Boom announces successful flight of XB-1 demonstrator aircraft
boomsupersonic.com
boomsupersonic.com
Also, the airliner may be glass screen cockpit on screens. This one had eyeballs to the sky.
I'm not sure what you're getting at with this?
The pilot had all glass avionics here. Other than the lack of an FMS (which is just never used in small aircraft), this had everything I'd expect to see in modern systems.
But also, even in an aircraft with a glass cockpit, the pilot is supposed to be mostly eyes up. Unless you're inside inclement weather, aviation operates on the "see and avoid" principle. Especially so when you're flying low and in congested airspace like the Mojave MOAs.
https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/digital-design-mult...
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.
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.
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"
FROM scratchApparently newer engines aren't designed for supersonic flight so I'm guessing options are limited for testing this airframe.
The complexity of designing an engine is comparable to that of designing an airframe.
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.
Of course, this is nothing new: noise abatement effectively banned a whole lot of engines, too.
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.
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.
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.
Edit: There are private groups that own supersonic aircraft and maintain them. EG:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draken_International
They can get a hold of existing models and diagrams to produce their own copies since the patents have long since passed and been declassified for decades.
do we know the reason for why rolls royce pulled out???
Guess it was a cost thing. Wasn't worth their time. Not enough customers probably.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/rolls-roy...
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.
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."
I suspect they used these just to get the XB-1 airborne, making progress while they find a better engine.
Their goal is to prove the design's aerodynamics WRT sonic boom, not the engines.
The XB-1 is a tech and systems demonstrator platform cheaper than big design upfront and costs (and risks) all at once.
(Cough) Don't tell the passengers it is all because the pilot literally cannot see the runway during landing.
ILS solved this problem for airline transport pilots [1].
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.
A CAT IIIB ILS will permit in most states a landing with a radio altitude of 0.
> 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.
Whether or not it can do an ‘Autoland without the pilot being able to check’ while satisfying the regulator’s inevitably vastly more stringent rules is what matters.
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).
It makes total sense to use flight proven engines like this off the shelf at first.
Old Design + New Materials can still be cutting edge
Not quite...
" a jet engine that’s all of 18 inches wide and 45 inches long."
Seems just a bit shy of the speed of sound (760 mph).
That relies on assumptions (ideal gas, adiabatic compression) that might break down for supersonic jets, but it's pretty close for the speed of sound.
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.
Flight testing will slowly and very methodically expand the flight envelope until it meets or fails its design objectives.
It would very much be an unusual exception, in that era and now. First flights rarely even raise the landing gear, let alone push the performance envelope. Flight testing programs are designed to be incremental to manage risk as well as learn things in a deliberate vs yolo way.
Rockets are really where you see the opposite being the norm, because it's hard to do a rocket launch half way.
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=add4b2&lat=34.920&lon=-...
> 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)
[0] https://boomsupersonic.com/press-release/our-partnership-wit...
There are no ads on the page, but there must be something nefarious.
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.
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.
> 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?"
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.
What's your angle here? Jet aircraft aren't going away in the era we're heading into. We're just going to move to sustainably produced fuels from either biomass or direct carbon capture powered by solar. So there's no reason to make that as an argument against Boom.
XB-1 reminds me of an F-104 or X-3.
NASA's X-59 will be even longer still, but without direct visibility (yikes).
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...
XB-1’s carbon composite and titanium fuselage is propelled by three General Electric J85 engines. [1]
There are enough billionaires now to support making supersonic bizjets. They will mostly be a status cymbal.
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.
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?
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.
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.
https://persquaremile.com/2011/05/27/u-s-not-dense-enough-fo...
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 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).
You would need power without the engines but you could hook up a generator or a feed from the airport.
Air travel is just endless indignities and discomfort.
Are widebody planes that much more efficient?
Fuel burn is probably not the main reason airlines use the routing that they do.
I bet it wouldn't if Boeing or Lockheed managed to make their Concorde competitors.
Most of eurpoe also banned overland supersonic flights.
So what are they supposedly offering the military?
Eventually companies are able to scale things
Companies generally don't scale things very well beyond the boundaries set by physics.
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.
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.
It's easier to dehumanise the people you don't know, and much harder to do that when you have been with them.
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...)
Those are some truly societally transformative speeds. You can go from the west coast of the US to Paris in less than 2 hours.
But we can't get to that without iterative improvement.
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.)
What? is this a different first class? Because first class gets off the plane like 5-10 minutes faster than economy in my experience.
In general (leaving aside flying private) paying more money doesn't necessarily buy you a lot of time savings (especially if you're not the sort who tries to cut things close) but it can eliminate a lot of hassle/buy you a lot more comfort which is probably more important to me most of the time.
Priority bags/check-in does help but I try not to check luggage so really doesn't save me a lot of time at the end of the day.
