and things like that.
Afaik, Kratos is prototyping supersonic-class UAVs (XQ-58C and D) for military customers, so I'd expect this isn't Boom starting from zero.
From Kratos's site:
https://www.kratosdefense.com/products/uav/air/turbines
Kratos has begun the first engine tests at its X-58 test facility. The newly commissioned test facility is used to carry out demonstrator engine development testing, allowing Kratos to grow its offering of low cost and high-performance small jet engines. The fully mobile test facility can accommodate fully instrumented engines up to 3000-lb thrust. Inlet and exhaust noise suppression is provided to reduce environmental impacts. All connections are designed to reduce test article set-up time thereby reducing program costs. The state-of-the-art data acquisition system and communications allow for high speed remote monitoring and real time data processing. Kratos is introducing several engines to support the need for low cost and high-performance engines for cruise missiles, powered munitions and UAVs.
3000-lb thrust is about an order of magnitude smaller than you need for a single row conventional commercial jet with two engines. Yes, they are ostensibly working in the same field but I don't think I can stress enough how different those two things are.
I would not disagree that you can do it, but I am skeptical that you can do it in 5 years.
Honda did develop their HF118 turbofan engine apparently from scratch, but it took about 8 years [1]. And for the actual commercialization they teamed up with GE and then it took another 10 years until certification of the successor HF120 [2].
[1] scroll down on https://global.honda/en/tech/eVTOL_gas_turbine_hybrid_system...
Also, boom could have asked for exclusive terms that they didn’t like.
Wasn't one of the Boom selling points that their aircraft would use conventional engines? Now they are developing their own...
« It’s never possible to innovate » This is currently the top comment on news.ycombinator.com
I think this is a grand tradition on this fair site. I think we all are looking forward to whatever's coming next.
So I can count on you to invest in my new startup that will be inventing human flight without any extraneous equipment right?
It's always possible to innovate. It just happens that often the people claiming too are mostly innovating at separating people from their money. If you want to chat why I think this is more the later than the former feel free to reach out, I love talking aerospace.
I couldn't stop thinking that the name of the company is going to be unfortunate, brand killing, one day if they have a incident
Even without incident, it's a poor choice of brand for a product most people associate with the deafening sound of the sound barrier being broken. It's what killed its predecessor.
My understanding is the the Concorde wasn't profitable to fly (too large!)
You can fly subsonic over land and go supersonic over oceans. That would make a trip to Japan much faster! And won't impact humans living underneath the flight path (since it won't go supersonic until it's over the ocean)
Flights these days often aren't even traveling close to the speed of sound, so there's room to design a plane more efficient at that speed as well.
can fly subsonic over land and go supersonic over oceans
A supersonic airframe is typically inefficient at subsonic speeds.
I think boom is aware of this and is planning to make their planes efficient at 90% speed of sound
1. If you're flying supersonically, you probably aren't worried about efficiency anyway.
2. If you're flying NYC-London or LAX-Tokyo, the portion you spend over land isn't a big contributor to the overall efficiency.
That would make a trip to Japan much faster!
Assuming it has the range. Trans-Atlantic is IMO not that interesting. You can already get to London from the East Coast same day. The continent is mostly a red-eye but that's OK in lie-flat business class. Even comfortable trans-Pacific is a slog but that takes a lot of range.
It seems like the plan is for flights from the East Coast to Asia (specifically Tokyo) to refuel at SFO before continuing across the Pacific.
the deafening sound of the sound barrier being broken
As someone who grew up hearing sonic booms all the time this is very puzzling to me. I keep seeing mentions of how the sonic boom is such a huge issue... really?
They're setting themselves up to get "Ok Boomer"'d
I can't help but imagine people used to think about these things, but they haven't for a while. I remember checking what was on the in-flight radio ~8 years ago to hear "Love when you hit the ground, girl."
Site won't load, but I assume this was just a subsonic flight, gear down, etc? A major technical milestone for sure, but I think the real trick with their proposal is the economic viability of such a plane.
Yes. The bet is still that the airlines can find viable routes to fly with a vehicle that creates sonic booms.
Japan Airlines is a logical customer then— they'd be flying all over the Pacific where none of that matters.
Their website[0] does list Japan Airlines as a partner.
[0] https://boomsupersonic.com/press-release/our-partnership-wit...
Yes, that's why I mentioned it. :)
I noticed that bit in the video -- gear down -- why is that? Just to avoid one possible point of failure, the gear failing to deploy properly for landing?
I had the same question. I guess too is a common protocol. Any insights on why these flights are gears down?
Not an expert, but I've seen the following commented on other test flight videos: on initial test flights, landing gear is always kept down to minimize risk. If a sudden landing is needed, gear is already down, no risk of equipment getting stuck, less mental load for the pilot to perform emergency landing, etc. Basically, when testing, you want to minimize the variables being tested. When airworthyness is validated, then you can test landing gear systems.
Yes:
XB-1 met all of its test objectives, including safely and successfully achieving an altitude of 7,120 feet and speeds up to 238 knots (273 mph)
Turn off your ad blocker. For some reason it didn't load till I turned it off.
