Boom Supersonic raises $100M, aims for 2019 test flights
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Is it the everyman's plane? Certainly not. But it essentially makes living in Tokyo/Hong Kong/Singapore/Sydney and working in SF much closer to living in New York and working in SF (which a lot of senior executives and investors do). Imagine if Australia East Coast was a 6hr flight and 5hr time difference to SF. New York is a 6hr flight and a 3hr time difference to SF. Seems a lot different all of a sudden doesn't it?
Focussing on gas is the complete wrong way of looking at this. Humans and our ideas are the ultimate resource, not gas. When we work together we solve problems, and the weapon engineer who had to relocate back to HK to raise kids near family can often be the difference between a breakthrough we all benefit from and nothing at all. Having these senior people able to work locally can enable them to seed their hometowns with thriving local offices that train new generations of talent.
Tesla won in cars and SpaceX won in rockets (both very complex industries) over very well established incumbents. Don't underestimate how much organizational dynamics can weigh on a company. Do you think the best people at Boeing are going to risk the next decade of their career working on a plane that might only do 300 orders when they could go get easy promotion working on the next 787?
Good luck to the team at Boom!!
What is the environmental impact of "regularly" commuting on an intercontinental supersonic jet, compared to simply using video conferencing?
Humanity doesn't need a new Concorde. The only real upside I could possibly see is faster transport for organ transplants, and how often is that actually going to happen?
For any serious discussions, video conferencing is a garbage replacement for in-person meetings. If anything, the latter is becoming more impactful as lower-level functions get clearly displaced to the former. As others have mentioned, jet fuel doesn’t have to be carbon additive.
I think you have a typo - you don’t need a new Concorde.
Since at least 2007. I'm sure we all remember the warm reception the Dropbox Show HN[0] got?
s/laughed/jeered/
I guess I'm trying to justify my reaction to Dropbox. Frankly, I still don't understand why Dropbox turned down acquisition offer from Apple. I still don't get it.
I don't remember laughing at Dropbox though. It was more bewilderment than anything.
More importantly though, who is Fulton?
And until we can manifest fundamentally different technology for air travel we should collectively and rapidly scale down our dependence on long distance commute.
Fossil fuel driven flight is not viable in a sustainable future. We need to understand this.
I understand that subsidies currently create perverse incentives in that industry, but I struggle to see why bioengineered carbon-neutral jet fuel is fundamentally not viable. That thinking seems very closed-minded.
Biofuels doesn't necessarily mean subsidized corn fields... for example, algae and bacteria grown under specialized LEDs powered by renewable energy are another path forward.
Perfect is the enemy of the good. We can research supersonic jets in addition to better electric storage and propulsion systems.
This saying is not suitable here because unsustainable technology isn't good. It's simply not worth the cost and we are borrowing from the future.
If the venture would be unprofitable up until the point when it would be sustainable would we still push money into it?
I say we should treat any venture that is unsustainable the same way we treat those that are unprofitable. But we don't. We allow unsustainable ventures to carry on without ever becoming sustainable. Which means that it is constantly borrowing (stealing) means from everyone else.
In theory, you can power a big car on responsibly sourced fuel. In reality, selling millions of big cars is a huge problem, because of course people will understandably put in the cheap, ubiquitous fuel for which they're not covering externalities.
It sounds very sci fi and I'm not sure it would even work on a napkin calculation produced by a thermodynamics professor.
Downsides include:
1. It's only neutral. It doesn't remove gases we've already released.
2. The process is almost certainly extremely expensive. Until something like emissions taxes are levied, it will not be a competitive fuel.
But it's the reality. Electrification of individual ground transportation, and the phasing out of gasoline cars, is absolutely inevitable over the next 20 years. But jet fuel isn't going anywhere for a long, long time. It's just a matter of physics. It's foreseeable to have small scale electrified commuter aircraft shuttling people within 400 miles. But any type of long haul flight will be done with turbine engines burning kerosene. Even with a 10x increase in energy density for LiPo batteries, we still wouldn't be there.
I'm kinda surprised to see this kind of hostility. Same thing happens when nuclear is suggested even though the IPCC HIGHLY advocates its use. It is all about relative impact. Part of the problem with resolving climate change is that even the people who acknowledge it fight among themselves and don't push for both current technologies (which includes nuclear) and research for new technologies (fusion, batteries, and better solar/hydro/wind). We need to just listen to what the experts say, not what you read in some blog post or HN comment.
Because there isn't any. None. Zero. Why would you be aware of people worrying about something that currently doesn't exist?
I'm not sure how to break this to you, but scientists are generally aware about up and coming technologies. And we do think about potential future impact.
So let me rephrase
>>I'm not aware of climate scientists actually caring about potential future implementations of supersonic travel.
It's decades old, and it's failed for economic reasons.
Climate scientists worrying about the impacts of supersonic flight would be like Ornithologists looking to spot dinosaurs in the wild.
Just the same way the expertise of the most-brilliant central planners in the USSR and elsewhere allocated resources.
It doesn't work. There's a better way which is also consistent with democracy and individual choice. But people don't like the sound of it.
You mean putting a price tag on emissions I assume?
It's inferior in econonic efficiency and comprehensive coverage to a carbon tax.