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?
Comparing domestic first class to transoceanic supersonic is misleading.
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.
If I have a 2 hour flight then no, it isn't. If I have a 12 hour flight then it's worth more.
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.
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.
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.
At what distance from the plane?
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.
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.
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.
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.
But oh so close!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26589001
;)
Until someone creates an incident on said train, and then suddenly you have to do the TSA dance at train stations too.
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'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 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.
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.
Like, who the f*k cares? There are other companies working on that too.
Now, if Boom was working on a supersonic train? That would be AMAZING!
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.
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...
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.
https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2023/06/26/the-ter...
Who is “we”?
"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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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 ticket 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...
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.
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.
You could, presumably have faith that both the founders and investors have asked themselves the same questions and have come up with an answer that satisfies at least them.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/a-cycle-of-misery-the...
Boom was founded by 3 people, 2 software guys and Joe Wilding (who had actual aerospace development experience). Now it's run by the only remaining software guy. sure there's an impressive staff, 700M invested in the company, but it's nowhere near the required many billions. and even after that there's zero guarantee that they can make money.
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.
The question I was replying to is not whether they can build a profitable business, but whether they can build their own engine within 5 years.
There's a greater than zero percent chance they can do this if they put in the focus and the effort.
There's also a greater than zero percent chance that they can build a successful engine and then still go bankrupt.
Early SpaceX had funding issues and likely would've gone bankrupt if the 4th launch of the Falcon 1 didn't succeed (the first 3 all failed).
So good luck to Boom. Even if they don't succeed, I'm glad they are going to try.
Boom has raised a lot of money, including an undisclosed (but presumably large) slug of cash from the Saudis last November.
> There's less than zero percent chance Boom will be able to offer cheap "everyday joe" prices on their aircraft.
You do realize that the history of technology is a long list of failed predictions just like this, right?
That doesn't mean they're going to succeed, of course, but one scoffs at new things at one's own peril.
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.
https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/airworthiness_certific...
"Amended type certificates typically take 3-5 years to complete. By comparison, the certification of a new aircraft type can take between 5 and 9 years."
Given that manned flight occurred in 1903, manned supersonic flight occurred in 1947, and manned spaceflight didn't occur until 1961, it appears that manned spaceflight is considerably more challenging.
At this stage, supersonic flight is 77 years old.
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.
Compare the cost of rockets when SpaceX started. People laughed SpaceX off too.
SpaceX didn't start with an existing knowledge base, talent and facilities either.
The idea of starting a rocket company and building reusable rockets was so laughable at the time that they couldn't even hire anyone for the chief engineer (Elon assumed the role because no-one else would do it).
In 2002 SpaceX realised it wasn't going to be able to buy an existing engine from the Russians, and decided to make their own <- this is essentially the place where Boom is now.
In 2008 they successfully launched Falcon 1 to orbit (on the 4th attempt), and would've gone bankrupt if that 4th attempt had failed like the first 3 <- Boom might never get to this point, but good on them for trying.
Even the comparison is poor. SpaceX had I guess the pieces that what would become ULA as competition? None of the players in the field had innovated for decades because they didn't need to, exactly the sort of area that is good for new people to come in and take a shot at getting a piece of the pie. And on top of that, you have an incredible amount of money and desire for the service. This has no where near the same market.
On top of that the commercial jet / engine world is incredibly competitive. Boeing/airbus and pw/ge/rr/safran have not been sitting idling by for decades reusing the same old designs with the same old technology. If you think that because this is supersonic it's not in competition with them... well I guess that's your choice in how to look at it.
And I'm skeptical that these guys are going to be able to type certify a new engine in the timeframe they've given. Jet engines are harder than rocket motors in some ways. Certainly the way in which they're used imposes stricter reliability requirements. They run constantly, and can take weeks to spool down, for example, when a rocket might only fire a few short burns on a mission. Realistically, I think they would need similar government support as SpaceX received to bring this kind of product to market, but that's just my opinion. It's good that they're trying, and I hope I'm wrong, but this stuff is hard and expensive.
This is just plain wrong, look up Tom Mueller's history.
Look at the cost and timeframes involved in spacecraft made by Boeing, Lockmart, Northrop Grumman and all their pals compared to SpaceX.
I'm about 99.99999% sure that there are considerable cost savings to be had in supersonic aircraft as well.
Startups eating the lunch of entrenched, bureaucracy-laden organizations is a very old story indeed -- long before Silicon Valley.
If they were still using the same designs they made 50+ years ago (like the rocket industry in the 2000s) I would agree with you... but they aren't. They have been constantly pushing performance to get better thrust-to-weight, efficiency, noise, etc. Whenever they get lazy (which they have) one of the other players is the one that gets to dine well. Look up "The Airforce and the Great Engine War" for an example.