There are no ads on the page, but there must be something nefarious.
"XB-1 met all of its test objectives, including safely and successfully achieving an altitude of 7,120 feet and speeds up to 238 knots (273 mph)."
Seems just a bit shy of the speed of sound (760 mph).
First flights are basically never more than a basic functionality check of take-off and landing configurations. (Note that there were no pictures of it with the gear retracted, because that's also typically something you don't try on a first flight.)
Yes, I get it. It's just they buried the lede of how far they have to go.
I mean, if you trust the math, you can just YOLO it and see what happens. The FAA is the major hurdle there though, because they don't trust the math, nor do they have the ability to really analyze it. So how far they have to go is mostly up to what they can get approved for, and how long it'll take to provide the data the FAA needs to give them the go-ahead.
It's fairly likely they'll find things that need changing along the way, which may also result in the need for additional regulatory oversight, so, double impossible to know if this will be flying at design speeds in a year or ten years or ever.
I'm sure we'll get a HN post about it when it does however.
It's not really about trusting the math, it's trusting the math has been implemented on that real-life aircraft over there. The truism about not wanting to fly an aircraft design which relies on a function being Lebesgue-integrable but not Riemann-integrable is not questioning the mathematics.
speed of sound changes with altitude right?
Effectively, yes.
Just the first test flight, not a great idea to run anything at top speed before you’ve validated it won’t fall apart.
Ya think? It's a test flight to make sure that the aircraft can take off, fly, and land. I doubt they even retracted the landing gear.
Flight testing will slowly and very methodically expand the flight envelope until it meets or fails its design objectives.
It's a 1/3 scale prototype so I guess through some creative maths the speed of sound may as well be 1/3?
This will never make it past prototype stages, unfortunately. Realistically, you need federal involvement to make something like this happen, a la concorde. I could see the US government getting involved for nationalism purposes if China starts actually building jets in large numbers to reassert US manufacturing supremacy.
It was sexy marketing for the Concorde to travel between NYC and Paris/London back in the 70s-90s. Today however, with the emergence of the middle east as a major travel hub, would supersonic travel be viable there? Dubai-Singapore? Dubai-Doha? Dubai-Moscow? Europe to Middle east wouldn't work due to having to fly over europe, right?
Also, is there enough luxury/high speed travel demand between asia and the north american west coast for something like this? It's nice to leave north america in the evening, sleep 8 hours, and arrive as the plane is landing in tokyo. Is there any demand to be get to Tokyo in 6-7ish hours?
It seems like the people that can afford 20-30k tickets can also afford to fly private, and with the internet there's much less need to be in person for making deals. Sadly, until fuel costs become negligible and they can make supersonic airplanes hold 200+ people, i think most people would rather fly private or fly first class on an A380 than on a cramped Overture.
Why assume "cramped overture"? What if overture feels like first class but is ~faster?
I suspect fast planes are going to have an enormous amount of demand - people value their time. What's the most important part of travel? The flight cost? The lodging? The days off of work?
If people value their time how come there was no serious appetite for upgrading and eventually replacing Concorde decades ago?
After all they could have just built improved versions of them and had fleets of them flying across the Atlantic, perhaps even a larger extended range version for trans-Pacific routes.
And if time is really the driver how come Boom Overture is going to be slower than Concorde?
Because nobody did it! Airlines are absolutely brutal businesses. Airplane manufacturing is at least as brutal. Trivia question: how long did it take the Boeing _ (pick any make) to become profitable?
It's an enormous risk to build a new airplane, to convince airlines to take a risk on you and buy it, for them to train pilots on it, etc etc etc
It's a small miracle Boom has gotten as far as they have.
Boom is not competing with Concorde!! You can't buy Concorde tickets today! Concorde was never profitable!
The Boom website has images of the proposed Overture cabin. Looks like international first class.
I could see the US government getting involved for nationalism purposes if China starts
If only that inspired the US to build high-speed rail.
From the marketing fluff,
"Supersonic intakes: XB-1’s engine intakes slow supersonic air to subsonic speeds, efficiently converting kinetic energy into pressure energy, allowing conventional jet engines to power XB-1 from takeoff through supersonic flight."
I'm under the impression that's something most jet engines do.
I don't think the air intake speed of a subsonic plane is ever supersonic.
Most air intakes of jet engines are designed to slow airflow/compress the air (which was my point - my apologies for being oblique)
Yes, this is what every supersonic intake does. The leading edge of the intake for supersonic flows is meant to create an oblique shockwave that reflects off the other parts of the intake to progressively slow the flow to subsonic speeds before reaching the front of the engine. Fixed intakes, like the one on the XB-1, are optimized for a certain speed.
The gap between the intake and the fuselage diverts the dirty boundary layer air so that the intake is more efficient.
It sounds like marketing fluff, which I think alot of their site is, but this is a real thing. As soon as you start flying faster than sound you have to do extra work on the intake for your engine you wouldn't otherwise need to do (put simply).
Most jets aren’t supersonic at all.