And if implemented incorrectly, it becomes corporate welfare, and this has already happened. It has potential to be just another corporatist-cronyist scheme at taxpayer's expense.
And to date government and bureaucracy have been pretty horrible about solving climate change.
Carbon tax is a simple, elegant, efficient, effective solution. Most people just dont like the sound of it though.
How would you solve the trade component though? Because carbon production would just shift elsewhere unless:
* there was an international treaty where states each agreed to raise carbon taxes and cut other taxes or do a dividend, or
* import tariffs were levied in proportion to the carbon used in imports from countries that didn't have a similar tax
The latter would demand a large bureaucracy and have a lot of distortions.
I realized recently that a carbon tax isn't like an income tax. An income tax only occurs on profits, whereas a carbon tax is an input tax. This makes the jurisdiction shifting problem more acute.
A carbon tax is still my preferred solution, but was wondering if you had any ideas on how to get around this.
What I know is that many other industries deal with somethint like this. Not just taxes, but costly regulation hurts domestic production. For example, countries which do not respect responsible fishing practices have a competitive advantage.
Part of the answer can be: just dont let those countries sell fish within the US. Others can be international treatise or laws.
If I were king, I'd need to spend more time to consider my options, but I guess a treatise is in order. I dont see how any climate change action within the US's 350M population will do anything meaningful to solve the problem if the other 6.5Billion are not cooperating.
Except for the fact that markets are a great way to manage rivalrous goods, dynamically balance economic need against cost without the need for a centralized authority to have high-touch meddling (which presents a corruption danger), oh and most importantly, ad I said, they work, empirically, as with the United States SOX and NOX markets
> Same thing happens when nuclear is suggested
It's not the "same thing". Nuclear has some sustainability benefits. Bringing back commercial hypersonic air travel seems to have no such benefits.
Air travel is low now only because it's expensive. People world gladly take many, many more flights if they were cheaper.
Of course if we taxed carbon this problem would go away, and taxing international flights would probably be easier than a general carbon tax, if flights were all that was left.
My issue was with the parent comment essentially suggesting that you can justify boosting emissions from flight travel because we still rely on fossil fuels, so might as well double down. Nobody was suggesting that we immediately cease all flight travel. I’m open to the possibility that supersonic travel is a net positive, but the argument needs to be around what we’re getting in return for the emissions and why that’s worth it.
People saying supersonic travel is a step in the wrong direction are listening to experts who agree that our use of fossil fuels is a threat to humanity and the environment. And what about when experts disagree? There has to be some level of independent thought to parse and apply what experts are putting forward.
Sure perhaps we shouldn't be using the internet. Or perhaps we should do a lot more to make sure that the energy used for powering the internet is sustainable.
But our deficiency in that area doesn't make this activity any better.
I'd be willing to take a slower option and I think at least some others would too as long as it's less cramped.
- You spend a lot (would estimate 30%+) of time waiting on sidings for freight trains to pass in the other direction because there's only a single track owned by the freight company, so their trains get priority.
- There's no back up plan, and only a few trips a week. Our train happened to run on time, but I had a family member try to take it a few years later and ended up having to cancel for refund and fly instead because the train was running 24h late and she needed to be home for something.
- It's priced and advertised as an "experience" comparable to going on a cruise. They serve you nice food, but obviously the cost of all that service is baked into the ticket— no one is pretending that you'd choose this option just to get to your destination.
- We got our fares for around 60% off, but it was still $450 per adult, I think, which was a lot more than our return flights were (we could afford neither the time nor money required to take the train in both directions). Getting these fares required weeks of monitoring for VIA's "discount Tuesday" promotions and then building our travel plans around the specific dates offered.
- No wifi or even cell reception for most of the route. The northern Ontario section of the route is extremely remote and not at all scenic— just mile after mile of unremarkable forest.
Maybe there's room for an option that's slightly more comfortable and slightly slower, if that's what an airship would offer? But as far as the train goes, it's lots more comfortable and many times slower, but there's just no way to make the cost comparable to flying when you need to pay for all those hours of staff and equipment.
Edit: Why are people downvoting this? I just googled it and confirmed what I posted here.
For comparison, a single 40' standard container has a maximum load of 57,000lbs, and a large cargo ship can carry thousands of those.
Alternatively, an airship of the same mass of the Hindenburg could be made significantly larger, and since payload scales with the lifting gas volume, payload would also increase.
Oh, and throw the Hindenburg's aluminum piano over the side.
I note with interest that you say the Hindenburg would have had a greater payload with Helium rather than Hydrogen. Why do you say that?
I did not say that. Note the negative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg-class_airship#Lift_...
The article goes on to say the difference in lift between hydrogen and helium is only 8%.
Edit: drop the apostrophe on zeppelins
Eventually we can move to produced carbon based fuel but that will take a while.
Until then, the old green idea of 'lets just not do it' is simply not viable to reduce carbon usage.
I think a large carbon tax is the only shot of getting everyone on track with reducing impact.
I don't see why this is any less viable than the other alternatives. It's the only option that we've already tried. Before invention of air travel.
I mean of course I see that people don't change. But that's the very thing we absolutely need to fix. We have to stay within our means. Not doing the thing that brings cost seems like a simple enough solution.