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...
Honeywell Aerospace, Williams International, United Engine Corporation, and AVIC are some others.
There are more than you might think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Gas_turbine_manufactu...
Not all of these make aircraft engines, of course, but a fair number of them do.
CFM (GE + Safran) own 39%, PW has 26%, RR has 18%, GE on it's own has 16%. So together they own 99% of the market.
Honeywell and Williams don't do anything over 10k-lb thrust (that I see). UEC is russian state owned, so I don't see anyone working with them anytime soon and AVIC is chinese state owned so kinda the same deal.
If you are talking small turbofans (smaller than 10k-lb thrust) there are a variety of companies out there but as soon as you start looking for bigger stuff to power your 737 Max or 320NEO class planes, you are talking about a very exclusive club.
As an aside, I would love to see more competition, I just think it's a really tough space to enter.
It doesn't always work out that way though shrug.
From my own context, the work of certifying the airframe alone takes forever, let alone prototyping another engine and one that requires the thrust requirements a supersonic aircraft needs, so I too am really dubious of the timelines. But I'm curious why you think this is a scam as opposed to general exuberance, or why you think innovation in this space in particular is unlikely. There's other variables here like United's purchase; we all know companies like Theranos have defrauded established players like Walgreens, but do you think United did not do their due diligence here?
(I'm also deeply curious on why you feel that high-level criticism of the idea is relevant for this forum but the details of your criticism are not. I feel it'll teach me a lot about what motivates folks to use HN these days, but that's just my own curiosity.)
If you look at some of my other answers I go more in depth on specific topics to provide more technical content. If you are curious to learn something more you can always ask? Alot of my posts are questions.
Edit: I wrote this and then saw there was more to your post I missed (or got added? maybe I'm having a stroke, do you smell toast?), will respond in below.
If by "innovation in this space" you mean supersonic commercial air travel, then not really. I could see someone making a couple planes that get bought by the saudi's and a few billionares but if you are talking in terms of eventually reaching all commercial air travel... that's a long way off if ever. Going faster takes you in the wrong direction in terms of efficiency (and thus cost and environmental impact), sound, manufacturability (and thus cost), maintenance (and thus cost), you get the picture.
As for United, I'm sure it sounded good at some point to someone. I guess we can check back in 5 years and see how that investment is going.
What are the technical reasons they are behind schedule? Is the physics problem just too difficult, and the problem they've set out to solve just too hard without, idk, government backing?
1. Only a plane modification, not a brand new plane in a novel space, 2. Being designed and built by an organization 100x the size that lives in that space. 3. Was not also hinging on designing brand new engines.
On the technical side, engines are very difficult to get right. You are often operating at or beyond material temperature limits, relying on complex analysis that take years to perform and then years to validate with actual testing, and then pushing parts to fatigue limits in service.
Sure it’s complicated but if SpaceX could start falcon design in 2002 and send one to suborbital flight by 2007, I don’t see why Boom cannot.
Maybe their execution is not on par with SpaceX, maybe it’s mismanaged but that’s a different thing entirely compared to your view of “It’s so complex, so many different factors etc etc”.
You realize you could have made the exact same argument about spaceX and Boeing/ ULA. ULA had stupidly long timelines to bring a rocket to production, no plans ever to make it reusable and now they’ve been disrupted, perhaps permanently. All they have is a few government contracts keeping them alive.
If Boom succeeds it will be similar, people will laugh Boeing and their bloated timelines off the room, Boeing will only be alive due to some govt contracts and Boom will thrive.
https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/airworthiness_certific...
"Amended type certificates typically take 3-5 years to complete. By comparison, the certification of a new aircraft type can take between 5 and 9 years."
Boom doesn't get to ignore FAA certification, neither would the organization making brand new engines for them, which are not included in that 5-9 year number (although it could go in parallel). I'm not pulling this out of thin air, there is a huge amount of history of developing planes and engines that you can look at (I'm more familiar with the engines side). It is not cheap, fast, or easy... so yes, I guess I am saying it's complicated, haha.
Separately, look at the market for rocket launches in the 2000's. There was no one innovating, people were using decades old tech and not pushing anything new because they didn't have too. There was a place for SpaceX to come in. If you asked me then though, yes, I think I would not have thought there chances were great, and for similar reasons, but I think I would have thought it was possible.
The difference is there is no market here. You don't have governments and commercial entities lined up around the corner to get a seat to go from NYC to London a few hours quicker. You do have competitors that are the last survivors of 70 years of competition (on the engine side) that have not been resting on their laurels and are some of the most technically competent companies in the world in any field. Boom is not in the same position SpaceX was. Look at Boom's last 10 years and SpaceX's first 10 and give an honest assessment if you think they are comparable.