Not sure if there is basic/core technology development being done or valuable technology being generated. Is supersonic flight essentially just throwing a lot of jet fuel at the problem of wanting to get someplace fast? Are we expecting to see novel insights and spinoff technologies from the development of this plane and industry?
I think there's a key, core military angle to this company, where their best and most stable and lucrative customers are sure to be nation-states. I think there is some real value to be generated around super-sonic technology development for missile applications, drone applications, fighter jet applications.
I think that this company gets a lot of peoples' backs up, because they don't appear to have any unique insight besides "Rich people and nation states will pay through the nose for wasteful and extremely obnoxious technologies that degrade humanity as a whole." It's a great business, might be nice and profitable, great for rich people and the most developed nation states, might not be so great for the humanity as a whole.
Pretty disappointing this is the top (edit: 2nd) comment. It asks and asserts several things that are easy to look up. I'd recommend reading their FAQ page: https://boomsupersonic.com/faq
It's certainly not a guarantee that this works out but that's true of any speculative enterprise. Personally, I think a speculative world where Asia <> West Coast US is as fast as West Coast US <> East Coast US is pretty exciting.
FAQ is mostly marketing with answers to obvious question. Sorry, I have a feeling that you did not read comment to which you replied.
The FAQ page addresses several - not all, that's why I said "look up" - of the OP's objections. OP/you might disagree (it is marketing, like you said) but they should state and explain those disagreements instead of acting like Boom hasn't thought of them.
Not sure if there is basic/core technology development being done or valuable technology being generated. Is supersonic flight essentially just throwing a lot of jet fuel at the problem of wanting to get someplace fast? Are we expecting to see novel insights and spinoff technologies from the development of this plane and industry?
See FAQ page entries: "Will Overture use afterburners like Concorde?" and "Why did it take so long to bring supersonic flight back after the Concorde?"
I think there's a key, core military angle to this company, where their best and most stable and lucrative customers are sure to be nation-states. I think there is some real value to be generated around super-sonic technology development for missile applications, drone applications, fighter jet applications.
Scholl indicated Boom Supersonic had no interest in a Boom product becoming a weapons platform at this time. From: https://simpleflying.com/xb-1-first-flight/
More broadly, supersonic missiles and fighter jets already exist.
Rich people and nation states will pay through the nose
See "How much will tickets cost?" from the FAQ. Business class pricing seems eminently reasonable for this service.
[W]asteful and extremely obnoxious technologies that degrade humanity as a whole
See "How is Boom dealing with the sonic boom?" and "What steps is Boom taking to make supersonic travel environmentally sustainable?"
I think there's a key, core military angle to this company, where their best and most stable and lucrative customers are sure to be nation-states.
Yes, but not in the way you think.
No nation-state with an aerospace engine industry has difficulty making military aircraft go supersonic. Or just buying the same thing off the shelf.
However, a lot of nation states have nationalized flag carrier airlines, that they heavily subsidize for prestige reasons.
These are the same carriers who were able to afford Concorde, and they're exactly who Boom will be initially selling to.
The 0.1% have all the time in the world. Why don't they just travel in a super luxurious cruise or something?
Time is literally the one thing you can't buy more of, and therefore, when you are rich enough, is the only thing that has real value.
Right which means you can use it to enjoy quality time. Not hurry up to do stuff as fast as possible and stressed because you're running out of time.
Supersonic flight isn't necessarily for the 0.1%, just the 1% (or whatever other made up number) whose price per hour times the travel time reductions is greater than the added cost of the fare.
Can you call it a supersonic aircraft if it hasn't broken the sound barrier yet? I assume they mean it's intended to be supersonic.
Probably shouldn’t put the throttle to 100% on a brand new airplane.
If you're building a submarine, you don't have to call it a "future submarine" until it submerges; people understand that if you say "I'm currently building a submarine," it has yet to go under water, but the thing you're building is still a submarine. I think that's generally true of not-yet-built or not-yet-used things: it's understood that if it hasn't done the thing yet, you're describing what it's going to be/do.
Great company building actual difficult technologies.
What engine are they using this time in their supersonic aircrafts? Last time I checked, Rolls-Royce abandoned Boom as their engine supplier.
[0] https://simpleflying.com/rolls-royce-quits-boom-supersonic-e...
On their main page they referencing the following:
XB-1’s carbon composite and titanium fuselage is propelled by three General Electric J85 engines. [1]
In the prototype, which far from full scale.
We need LESS planes and LESS speed to combat climate change
This technology, like all technology, increases humanity's collective capacity to create solutions to problems and implement them. Faster travel means more time to solve problems. LESS planes and LESS speed make the world a worse place.
Absolutely not, it means more URGENCY to solve problems because all these behaviors INCREASE the issues
Why are the gears still down?
For the first test flight of an aircraft, it's quite common to test a very limited set of parts of the aircraft, and retracting the gear might not be on that list. Also, if the gear is left down, then that's one less thing that could go wrong while the pilot is still getting used to an aircraft with a very different feel to anything they have flown before.