But that’s with current aircraft supper sonic is less efficient and enables longer flights having a very outsized impact for minimal gain. You can both sleep and use high speed internet from modern jets, going 2-3x as fast adds little productivity.
On top of that emerging markets are just as happy to start flying as start driving which is pushing up flying’s impact every year.
Speak for yourself — I can't sleep on planes. Nor is airplane internet anything close to high speed by any standard. It's expensive as hell and doesn't exist over oceans. At the same ticket price, for long-haul international, I'd greatly prefer an economy-sized seat in a 2.5x shorter flight to a biz-class seat in a traditional flight.
As to internet over the ocean, Gogo has quality high speed internet via satellite. If you have not flown on one of these flights or a competent competitor you will notice a real difference.
*At least until a large number of aircraft are in service. Airlines make the most money per square foot with business class, but first class is still a critical revenue stream. Free up first class space via these and run fewer large aircraft with a higher percentage of business class is going to be most efficient. This also means you end up with either fewer economy seats or more expensive ones as currently first class and business class subsidizes economy.
Never went anywhere then but I'd be interested to see whether modern tech could make it feasible.
Also should the plane have an accident you now have radioactive material spread over miles. Which is also not an easily solved problem.
Can you elaborate on what specifically about landing causes that?
When it became clear that there was absolutely no way this could work for more than a token number of flights without absolutely devastating consequences to the planet we live on.
We've basically wrecked the planet already. At least let these super-rich dudes have some fun while it lasts.
Jeez, this again.
What is it about we tech folk that allows a little aptitude to let our ego get so far out of whack?
I'm not that special. You're not that special. Your weapon engineer is not that special.
There's a bunch of guys and gals in Hong Kong/Canada/Iceland/wherever who are just as capable of doing the same job without intercontinental commuting.
As others have said, the Internet exists, which mitigates the need for international travel like you've suggested anyway (which is absurd, not least for the environmental damage this implies).
"Tesla won in cars and SpaceX won in rockets"
I'm a fan, but this very much remains to be seen.
it's startup culture nonsense
Lets enjoy laughing at them after they fail, rather than before.
"Lets enjoy laughing at them after they fail, rather than before"
Suggesting someone apply a little humility to their worldview is a pretty far cry from laughing at them for having goals.
I also don't know why you would laugh at someone for failing, it seems a bit harsh.
There are a few target markets that are special. Celebs are each unique, their earning power is tied to this uniqueness. Such an aircraft is great if you want to film in the UK but spend your weekends in NY. Much of Concorde's passenger base fit this profile.
Then there are the truly wealthy. There might actually be an environmental argument for them to use this aircraft. Compare it against the carbon footprint of someone flying on Emirates in that airborne apartment they sell on the A380. I'd bet that a semi-normal seat on this rocket will be less carbon intensive than one of those giant first class seats on a slower aircraft. Maybe a few people opting for a less-opulent but far faster option might actually reduce net carbon emissions.
Boom is certainly an extremely risky startup (as was SpaceX)... but isn't that what venture capital is for?
Bad example.
Flying faster doesn't reduce the effects of jet lag.
https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Pages/A39_CORS...
That was one part of their strategy, but the ultimate goal was always to make it cheaper through reuse and not through cheaper production.
> It didn’t try to fight fundamental physics.
Tell that to all the people who claimed that the way SpaceX does the landing of their rockets would never work out because of the "fuel economics", "the way the engine is designed", etc..
Before SpaceX actually achieved it, there were a lot of people out there who doubted that their approach is feasible.
That's quite a revisionist characterization of SpaceX's 15-year toil, which many had described as impossible. Elon Musk said it best in March 2017 [0][1] when they achieved the revolutionary feat of successfully landing a reused rocket:
“It’s the difference between having airplanes that you threw away after every flight, verses reusing them multiple times."
“It’s been 15 years to get to this point, I’m sort of at a loss for words. This is a great day, not just for SpaceX but for the space industry as a whole, in proving that something could be done that many people said was impossible.”
I certainly wouldn't call something that had never been done before by anyone a well-understood technology.
> And there hasn’t been fundamental changes in the physics since those prior efforts. It’s a different bet.
You may be correct on the physics, but you are ignoring other dimensions that could make this endeavor feasible. The first Concorde flew 50 years ago. Our understanding of CFD, materials science, manufacturing techniques etc has progressed significantly from what they were 50 years ago.
[0]: https://www.recode.net/2017/3/30/15131514/spacex-space-histo...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1800&v=xsZSXav4w...
On a side note, why aren't there more startups trying to reduce passenger time at the airport instead of focusing on faster airplanes?
For international flights, actual flight time can be brutal. I have colleagues who regularly take 14 hour flights. Some people would gladly pay extra to shave a few hours off of that.
The bigger problem for a business case for paying extra to fly supersonic is that convenience is as much about timing of landing as length of flight, especially in an era where portable computers and digital connectivity exists and regular long haul flights are generally comfortable enough for the average business class flyer to sleep on. Cutting three or four hours out of an 12 hour flight doesn't sound quite so exciting when you realise that it's a choice between 8 hours in a seat or 12 hours in a lie flat bed with a choice of departure times and arrival airports.