I don’t know about the FAA, I would expect they had similarly long timelines for rockets but when a company as fast as SpaceX came, they adjusted, but then again rockets does not involve humans while planes do, so I can see why it would be more rigorous and extensive, but still 5-9 seems really slow.
The critical path will bite you in the ass especially if your idea of project management comes from software projects. If you pile on enough dependencies, especially on untried concepts, you might not know which possible critical path will bite the hardest.
If you're clever with the orientation or possibly with a movable sun shade, you might even get by with just using space as a heat dump, by insulating against the earth and the sun and exposing to empty space to radiate the leakage heat away without a refrigerator.
I think they have enough experience with orbital electromechanical design to make this not a problem with much suffering.
This is old technology, we know how to do this - what we’ve not figured out is how to make it profitable. There were supposed to be 350 Concorde built but we got 14. Operating an Airline is a brutal business now matter how cool the planes may be.
And the history of aerospace is littered with companies that made lofty claims, raised a bunch of money, and eventually went under. When Boom launched eight years ago, they were telling investors they were going to have a prototype flying in two years. For anyone who has any experience in aerospace, this is unrealistic to the point of being fraudulent. People said as much back then [1]. And sure enough, it took eight years, not two. And the actual hard parts are still ahead of them!
99% chance the full-size supersonic aircraft never flies, and 100% chance it won’t be before 2035.
Everyone takes for granted launch vehicles being “easier” than airliners now, but go back to the 1990s and the attitude would’ve been switched (PARTICULARLY high-rate and economic reusable launch vehicles, which were considered virtually unattainable).
I think it’s totally doable to make both an airliner and an engine, and the main reason we don’t think so is successful PR by old aerospace primes.
Also China does have it's own engines used in its military aircraft.
Designing very efficient engines that are also cost efficient is the focus of a lot of those big primes in the US/UK/Europe so competing with them may be difficult, however there is currently no one trying to make very efficient _supersonic_ engines. All supersonic engines are destined for military jets which care a lot more about peak performance as the primary design parameter. In other words there is no one operating in the segment Boom is trying to develop an engine and they can hire a lot of people from the rest of the US industry who already have a lot of experience designing engines or people who were trained by said people.
Ironically it may be SpaceX who kills off Boom if they're successful in implementing suborbital long distance passenger travel with Starship, though that's still very much an open question if it's possible. Such travel would, if successful, most likely be way faster and cheaper than supersonic long distance travel because of the reduced losses from drag.
This video is outdated (and a surface ferry like shown would be too slow... probably would have to be some sort of aircraft, or the time on the ferry would make the rocket trip not worth it), but this shows the idea: https://youtu.be/zqE-ultsWt0
Given that (even after a 650% cost overrun and 30 years) the total engine development cost is still about $400 million USD, that buys about one and a half F-35Bs.
Even when picking good and cheap, there’s cheap and then there’s shoestring.
It’s a very different optimization task.
https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/airworthiness_certific...
Lets say they are really good and they are ready to test fly in 3 years to meet that 5 year goal (which I'll tell you right now is not happening), they still need engines. 3 years to design, develop, and build a clean sheet engine. It took GE and Safran (CFM) 10 years between the announcement of the LEAP and its certification:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFM_International_LEAP
So no, it is quite unlikely that a company with no experience in commercial jet engines (Florida Turbines, subsidiary of Kratos) will be able to field the equivalent of a modern day concord engine in 3 years. I would say the main reason people think it could be is successful PR from new startups.
It's partly that, and also partly that making engines successful is a different business. For capital intensive industries, it's natural that they separate and consolidate into specialties, which is why you see things work they way they do today. SpaceX is probably the exception that prove the rule, at least for space access. It would be nice to see Boom become that same exception for passenger jet aircraft. For obvious reasons, given the ongoings with Boeing.
The statement was they didn’t want to invest in the development.
The only “impossible” thing about it was that a couple board members couldn’t be assed to get a slightly smaller bonus for a couple years.
Looks like a collusion ripe for disruption.
"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.
The gap between the intake and the fuselage diverts the dirty boundary layer air so that the intake is more efficient.
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!
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 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.
So on top of existing R&D, ignoring all of the money they dumped into stock buybacks, roughly 2 years of profits to create a plane design that would last 30 years.
They can absolutely afford that.
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.
Their grumbling was just more limited compared to internet noise.
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.
Also, now we have the climate crisis to deal with, commercial supersonic flight should be consigned to the history books where it belongs.
So really a shakedown, didnt try for supersonic
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.
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.
A supersonic airframe is typically inefficient at subsonic speeds.
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.
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?
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."
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The internet has become an unusable joke
The other major issue is having to be at the airport hours early, and the planes can't fix that.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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!
If only that inspired the US to build high-speed rail.