On the first test flight you want to minimize risk as much as possible - there’s many, many things that can go wrong, so adding variables is a bad idea. Landing gear can’t get stuck up if it’s never retracted.
They beat Lockheed's X-59 to first flight. That was rolled out on January 12th, but it hasn't flown yet.
There are enough billionaires now to support making supersonic bizjets. They will mostly be a status cymbal.
The question always for the user is, do they want a crash or a ride? :)
This is absolute comedy gold and I wanted you to know that I saw it and appreciated it.
The undercarriage didn't retract in the video. Was that just an artefact of the stages of flight the film came from or was the undercarriage fixed for the maiden flight?
Pure speculation on my part, but on a first flight when you're shaking out the fundamentals, it's safer to not retract landing gear in case there is a catastrophic failure in, say, your hydraulic system.
What is with the sudden surge of hypersonics? Surely this is military funding on some level?
it's just supersonic, hypersonics is not involved
As a consumer, the pain-point of flying isn't that the plane is slow (although it'd be nice to go faster) - it's the slap-dash construction of the planes. I know it's safe statistically, but I just can't stomach entrusting my life to a system that lets Boeing's many ridiculous failures through the cracks.
The other major issue is having to be at the airport hours early, and the planes can't fix that.
While the planes can’t fix needing to show up at the airport early, business class fares (usually) help. Priority security and priority checkin mean that, while you can’t show up 5 minutes before your flight, you also don’t need to show up 3 hours early. And, if you do, you have a lounge to relax in with as much food and drink as you can swallow while you wait.
I would imagine that every seat on these flights would be a business or first class fare (as I don’t see any other way they can make money), and would get you all of those benefits.
To me this just looks like civilian fighter plane... Quite far still to go to any real capacity even as business yet competitor...
It's intended to validate their design models. The next one will be much bigger.
“ XB-1 met all of its test objectives, including safely and successfully achieving an altitude of 7,120 feet and speeds up to 238 knots (273 mph).”
So really a shakedown, didnt try for supersonic
The blog post didn't really explain what an XB-1 is or what it's for, but the wikipedia page helps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_XB-1
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The internet has become an unusable joke
I know the Boeing safety reputation is a bit tarnished of late, but how many people are stepping on an aircraft called "Boom"?
I love the idea of supersonic travel, but I can't help thinking that when you see how many things can go wrong in an airliner, how much safety was the result of trial and error, and how Boeing's woes shows how fragile safe manufacturing can get, how safe will an airliner built by a startup be?
awesome!!!! love it
Concorde 2.0. What could go wrong?
Any news on the powerplant-side? Which is one if not the most critical part of the plane for commercial success. Didn't GE dropped the ball a while ago? I still see them mentioned in their website https://boomsupersonic.com/symphony
I was disappointed by the video. I was expecting more.
They are making air travel more efficient. More time efficient. That's great for everyone flying, but also great for airlines. The last three flights I've been on arrived significantly ahead of schedule and were going much faster than usual. I assume this was to get the pilot to the location ASAP so they can fly again sooner.
Also how do you not see supersonic flight as just generally good for everyone flying? I want to sit in a plane for less time, always.
For a coast to coast flight, at least 30-40% of the flight time is spent getting to the airport earlier to de-risk the TSA line, or standing in the TSA line. Or, going outside to hail a cab to the airport, sitting in airport traffic, and driving to and from the airport.
For a 5h flight from LAX -> JFK, approx 3-5 hours is spent doing these things.
So, to shorten the 8-10h of an LA to NYC trip, the easiest possible thing to do is... build a f%@#$ train.
Supersonic is unusable over land anyway. This aircraft is designed for trans-oceanic routes, like US to Asia or Europe.
Quite hard to build a railway over the ocean.
A myth created because Concord came to market before the American SST. Sonic booms are not the epic thunder crashes of Hollywood fame. The Concorde going by at altitude wouldn't be any louder than a truck engine braking on a nearby highway for a second or two.
Not even remotely correct. They flew supersonic aircraft over Oklhahoma City a thousand times and basically drove the city insane and had to cut testing short when it was obviously untenable to regularly Sonic Boom half a million people for commercial aviation, let alone every large city in America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_tests
If I'm doing my calculations correct, their targeted sound pressure levels of 50-100 pascal is equivalent to 127-133 decibels, which is over the threshold of discomfort for most, and getting close to the threshold of pain.
My childhood home was in the flight path for NASA when they were given the Blackbird after it's official retirement. We also routinely had fire-retardant bombers flying eye level close enough you could read the tail numbers off with a naked eye (we were on the side of a mountain, bombers flew down the valley).
Point is: the Blackbird, flying at altitude, sounded like a tree fell on the house . Big crash/thud suddenly. The bombers, though loud, were a steady build up until they passed, then quietly faded away. The Blackbird, I literally remember leaving the house to make sure there wasn't a hole in the wall or roof.
Blackbird was a beast, literally the fastest plane out there and it never really slowed down. Compare shuttle, which came in much faster but few ever complained about its boom.