Yes they can. Clear makes security a breeze. And small, efficient planes make direct flights competitive with connecting ones.
The biggest delays are people who don’t have their ID and ticket ready when they get to the front of the line, and people who can’t figure for the life of them how to use the kiosks without additional assistance.
A lineup anywhere is a sign of not enough money being paid, so people pay with their time.
I do bet that some of the fee you pay to Clear goes to the TSA, which pays for more security staff.
More poignant examples: mobile passports and global entry. Fundamentally faster (checks performed when you enroll, and then automatically, and while you get off the plane), and scalably so.
For example, the TSA added pre-check, which does speed up security by reducing requirements.
And the UCIS has added kiosks for global entry and us citizens, which effectively increases the number of security processing 'staff' at checkpoints, making things faster.
No it doesn't, because the limitation at most major airports is the number of takeoff and landing slots. More, smaller, planes would reduce capacity because you can only have a plane takeoff every 3 minutes or so.
> On a side note, why aren't there more startups trying to reduce passenger time at the airport instead of focusing on faster airplanes?
Just thought about it, it could actually be harder for startups to work on reducing passenger time at the airport. A main blocker would be convincing airports (and/or governments) to adopt your solution.
Assuming the 55 seat $5k+ demand is there.
We already have very-long-range business jets like the Global and G650ER for when P2P is essential and cost is secondary.
The 767 was a great plane for those routes especially on the shorter end (like TYO-SEL or TPE-HKG). The 787 is significantly heavier so performs poorly in terms of fuel efficiently until it's flown a couple thousand miles to make it up in better cruising performance.
It goes into some of the technical and regulatory hurdles Boom is facing, among other things.
Edit: To be clear — I find the prospect of affordable supersonic flight super exciting. But, knowing 0 about the aviation industry, what's the secret sauce that makes this believable (e.g. budget at least one order of magnitude lower than competing products)?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-honda-jet/honda-faces-lon...
But $100M might suffice to build a scale model experimental technology demonstrator.
Source/disclaimer: Aerospace engineer that builds rocket engines for a startup.
As for the market... As a simple person, I probably won't ever pay that for any flight. Businesses may think it is worth it.
As for comments to the effect, "physics hasn't changed since the concorde failed," no, but materials and manufacturing really have. Turbine engines have evolved a lot since then. That companies like Boeing do not build such aircraft doesn't tell you anything, any more than studying the success of Apple in embedded systems tells you whether or not there is a market for them. Perhaps a poor example since embedded systems are not a disruption, but my point is that entrenched incumbents may not pivot simply because they are doing well where they are, and all the more so in a more heavily regulated market.
In short, I think it will be interesting to see how it turns out. For any aerospace startup, the hardest part is raising enough money to stay afloat and focus on their work. $100M starts to build enough momentum that they have a real shot. The question now is what they do with that shot.
This. So much this. The specious argument about physics really irks me.
- Time between the first commercial air travel (1914) and when Concorde began development (1962): 48 years - Time between when Concorde began development and today: 57 years
Translation: Concorde's tech is OLD. Think of how much aviation technology advanced in the 48 years between the first commercial passenger flight and Concorde beginning development. Now think about how much it inevitably has advanced in the 57 years since Concorde's technology was developed.
The founders of Boom have openly stated that they intend to build a more fuel-efficient aircraft, leveraging technological advances to provide exponential increases in efficiency. If they can't do that, the economics don't work out - plain and simple. But they're making a pretty good case that they can to date, and this funding will help them further demonstrate that their plans have promise. As an aviation geek, I personally hope they succeed.
After that, they would need raise or finance more.
This is money to keep Boom afloat to the next raise, but that's not exactly unusual in SV startups which are a lot less capital intensive than aerospace
Obviously Boom is doing something orders of magnitude more technically complex than a simple bi-plane but maybe, if they're scrappy enough, they can pull it off.
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/analysis-jal-inve...
There's certainly both technical & market risk, because an LOI != cash in the bank. But that's why investors are willing to invest. If Boom delivers on its technical promises to spec, that $15.2B in revenue lined up before the first prototype flies.
JAL putting in $10m of seed investment is showing a bit of faith, but the rest is just pieces of paper.
Concorde had firmer commitments for 74 aircraft back in the day, but only ever made 20, most of which were sold off at a subsidised price and spent most of their time on the ground.
I wonder if Boom could get a boost by convincing it that the Boom jet can be useful. Certainly not for troop transport, but maybe it can be used to move field commanders around quickly in times of crisis.
For special ops I could definitely see such purchases. Just not at a large scale.
Getting the aircraft certified by every country's aviation body is going to be massive (unless they restrict flights to within the US only, which will basically negate the positives of international supersonic flight).
Then there are the battles against various environmental lobbying groups, like Concorde had to do, who will try to enforce curfews and restrictions on supersonic flights over populated areas.
If this ever flies and there is a kerosene carbon tax, that plane is dead.
It's the lack of fuel efficiency which has killed off various other exploratory supersonic flight programmes from ever going anywhere. Ultimately to be successful they have to convince airlines the extra speed will convince passengers to pay for the extra fuel. I think that's unlikely in the near future, and Boom will have to raise a lot more to convince people otherwise.
