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Comment by gok | Hacker News Reader

Primarily they are targeting transoceanic routes. Transoceanic demand has increased substantially in recent years. Transatlantic traffic has doubled since Concorde went out of service. Transpacific travel has grown even more, and Concorde was unable to compete there.

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Transpacific and trans-hemisphere super sonic flights would be an interesting. the demand to fly to Asia from North America is likely higher than currently observed due to lack of interest in 12-24 hour flights.

With careful planning the fastest I can get to Australia/New Zealand is ~18-24 hours flight time - on a 10 day vacation that's ~40% of my vacation time including recovery from an 18 hour flight. I'd be fine flying 6 hours to the west coast then hopping on a supersonic flight for a 2-3x premium ( still expensive, but worthwhile every few years ).

I wish they'd do bunk beds for the 18-24 hrs flights. Not super lux super expensive but utilitarian - I'd lie down on the floor if they'd let me. For me I think supersonic will be a bit expensive and polluting.

Asia-North America. Would they do a polar trajectory? Or would they worry too much about the radiation?

Existing flight routes between Asia and North America often fly over the arctic already:

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/winter-winds-how-singapor...

I don't think the planned Boom plane has the range to go trans-Pacific. Maybe with a stopover in Honolulu to refuel (which could still be substantially faster)

Anchorage seems a more likely stopover for most Pacific routes?

Absolutely. To expand on this a bit, the great circle route between something like Hong Kong and Seattle is a leisurely flight up the Canadian coast, along Alaska, down it’s Archipelago, by Russia, Japan, and Korea. At no point do you come anywhere near Hawaii.

https://www.greatcirclemapper.net/en/great-circle-mapper.htm...

Anchorage is a very busy airport for cargo routes for this reason.

Traveling to Hawaii is a more dangerous than to something like Japan from mainland US due to the distance from land being much greater.

Never look at Mercator projections when thinking about flights, they will mislead greatly.

Fair enough.

Though honestly even 4500nm is not very far for transpacific; from ANC Hong Kong and Manila are barely within/outside range, Bangkok and Singapore are out of the question.

Not if it crosses a landmass, I guess.

Why was Concorde unable to compete in the Pacific? Range?

Yes. Its maximum range was 4,500 miles. That won't even get you from Seattle to Tokyo (4,700 miles), let alone to anywhere else in Asia.

You can do two hops, by stopping in Anchorage, which will get you to Tokyo or Seoul on the second hop (Stopping in Hawaii won't get you the range to go to Seoul), but at that point a no-stop subsonic flight is faster, more comfortable, burns less jet fuel, and does not require you to make a landing within spitting distance of the Arctic circle.

This jet promises[1] to deliver a range of 4,500 nautical miles, which will barely get you from Seattle to crash-landing in the mountains east of Seoul (4530 nautical miles)

[1] It remains to be seen whether it will deliver on this promise.

How did you calculate that a subsonic flight with no stops is faster?

Both because it did not have enough range and because it went out of production before airlines in Asia, Australia, or the Americas could buy it. Air France and British Airways can not legally fly routes like Seattle -> Tokyo or Sydney -> Seoul.

> Air France and British Airways can not legally fly routes like Seattle -> Tokyo or Sydney -> Seoul.

Wouldn't those be covered under the fifth freedom[1], assuming the flight originated in the airline's home country. E.g. BA flying London -> Seattle -> Tokyo.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air#Fifth_free...

Well Concorde couldn't make it to Seattle from London, so it would have had to do like London -> New York -> (subsonically) Seattle -> Tokyo which would have been a pretty hard sell I think. Plus the Seattle -> Tokyo route in particular would have required a next generation plane.

> Air France and British Airways can not legally fly routes like Seattle -> Tokyo or Sydney -> Seoul

Can you explain more about this? I assumed those routes were just ones that were only of interest to the more local carriers.

The laws around this are very complicated but generally airlines are not allowed to operate flights that operate between two non-home countries unless it's part of a larger route that originates in home country. This would be called a 7th freedom flight, and outside of the EU almost no countries have a deal like this.

(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air )

The airline industry is dying because air travel is dead. I don’t see it coming back anytime soon, especially for such a carbon-polluting aircraft.

For what it is worth, Boom is claiming that their jets will be carbon neutral.

The jet cannot be carbon neutral. The operations of the jet can be if the operators choose to offset the carbon. Boom is not an airline, so it can't say whether or not the jets will be carbon neutral.

It could contractually require buyers to offset carbon emissions but that's a dubious idea.

Carbon offsets aren't the only way to do carbon neutrality; Boom is ensuring compatibility with synthesized fuel (they specifically mention Prometheus Fuels). This is where hydrocarbons are basically used a an energy storage medium for renewably-generated energy, extracting the CO2 from the atmosphere for fuel production and emitting it back into atmosphere when the fuel is burned.

Any more details on this? Will they use captured co2 to make the fuel?

https://www.boomsupersonic.com/sustainability

We could just as well choose to burn biodiesel in today's jet aircraft.

Actually, I find worrying that you can build a plane that creates trust from breaking long carbon chains into CO2 and, at the same time, publicly announce that it will be "carbon neutral" some day.

It is doubtful that we'll find fuels that are carbon negative anytime soon. So hey, neutral is better than positive.

Neutral would be good, but I doubt that they are serious about this.

Otherwise, they wouldn't build their plane around gas turbines, which create trust from burning carbon compounds.

For downvoters: it's a fine project, but I don't think they can fly planes at higher speed, lower cost, and lower carbon emissions, without a major technology shift. It is hardly controversial.

Most likely: they do care, but it is not their main priority.

Not good enough. About 2/3 of aviation climate forcing is from non-CO2 effects: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-calculating-the-true-...

The moment there is a vaccine everyone will fly

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