At what distance from the plane?
This seems bit excessive, Concorde booms were purportedly about 105-110 dB on the ground when cruising at altitude (around 60 000 ft).
I've personally only experienced sonic booms from MiG-21s. They are not painfully loud, but surely startling. They are very deep and make the windows rattle.
It's no myth. I'm old enough to remember sonic booms as a regular occurrence. We were used to them but they were definitely louder than a jake brake and they disturbed a much larger area.
Many municipalities have laws against engine breaking because of how much noise pollution it causes, so I don't think your example works they way you expect. Especially considering this would cause that noise pollution for 10s of millions of people.
I was with you until the last sentence. Your train trip that crosses two continental divides is still going to take you more than a day. Even a "spare no expense" rail project isn't going to make that cross-country trip palatable for most travelers.
I guess GP meant to build a train from downtown NYC to JFK.
Another one? JFK is connected to the subway.
It is a slow subway train that requires transfers at Jamaica to the airtrain and then an internal airport people mover. Some people need multiple transfers from
WTC/Penn/14th street are centrally connected stations that should have a direct connection to JFK.
Run an express A-C-E train from central-park, 34th, 14th, WTC, Atlantic, Jamaica, JFK. It should not be that hard. While we are at it, run an express downtown manhattan to Newark train/BRT too. LaGuardia is....hopeless.
The upstream comment ambiguously suggested a train as a solution to an 8-10 hour door to door LA to NYC travel time. Either that means connecting the airport to the city by rail or the cities themselves. Sub-8-hour LA to NYC by train is beyond any currently known technology. JFK is already connected to NYC’s subway by rail.
No, it's connected to AirTrain, which is slow and unpredictable, which is then connected to either the A or the LIRR.
Sorry I meant that you can use rail to get to and from JFK to the parts of New York served by the subway.
If the claim was to build a sub-8-hour LA to NYC train that’s obviously not going to work because of physics. If the claim was we need rail to LAX and JFK that’s silly because both are already served by rail.
It might be palatable if it's quite a bit less expensive, which could be the case if we start passing externalized costs (e.g. offsetting the impacts of carbon emissions, pollution, noise, etc.) down to the consumers who use these services.
Until someone creates an incident on said train, and then suddenly you have to do the TSA dance at train stations too.
Most of Europe doesn't even check if you have a ticket before boarding a train. Some countries check tickets at the station, but I have never been checked for anything else. And there have definitely been incidents.
You get through airport-like screening (metal detectors, baggage scan) when crossing the eurotunnel.
Honestly, with Pre-Check, I haven't had a security check be a major issue in years and years anyway. I still tend to get there early though because--who knows what could happen? I certainly cut things a lot closer with early morning Amtrak departures than the airport.
Because it require vastly more energy (fuel) per mile than most any other form of travel. Because the aircraft carry fewer people per takeoff/landing cycle, congesting airports.
Those who care about time can already travel at much greater speeds. Door-to-door travel times for first class, and especially private, are already about 1/3 to 1/2 that of the common economy passenger on a domestic flight. If we wanted to speed up the process, the easy fruit is the speed of the airport rather than the aircraft.
There is massive room for improvement. Consider the effect on global relations if crossing the world didn’t cost days but hours. More practically, consider an economy networked with this travel and transport competing against one sticking to trains, trucks and Zoom.
Yeah, but Zoom (and its analogues) exist. Crossing the world doesn't take days OR hours; you can have a meeting with someone halfway around the world right now. I genuinely don't see an economic need for very many people to cross intercontinental distances that quickly in this day and age. How often does an executive actually need to go from New York to London? Or LA to Shanghai? We already ask "could this meeting have been an email?" Well, companies looking to save money should also be asking "could this intercontinental business trip have been a Zoom call?" Otherwise, it's just businesses subsidizing their executives' luxury travel expenses.
The existence of business class flights proves this wrong. You are probably right the relative demand for face-to-face has gone down since Concorde but the world has also gotten bigger and richer since. I suspect absolute demand is higher, particularly if they can deliver their promise of business-class prices (versus Concorde's, inflation-adjusted $20k).
I don't see how it does. Wanting a more comfortable experience than being crammed into a narrow seat for hours when travel/physical presence is actually necessary doesn't somehow translate into necessary travel being underserved.
(Specifying necessary travel because that's the GP's point - just because there are people who want to take 10 minute hops between neighbouring cities or to fly out for meetings that could have been conducted perfectly well over a call doesn't mean that the world should cater to their whims.)
I believe the cultural integration aspects of cheap, fast, and effortless passenger transportation cannot be overstated. I'd like to see more and more people traveling to places they wouldn't travel otherwise.
It's easier to dehumanise the people you don't know, and much harder to do that when you have been with them.
The time spent in flight is not the limiting factor on globe-spanning tourism. Traveling is massively expensive (not just the cost of transportation, but also lodging, food, and itinerary), and if this just makes it more expensive, then it doesn't help in that regard.
Concorde wasn't transformational for business at a time when executives couldn't work and videoconference from anywhere in the world and stay connected to the workplace for the majority of their flight duration.