Comparable would be Tesla raising $100,000
And even then we're still talking a smaller body - 737, 757, not so much a 777/787.
"Disgust first, ask questions later," is 180 degrees in the wrong direction for improving public discourse. I urge you to reconsider, then lead by example.
Or without a carbon tax… 200 gallons of jet fuel makes 1 ton of CO2 and costs ~$800. Current state of the art in CO2 capture is $94/ton. For a self imposed 12% fuel surcharge they could be carbon neutral.
␄
¹ http://www.rff.org/blog/2017/calculating-various-fuel-prices...
https://www.iata.org/publications/economics/fuel-monitor/Pag...
I suspect at "airline" scale there is a large discount over the full service pump prices I'm seeing. This might change the percentages to 10% and 25%.
It's also possible I'm seeing the "putz price". That made up price that "no one really pays", unless you are that guy who doesn't know better and does.
It probably wouldn't significantly alter the cost of carbon neutrality, but something to bear in mind.
Current carbon tax schemes are laughable and will not be sufficient to prevent disastrous climate change. The carbon tax calculator in the article you linked only goes up to $50/ton, while the IPCC report calls for carbon prices as high as $14,300/ton by 2050. Obviously prices that high would mean a de facto ban on carbon. And that's what we need to avert disaster.
Just wanted to weigh in here a bit...
You are correct that increased emissions are definitely bad, but you may have missed how a carbon tax scheme would work in practice.
From a climate perspective, there is not much difference between being zero carbon versus carbon neutral. In other words, adding 1kg of CO2 in one place, and removing it elsewhere is effectively the same as being zero carbon.
So, while a carbon tax does create an economic incentive to avoid emitting carbon, what it really creates is a market to offset carbon. No one would pay a $10,000/ton tax when they can pay someone else $100/ton to offset the same amount of carbon from the air. The smooth ramp-up of any carbon tax allows offset price discovery without significant disruption.
Anyway, net result of a carbon tax would make having a plane be effectively carbon free, and current air travel would thus not be unsustainable.
In the airplane case, what would likely happen is that biofuels, which are inherently carbon neutral, would come to dominate (easier to let plants capture carbon and then turn them into fuel than to sequester CO2 directly from the air). However, that is irrelevant from a consumer perspective, and we'll just see an x% increase in cost as the offset market price gets baked in.
That's cap-and-trade, not a carbon tax.
Traditional cap-and-trade has a very valid criticism that it doesn't fix the problem, only limits it slightly and moves it around. If you add carbon-removers into the equation, and set things up to have 0 or even negative carbon per year, and then you actually do fix the problem.
Out of interest, may we ask - How do you reconcile your carbon emission research against other ecological considerations? Does your group use a preexisting model to map externalities / run simulations?
Many thanks (Apologies for taking the conversation out of scope slightly)
While this may eventually change, in the short term, airlines probably have less to fear about carbon taxes than any other industry.
[1] https://www.markey.senate.gov/GlobalWarming/files/LTTR/ACES/...
This is a technology that could only benefit people wealthy enough to afford it. There isn't even a nice story to tell about how it helps humans as a whole.
As technology gets better, the probability that it will become affordable to the masses increases greatly. It's not guaranteed, but its definitely non-zero.
While I am dubious about commercial supersonic flight (at least without significant investments in reducing emissions, though avoiding afterburning should already help), improved designs will at the very least lead to developments in the field, and possibly in related fields such as suborbital flight and spaceplanes.
It may not be a dishonest company, but lots of harm can be done honestly.
So you done yet?
I would love this
Boom can use the Tesla approach by starting with business class customers to prove the demand then moving down the latter to consumers. Tokyo could be a weekend trip if the flight was five hours.
Business aviation is a less lucrative market than commercial, and business-only commercial flights is a market which has almost completely failed to make any profit. In automotive terms, not only are there are a lot more people buying buses than cars, you also don't make a higher profit on the cars either unless you're the interiors outfitter....
https://www.aerionsupersonic.com
So there may end up being other options.
That doesn't translate particularly well to less frequent 55 business class seat flights on most of those routes; even if the flights are shorter the arrival times are probably a lot less convenient for most of the executives.
The all-business class model has struggled to be economically viable even on ideal routes like London-NY. Those economy seats give you a lot more flexibility when the business class seats aren't selling.
(And as ghaff pointed out business travellers /= business class; most people travelling on business have an economy ticket sized budget)
For US and European carriers, it's around 75%. Since the cost is 4 - 7x higher than commercial, most people aren't paying for this expensive personally. Not sure about other industries, but for consulting and tech, the standard is to allow a business upgrade on international flights and not domestic.
http://www.fortworthbusiness.com/news/bass-backed-aerion-giv...
https://boomsupersonic.com/xb-1 (oh boy, strips of carbon fiber and a 1m x 3m hand-laid cross-section)
It'll be interesting to see what happens if they make it.
JAL is already a Boom investor.
>Virgin described BA's refusal to sell the planes instead of retiring them for good as "an act of industrial vandalism",...https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2855774/Virgin-bitter-as...
Airlines don't go supersonic because there are no aircraft.
