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Comment by jamestimmins | Hacker News Reader

Does this mean if any repairs are needed they'll have to rebuild the wing from scratch?

I'd love to hear from someone at Boom what the main goals are for this aircraft. And how it will differ from the larger transport craft they're planning. Beyond size and capacity.

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The company's goal is overland supersonic flight. Profitably, ideally. To make that even a legal possibility means demonstrating they can be somewhat quieter than prior supersonic aircraft. This aircraft is a proof-of-concept.

Is it specifically to demonstrate that they can make a quiet aircraft then?

I think I'm curious specifically whether this is more about internal R&D and building systems, or if it's meant to demonstrate they have the capability to to create a performant supersonic aircraft, which they can take to potential investors.

This demonstrator is a 1/3 scale model of their final design.

It allows them to prove their exact final design will be quiet, along with verifing the rest of the aerodynamics.

Any idea how often the final design and the prototype don't match in terms of volume and aerodynamics? I would have assumed that those parts are the easiest to model with high confidence.

You don't need to build it to test volume and aerodynamics (math and wind-tunnels can figure that out for you). This is probably more about finding unknown flaws in the design/running down risk. Spending however much on a prototype (10s or 100s of millions of dollars) just to marginally reduce the risk that there's a fundamental flaw in your approach makes a lot of sense when you plan to spend 6 billion total to develop the plane.

Aerodynamics modeling is incredibly difficult. You could probably test a smaller scale model, though (probably they have).

Carbon repairs are relatively easy as long as they don't damage any internal structure. IIRC they usually just patch and sand.

Only way to verify no internal damage is an X-ray. I'm sure they've thought of that, though; this is carbon manufacture 101.

Depends on the event. I've never heard of anyone doing an xray on hangar rash type damage, at least not within a part 91 environment. Taxiing into a pole would be a different issue however.

Oh, sure.

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