The realistic potential of an operationally-expensive medium range aircraft designed for scheduled passenger flights isn't going to radically change trucks, trains and Zoom. Or business jets, for people that care enough about time to pay for it in thousand dollar multiples. Even for the small fraction who can actually afford it, a supersonic airliner is still going to have range constraints eliminating the possibility of quickly crossing the world, and for the transatlantic hops it might manage, it's the 8am JFK-LHR flight competing with a business jet at a time and origin/destination airports of the executives' choosing...
(for related reasons, I'd actually be more bullish about the economic case for supersonic bizjets, but there have been quite a lot of projects studying that market that haven't got anywhere...)
The supersonic biz jet fails because they all need longer runways. The biz jet wants to land at smaller private airports to avoid the hassle (security) of large airports. Any supersonic biz jet capable of also landing on a short runway ends up looking more like a fighter jet with some extra seats.
It's a misleading rhetorical trick to criticize a company primarily focus on trans-oceanic flights by talking about first-class domestic flights.
Not when their ticket prices and passenger volume are similar to first class. Go to their site and scroll down until you see the picture of the seating and tell me that isn't first class.
https://boomsupersonic.com/overture
You don't actually think someone making under 6 figures is ever going to be flying on one of these things do you?
You miss my point: the optimizations on ground experience for domestic first class can save you 20-30% of the time because the actual domestic flight time isn’t that long. On a transoceanic flight, to generate similar time-savings, you have to make the plane faster.
Comparing domestic first class to transoceanic supersonic is misleading.
What? is this a different first class? Because first class gets off the plane like 5-10 minutes faster than economy in my experience.
Travel on first class. It is a different thing, especially internationally. You don't wait in line for check-in. You don't deal with security the same way. You don't deal with immigration the same way. You don't wait around hours for your bags to come out the chute. You don't get bumped off of flights, nor do your bags. It saves hours, even on the shortest flights. When companies send their people first class it isn't about comfort so much as saving time and increasing reliability.
Priority check-in, priority security, priority boarding, priority disembarkation, priority immigration, priority baggage pickup, priority customs lanes all exist and these add up, particularly for international travel. My APEC card alone has saved me hours more times than I can count.
In principle, yes? I also want to sit/lay more comfortably. I also want to pay less money. In general, halving my in-air time is honestly not worth a lot.
It's a huge enabler - right now, flying to see my family in Brazil is a huge PITA - two airports and 12+ hours in the air. It's less horrid in business class, but still something I tend not to do more than once a year.
If I had a 5-hour direct flight, it'd be a no-brainer.
Maybe I'm just more accustomed to long flights, but a 12-hour non-stop flight in business class if I'm not really thinking about the cost much just isn't a material inhibitor for me. (And whether there are non-stop flights is a separate issue.) Certainly shaving off 6 hours of flight time wouldn't really affect my calculus much, if at all.
If I have a 2 hour flight then no, it isn't. If I have a 12 hour flight then it's worth more.
The morally negligent corporate poster is my favourite mainstay of this site
When scheduled commercial flights arrive ahead of time it's because ground delays were less than average and/or winds were favorable. Airlines don't control those factors and don't really account for them in crew scheduling. They can sometimes cruise at slightly higher speeds to make up a bit of time when running behind schedule, but this comes at the cost of higher fuel burn and can only save a few minutes at most.
Flying faster is fundamentally less efficient and thus worse for the environment.
Unfortunately, I think the route to more efficiency is funneling people to massive hub airports where widebody planes carry them on less frequent runs to other hubs— but that results in longer boarding times, less flexible schedules, and more stopovers, none of which the market wants.
So instead we have a bunch of smaller "commuter" jets making point-to-point trips, many of which are short enough that they really should be trains, not air travel. And that's a whole other issue. Sigh.
A supersonic passenger jet would not find much of market on short haul flights. They would either stick to the dense pockets of wealth, the biggest airports beside the biggest cities, or rely on feeder airports to bring passengers in. Either way, I don't see this saving much in actual travel time over the current system.
It's certainly niche, but NY-LON sees ~3 million non-connecting passengers a year.
If they can make it quiet enough to be supersonic over land, it's a lot more compelling. But even being supersonic for the atlantic crossing will shave hours off of most EU routes from NY.
I think the bigger problem is the time changes on a lot of routes make EU flights pretty efficient - you don't want the overnight flights to be shorter really (and I wish most were longer).
Maybe overnight flights should optionally let you sleep on the ground before/after the flight. Charge extra, you don't have to pay pilots or for fuel, park away from the gate.
You would need power without the engines but you could hook up a generator or a feed from the airport.
Then turn on all the lights and wake you up for the preflight briefing!
I've been on redeye flights where, a few hours in, the pilot came on the PA, told us about something to see out the window, and also about the drink we could buy from the flight attendants - credit cards only please!
Air travel is just endless indignities and discomfort.
Planes run on shore power at the gate anyway.
That's a good point, but rail infrastructure is very expensive to build and, unlike planes, where you only need to build the destinations, you need to build every route.