What's changed is the market. It wasn't economical to run the Concorde for most of its service lifespan, because demand for fast business travel was limited and fuel prices were high. Then globalization and income inequality happened. There are a lot of very lucrative fields right now where it's beneficial to be in SF in the morning and Shanghai for dinner, then back to SF for the next morning. And fuel prices are on their way back down.
They can probably build it a bit more efficiently than in the days of the Concorde, Tu-144, and Boeing 2707, but the real driver here is the existence of wealthy firms who will pay a lot to shlep their employees across the globe in a day.
Yeah, I think this is the new driver for SST. There's now a class of customers who can easily afford whatever the ticket price will be, so a market is assured.
Unfortunate for those of us who would prefer not to hear sonic booms day and night.
Being a history buff(especially aviation), I wonder where it sits in terms of possibility <—> probability of repeating the tech industry(Microsoft related ties) enabled Eclipse Aviation debacle.
Eclipse Aviation was founded late in the Dot Com Tech bubble with a promise of cheaper Very Light Jet(VLJ) private ownership and air taxis.
Boom Supersonic was founded late in the current tech bubble with a promise of faster business class/first class travel.
My primary concerns would be the fuel burn per passenger seat miles and shorter maintenance intervals required based on current engine technology.
Is Boom SuperSonics a possible indicator of late tech bubble drawing board excess?
I’m actually not trying to be negative, because everything beautiful, cool, and fast is awesome.
I’m just concerned about a possible echoing of the Eclipse historical speedbump.
But it was a niche product. So, if boom reoccupied the niche and can leverage the now long amortized sunk costs of supersonic research with some twists to get fuel cost and noise under control.. maybe they can be profitable.
I'd fly in one if it made sense cost wise (frequent business traveller intercontinental for twenty years) but I am also believing this is a terrible model for high altitude AGW consequences
"Focussing on gas is the complete wrong way of looking at this. Humans and our ideas are the ultimate resource, not gas."
Some people would disagree: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-sta...
Would this development not be better put towards smaller and faster planes rather than trying to transport ~55 people at a time? Make a small passenger jet that can do New York to London in 3 hours and it could possibly be profitable as a niche private jet not unlike Gulf/Lear/etc...
Growing up seeing the Concorde land and take off I would love to be on a supersonic flight at some point in my life.
I'd be similarly skeptical if it was just for consumer vacations, but there are a lot of business travelers who need to attend short meetings in faraway locations. My wife has 3 cross-country business trips scheduled this month alone, each of which is only for 1-2 days worth of meetings but takes about 4 days including travel time. In one case, she has a meeting in San Francisco in the morning and a dinner in NYC in the evening, and her employer's flying her out the day before so she can call into the SF meeting from NYC and still attend the NYC dinner, because it's physically impossible to make both of them.
It'll probably be a while before any SST is certified to travel over land, but the demand is there. I could see this being very handy for business travelers who regularly need to do NYC <-> London or SF <-> Tokyo <-> Shanghai.
https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/when-the-faa-blasted-oklahom...
I assume Boom is like so many startups in that they have ignored history and have barreled ahead anyway.
>What about the sonic boom?
>Boom's airliner is designed to maximize efficiency while producing a “boom” at least 30 times quieter than Concorde's. ...
Or spend 5x that to get there in half the time aboard a cramped super sonic jet.
I don’t get it.
If you make existing planes nicer, people will complain that the ride is too short. And it will be much, much cheaper.
It's unfortunate that so many people come out of the woodwork to tell people their ideas are terrible or won't work without actually understanding the idea, technology, or risk-adjusted return that investors may be considering. It's far far more interesting to consider how things may work or what you may be missing. I've listed a mini-FAQ at the bottom about Boom. I'm an investor in every Boom round, from before they were in YC so am clearly biased, but also know the company very well.
Props to everyone in the thread who is asking genuine questions and actually trying to understand what the team is building.
References
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Dropbox launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 Coinbase launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4703443 A 2012 thread discussing comment negativity where: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4363717 A classic thread from 2012 where PG talks about negative comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396747
Mini-FAQ
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1. Isn't the most important part of reducing flight times the pre-flight experience (security, airport delays, etc.)? Yes, you are correct. However, the long haul international market that is about 10% of the overall number of flights in the world is still a HUGE opportunity where the bulk of time is spent in the air. Boom is most effective in these longer 8-hour+ flight situations like SFO-Tokyo, LA-Syndney, etc. On these routes you would save a day round trip. For many people an extra day in the office or an extra day with family is a tremendous win.
Most people don't realize but travel to Hawaii 10x-ed in the decade after the jet engine became common because Hawaii became a five hour flight from the West Coast instead of an eight hour flight. Imagine if you could get from SFO to Japan or China as fast as SFO-NYC.
2 - How can do this for so cheap? It will be capital intensive to get to the final plane, probably ~$2B. Most of this can be financed with debt, however, because there are many billions in pre-orders from airlines already. This round gets you to fly a one-third scale version of the plane and be ready to raise an even bigger round to build the full scale plane and get to FAA certification in the series C.