Anyway, the future of short commuter flights is electric.
The key determinant that tells you whether trains or planes are more cost-efficient is population density. If you have two cities far apart with not much in-between, then it's cheaper to build a couple of airports. If you have loads of other cities along the route, then it'd be cheaper to build a railway. The former case is true for much of North America, and the latter for much of Western Europe and UK.
Commonly cited but not really grounded in reality— lots of places that have made rail work have very similar or worse density characteristics to the coastal US routes that should be a no-brainer:
https://persquaremile.com/2011/05/27/u-s-not-dense-enough-fo...
If you take into account cost-per-moved-amount-of-cargo trains are dramatically cheaper, even including infrastructure. The only reason we don't use/develop them more is social/political bs not due to choosing the ideal engineering solution for the problem and that solution being planes)
As for electric flight:
1 gallon of jet fuel has like 40 kwh of energy and weighs like 6 lbs. A Ford Lightning has a battery capacity of 100 kwh and that battery weighs 1,800 lbs. Electric flight ain't happening in a big way anytime soon with current battery tech.
If planes are full, how can it be more efficient to fly my ~200 lbs (including lots of luggage!) from point A to B to C, adding extra distance and another takeoff, rather than directly from A to C?
Are widebody planes that much more efficient?
The short answer seems to be no. Newer planes are much more efficient than older ones, but the most efficient aircraft and flight segment per passenger-distance are the A320 Neo and 737 Max making ~1000 mile flights.
Fuel burn is probably not the main reason airlines use the routing that they do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft
I'd guess that staffing and gate time are big cost drivers. A lot of those "how Southwest succeeded" articles from back in the day cited very fast gate turnarounds as being a key thing— get the people off, get the other people on, get back in the air.
“Designed to run on up to 100%” says nothing about what percentage it will in practice operate on in service.
I am capable of running on a sustainable diet of 100% nutrient balanced meals and a strictly controlled daily calorie intake. In practice, I’m operating on a mixture of pizza and Oreos right now.
And even if it runs on 100% sustainable air fuel 100% of the time, that fuel is better used powering more efficient planes.
It’s not as if we’re having surplus production of sustainable air fuel, or will have it any time soon.
You want to spur an industry by rationing its customers?
SAF is a good investment - it allows us to use the current airplanes while we transition the shorter distances to electrics. It also allows for a gradual infrastructure transition, because you can run a jet engine with any mix of kerosene and SAF.
If SAFs are to be economically viable at all, they'll almost certainly need to be able to run in existing, unmodified engines. So: all engines will be able to run on some amount of SAFs anywhere for 0% to 100%, as will this new engine. This statement has no information content whatsoever.
I think their sights are set on military contracts (I believe they already have some military funding) and commercial aviation is a way to fund the development.
Military supersonics just aren't that important. We don't have Mach 3+ planes anymore not because we forgot or some nonsense, but because the things we used them for we now use space for: Need to spy on someone? The USSR is less happy to shoot a satellite out of the sky (this will change soon) than Mr. Powers in a plane. Want to nuke someone in a few minutes? ICBMs are mature technology.
So what are they supposedly offering the military?
Powers was shot down in a subsonic U2. The mach 3+ Blackbird family never overflew Russia.
It would make a lot more sense to do that the other way round...
Seems a little silly, the military is exempt from the regulatory burden they're spending a fortune to work around and has extremely deep pockets. It would be much easier to start with military contracts and establish everything they need to make supersonic planes and then transition that to civilian supersonic planes then to try and do everything and then some with no revenue and an unproven business plan.
Agreed. For noise reasons as well, I'd like to see these kinds of efforts get shut down.
NASA is working on designs to significantly reduce noise from breaking the sound barrier, which I'm sure will inform changing requirements for supersonic flight over the United States. Right now the regulation is a very strict "you cannot fly supersonic over the US", except military aircraft of course
I bet it wouldn't if Boeing or Lockheed managed to make their Concorde competitors.
I doubt it, outside of very small portions of the country. IIRC, the plan was to have huge airports in places like florida that the 2707 would land at and people would get on subsonic jets to connect to where they wanted to go. Unless sentiment changed due to people hearing how quiet a "sonic boom" actually is when one of them was cruising.
Most of eurpoe also banned overland supersonic flights.
Noise is a valid complaint but where these planes will really shine is oceanic flights, USA to Japan, Australia, Singapore are 3 routes mostly over ocean or uninhabited areas that could use the reduced travel time.
There are so many commies in HN that I have to think that's deliberate. That's gotta be state actors at play. CCP?
Like, who the f*k cares? There are other companies working on that too.
I’ve always found the best way to fight for American freedoms is to post “CCP?” at people that I disagree with on the internet. These cyber actors may be well trained but they cannot stand up to the rigor of my investigative methods
110%. The libertarian/anarchist hacker ethos is dead.
They're everywhere here. It sucks.
Didn't they say it could run on sustainable fuel?
I'm sorry, but I want to maximize my (and really all humans) time on this Earth, if that costs energy, that's the cost. I wouldn't be concerned about emissions per passenger-mile as that's nothing more than a rounding error in "emissions". You're welcome to walk / swim from San Francisco to Europe, but don't expect me to.
The same can be said about my car/boat/monster truck/jet fighter and anything else that pumps out carbon. The average jet engine can be tuned to run rather well on olive oil. "Can run on X" is a far cry from "actually runs on X".
But by using too much energy, you are reducing the expected lifespan of future generations. I can't tell if your being sarcastic. Tragedy of the commons.
I disagree. The world badly needs new players in aviation shaking things up.
I'm very happy to see boom existing and trying to do what they're doing.
Plus, as someone who has done many long haul flights, I badly want this. (flying one in two weeks)
I also disagree. As a fan of aviation, theres never enough experiments going on. We need to stop it with this carbon virtue signaling when everyone of us here would be glad to own a used 2017 Bombardier Global 6000
I applaud Boom's efforts I just don't know if its viable because if Airbus isn't working on it then it probably isn't safe/worth the insurance upkeep.
Airbus lost a bunch of money developing the A380 and are understandably nervous to undertake any more high risk development projects. This is actually a great case for an aviation startup. If Airbus failed to develop a modern SST that might bankrupt them and disrupt the entire industry, but if Boom fails it only destroys a nascent startup that no one depends upon yet.
Pretty much everything we use daily were introduced to "regular people" as a luxury product for the 0.1%. Even personal computers
Eventually companies are able to scale things
Companies generally don't scale things very well beyond the boundaries set by physics.
There's no "we" here. You're not a part of Boom, and I daresay you aren't working to make commercial air travel more efficient either. You're kibitzing.
Thanks, I shrug whenever I read "we"s used liberally here and there.
Why should we make it more efficient? Why not make more energy from clean sources first?
That's what sustainable air fuel is. There is a lot being done to certify existing engines to run on it. Moving to an incompatible power source (such as hydrogen) isn't feasible because it would require scrapping the current fleets (and well maintained planes live longer than their pilots).
Plenty of people around the world have legitimate needs to travel via airplane. Think about the millions of immigrants in USA with family abroad. Tech to better connect the world is worth celebrating.
That tech exists already. Those immigrants don't need/can't afford supersonic travel.
While yes this is a pessimistic take on it, the book 'Dark Age America' called out the problems of the original Concord and I think it applies to Boom as well. The authors argument being that Boeing pulling out of the 2707 SST project, while at the time was seen as a massive loss, turned out to be one of the smartest moves they had done in the space.
Yes, super sonic flight and things like Boom are a massive technical achievement, there is no doubt about that. But, we should not conflate technical capabilities with economic viability. Concord was very technically viable, but it was an economic white elephant.
This thing could see a role in the luxury space but I don't think we can reconcile the issue of brute forcing physics and cheap transport for the masses.
Hermeus is ostensibly going after the super/hypersonic commercial transport market too, but something seems kind of off with that approach (to me).
Their quarterhorse demo aircraft has plenty of utility in a variety of unmanned military roles. To such a degree that the civilian transport angle seems like kind of a distraction in this current era of military ramp-up.
Maybe it's just a hedge so they can keep their toes in two markets simultaneously and perhaps appeal to investment via those different interests.
you do if you're the Saudi government and you're worried about finding way to prop up declining demand for fossil fuels
https://youtu.be/aT0r_yJafmg?si=0aPDghhuU6RUaNNY&t=780 (obnoxious youtuber voice warning)
slide 25 here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24175697-osp-opportu...
That’s one of the most shortsighted views I’ve seen in awhile.
They are making air travel more efficient. Improvements in aircraft aerodynamics and engine efficiency to achieve supersonic flight can sometimes apply backwards and make a normal plane more efficient. We can apply some of the same technologies to shorten runways and reduce the sprawling layout airports need. There’s so many places technology like this can go that it’s insane we ever stopped researching it.
Writing it off because of vague fear-mongered potential environmental impacts is silly. As another commenter said, you can swim to Europe if you’d like but I will take the supersonic jet personally.
Who is "we" exactly?
Every single other major jet manufacturer is already making air travel cheaper and more efficient every year. It's all airlines who buy from Boeing or Airbus care about. The underserved niche is premium and small, not scale. Commercial aircraft will get 1% more efficient every year with or without new companies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#/medi...).
If we start in supersonic today, and innovate at the same pace for 20 years, you might match the efficiency boom from the "jet age" and make supersonic twice as efficient as today.
To be honest, the best air travel is high speed rail. Replacing regional flights with train trips would save so much energy and reduce emissions monstrously. I'm not even worried about these supersonic flights to be honest. They are 40 planes out of over ten thousand in service today.
Now, if Boom was working on a supersonic train? That would be AMAZING!
Boom (and supersonic aircraft) are a strategic investment priority for Saudi Arabia to sustain demand for oil. If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about their impact on emissions I don’t know what else does.
Boom is specifically working on efficient and affordable supersonic flight. This isn't the 1980s.