The Boom team has been very smart in their go to market by maximizing the amount of already FAA approved technology that goes on the first plane. For example, the carbon fiber composite is the same as that used on the 787. Fast tracking the components because they're already FAA approved dramatically reduces costs.
3 - What qualifications does this team have? How can they possibly pull this off? The team includes 80 technical experts and leaders from Airbus, Boeing, SpaceX, Gulfstream, NASA, and Lockheed. Collectively, the team has made key contributions to 40+ successful air and space vehicles the SpaceX Falcon 9, Airbus A380, and the SR-71 Blackbird. The team has led the development of many planes that have gone from 0 to FAA approved and launched.
Hope the above is helpful to people reading through and wondering how this makes any sense. I think Boom is a once in a lifetime, category creating company (like SpaceX or Tesla). Happy to answer more questions if you have any.
~$2bn is a ludicrously small sum of capital to get a "final plane", even compared with airframe programmes that took the 737 as a starting point and had the relatively straightforward objective of being a 737 but a few percentage points more fuel efficient and with a nice new cockpit. And no, you really can't debt-finance a new aircraft research programme with outstanding orders. Most of the money in an aircraft transaction changes hands at the delivery stage (deposits are a small fraction of the aircraft cost, pre-delivery payments are also a small fraction and are made in the months immediately prior to an aircraft delivery, not as r&d funding). The airlines usually need external financing to actually manage these payments which comes from the asset finance arms of conservative financial institutions looking to earn steady ROI from having assets with predictable residual values on their balance sheet, not a punt on a research project which may or may not actually deliver an aircraft. Boom's going to have to raise VC-type funding themselves; the airlines can't and won't do it for them at any scale. (I used to speak with senior executives at airlines involved in aircraft finance on a day to day basis so I'm not just being cynical here). And please correct me if there is undisclosed information and I am wrong on this point, but at the moment as I understand it Boom does not have "many billions" in orders, it has non-binding LOIs for an entirely notional 76 aircraft and $10m in equity investment from JAL is the only financial commitment from any airline.
So I'd be extremely worried if this was the basis from which investors in general were considering their risk-adjusted returns. I suspect this is more your attempt at an HN-friendly summary of the prospects based on casual conversations with employees, as someone who yourself backed the project for other reasons at a much earlier stage. But if they were making claims about funding much of their r&d from their order book in representations to investors (as I said, I suspect they aren't) I'd start viewing it a Theranos-level heist as opposed to yet another well-intentioned aerospace project full of good engineers trying something wildly ambitious (which is where I think they actually are).
They are definitely not representing their order book as the basis for a full debt financing. I appreciate your assuming best intent as I use broad brush strokes in the parent comment and below.
A few thoughts: + I think the history of startups is also one of teams succeeding with far less capital than the incumbents. They're on track to build the fastest civilian aircraft ever built for less than $100M raised which speaks to their accomplishments to date. Aero is notorious for cost overruns but their capital efficiency to date is impressive.
+ Of course, the biggest risk is that there are cost over runs due to unforseen issues, e.g. Bombadier's C-Series estimated to cost $2B and that ended up closer to $5B (though that was also for multiple planes and configurations). At the same time the A320-NEO was done for below $1.5B I believe. Time will tell how much it actually costs but I think it's probably much closer to $2B than say $20B.
+ You are correct that these are not pre-orders. I shouldn't have used that term and should have used LOIs (and now I can't figure out how to edit the comment). As I understand it, the LOIs are of varying levels of commitment. The earliest LOIs were non-binding and with no skin in the game. More recent LOIs have more teeth. The strategy has been very clever. Each batch of LOIs has terms more favorable to Boom, so there is an incentive to move before the LOIs become less favorable to you (the airline). And there is a competitive dynamic that is at work that engages companies, e.g. JAL vs ANA, via incentives such as exclusivity on certain routes or deal sweeteners like the opportunity to invest. I think it's unlikely that 100% of these LOIs convert as external circumstances will always be a factor (e.g. airline gets a new CEO who has a different strategy) but the newer LOIs also have significant executive, CEO, and board buyin from the airlines, so they're certainly not throwaway. As you noted, airlines are very conservative about basically everything. The reason these LOIs are managing to get board level approval is that the math makes a ton of sense if the planes fly. You're essentially replacing less profitable narrow body jets with a Boom jet on certain routes so you stand to make more money as an airline if you get one of these.
+ It's much harder to debt finance the entire thing as an R&D endeavor at once but there are multiple ways to traunch this and phase it in over time. And not all of the costs need to borne by Boom directly. It's pretty standard for suppliers (not the airlines, as you noted) to put up significant commitments as part of the development process and bear those costs and risks. Many of the existing partners for major components of the Boom plane are bearing these costs directly already, because the math behind unlocking supersonic makes sense and even if the plane doesn't launch they stand to benefit from the R&D on these new components. Sharing these costs such that the partners benefit from the upside in a success case (huge new market the supplier is a leaders in) and in a failure case (IP that makes their existing components much better), while also bearing the capital risk helps reduce the capital and debt burden on Boom itself.
Anyway, your read that this is a well-intentioned aerospace project full of great engineers trying to do something wildly ambitious is correct. Anything I've misstated that might imply otherwise is a failure on my part, not Boom's. I also think they are as savvy on their business as they are talented at the engineering, which is why they've even made it this far.
I have no idea about the economics or practicality of this particular effort. But one place I agree with the criticism of the criticism is that I do think it's silly to operate from a premise that supersonic commercial flight will never make sense. In fact, it seems almost obvious that it will some day even if it takes a long time.
The real problem is comfort. Planes are incredibly uncomfortable, even if you pay thousands of upgraded seating. I'd rather flights take 2-4x as long but be 10-20x more comfortable.
I'd like to see true innovation, using high-speed blimps or massive ocean-going ground effect airplanes, hovercraft, or something.
I'd rather take 1 day "air cruise" to Europe than a 4 hour hair-raising rollercoaster ride.
Personally, as attractive as supersonic flight is to a former pilot like me, I would far rather spend time in a wide body cabin and arrive a few hours later than suffer the claustrophobia of sitting in a skinny tube. From what I have seen, the Boom concept jet has a similar fuselage profile to Concorde.
And first class in those days, modulo first class lounge that got turned into more business class seating at some point, was much less comfortable than modern business class much less first class where it exists.
It would be nice if transPacific were faster (though that has its own set of range problems) but I don't find flying business class from the US East Coast to Europe a particular hardship.
Of course, you need to remain competitive with private jets that don't have the issues associated with scheduled service.
No need for anything exotic like that, just build more and better trains. Trains also have a huge benefit of being easy to run off renewable energy (electric trains powered by the grid).
Even crappy trains like Amtrak operates are leagues more comfortable than air travel.
I would much rather have a coal or nuclear plants to run a fleet of trains rather then a bunch of batteries and some solar panels. Any volcano could disrupt not just air travel but also take down your land based transportation system.
But I agree insofar has having transportation being electric is a good thing. The same could be done for planes at some point. Elon Musk actually has a surprisingly good idea for an electric plane but he has no time to do it.
Anyway, the point is that grid power is excellent no matter were you get it from, and because you can run them off the grid trains are exceptional.
Only one point, nuclear is already pretty much unlimited. We don't need LFTR for that. Uranium is easily plentiful enough and newer designs that are much closer then a full LFTR can use it much more efficiently as well.
Thorium would be nice because its already a waste product of current mining, however Thorium is really only worth it if you are doing a LFTR, with most other designs Uranium is preferable.
Why are people so convinced some random startup with no experience is going to be able to do the impossible? It’s not enough to point at SpaceX and say “they did it, so we can too!” It’s a totally different product category, market, and regulatory environment.
I wish there was a way to short the stock of private companies.
It will still be extraordinary expensive and difficult, so I wish them luck.
Edit: to be clear, I wish them luck too, but I think they’re being dishonest with their timelines. The YC / startup culture is the polar opposite of the FAA culture, which is basically “move slow and make sure nothing breaks, and if it does, carefully examine the situation and change the rules so it doesn’t break again”
Here’s a good overview of the certification process: https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/aviation-internation...
Zero chance that some random startup is going to have these flying with passengers in 2025. They follow a very long line of startups that have burned through billions of dollars and almost all failed. I’d be surprised if there was more than one or two new airplane companies in the past three decades that have survived without bankruptcy, state subsidies, etc. And none of them were trying to do something nearly so technically challenging.
All that said, I hope to eat a giant humble pie on my 2025 supersonic flight to London!
1. Boom (or some other startup) will deliver by 2025.
2. Boom (or some other startup) will deliver, but later.
3. Boeing (or Airbus) will deliver later.
4. No renewed supersonic commercial flights in our lifetime.
I understand you say 1 is impossible. But is 2 out of the question? is 3 more likely that 4? is 3 more likely than 2?
I don't know enough about Boom and supersonic flight, but I personally don't subscribe to the idea that tomorrow is entirely in the hands of today's established institutions.
Trouble for Boom is that promising (1) might make raising the capital for (2) more difficult. And also the big risk they deliver (2) which is known to be possible and don't sell enough aircraft to recover their costs.
"to do the impossible" -- since you have not invested any money in this company, why does it bother you so much that they intend to achieve goals you don't believe in? how many people predicted failure for the Wright brothers?
I root for Boom and will applaud all their achievements, because I appreciate ambition and feel grateful to all ambitious entrepreneurs.
However, it's a huge economic hill to climb. Long haul flying is already pretty comfortable if you spend the money. Even on United which has been upgrading domestic routes. Of course, faster is better. But lie flat seating, decent food, and even mini-rooms go a long way towards making lengthy flights comfortable.
So you basically have to get close to those price points, which is the high end of the volume market. A few hours aren't worth that much even to most relatively wealthy folks.
Existing companies don't try anything radically new because of risk aversion, corporate inertia, whatever you want to call it. Why didn't NYC YellowCab invent Uber? They've been doing their thing for years and it's been working just fine. Sometimes you need an outsider to take a radical risk, that in all odds will likely fail, but every so often doesn't.
I disagree with the rest of your comment, but I see where you’re coming from. But almost every failed aerospace company has a bunch of people with industry experience. Doesn’t stop nearly all of them from crashing and burning. And even the unicorn that succeeds is very late and way over budget.
Guess we’ll see.