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Comment by lumost | Hacker News Reader

Supersonic passenger jets are currently an untapped market with zero competition. The traditional players have decided it's not a useful market to chase. The technology of a supersonic is also sufficiently different from a sub-sonic jet that it will be tough to chase them once they bring a product to market.

Regional jets have been optimized over the better part of a century, are heavily regulated and have heavy competition from incumbent players. Based on the historic gains in commuter flight performance we're likely within 10-20% of the optimum plane configuration for any given market. A new entrant would take ~10 years to bring an aircraft to market, during which time an incumbent could introduce a competing aircraft or simply leverage their existing product lines and sales channels to compete with suboptimal aircraft.

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Regional jet technology has been ahead of the planes you've likely been flying on for 20 years. The E195 is smaller than the B737 but feels like riding in a B767, it is like Buck Roger's spaceship but Airbus and Boeing kept it at bay; Canada developed a B787-level technology competitor for it, and Airbus bought it after Boeing and Airbus colluded to keep it off the market. The E195-2 is almost as nice as the A220. If they can just shut down the 737 line and change the labor laws in the US that discourage E195-sized planes, life could be much better for fliers.

The Concorde demonstrated the failure of the Mach 2 class airliner, not just because of "high fuel consumption" but because it could not do multiple trips across the Atlantic in a day thanks to takeoff and landing restrictions. Originally people thought the SST would crush all other airliners economically because they could fly twice as many flights in the same time ("half the capital cost") but that was not realized. (People in London and NYC have to sleep once in a while)

The Mach 3 class typified by military projects such as the SR-71 and XB-70 might be successful at both problems.

Believe it or not supersonic cruise at Mach 3 is about the optimum fuel economy for supersonic flight and it might be fast enough to do more flights and lower the capital cost.

One gap between the Mach 2 and the Mach 3 classes is that at Mach 3 you have to give up on aluminum as a structural material and switch to Iron, Titanium, or something else. The SR-71 squared some of the design circles by taking off with a minimum fuel load and refueling mid-air -- airliners would have worse problems in terms of wing design.

There is no commercial airliner in the Mach 1 class, the economics are certainly worse than Concorde. The Mach 1 business jet might just work if somebody values the time over the economics.

The big problem with Concorde was that it wasn't allowed to fly supersonically over most land due to noise restrictions. Thus eg transcontinental US, where the time gain might have been quite attractive, was ruled out. The same issue combined with limited range also ruled out nonstop London-far east (Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo) or London-West Coast US. Are these issues likely to be any different now?

Also - not sure what you call Mach 1 class but the business jet market has a lot of planes which will cruise at eg Mach 0.93 or so - ie faster than airliners - and speed is valued in that market. If noise issues over land can be navigated successfully then I would expect there is a good market for supersonic business jets.

London to Tokyo great circle looks like it doesn’t cover much human habituated areas, especially if you modified it a bit to go around Norway. I think if fueling allows, you could come up with routes like this for many potential trips.

Norway may be scarcely populated but if you piss out the few people living there they will make pressure to their government which will forbid flyovers. I don't think it will be hard for them to argue that entitled business people having to quickly travel the other part of the world have no right negatively affecting their quality of life.

This is a similar argument now being made against Starlink and similar satellite constellations.

Surprised no one has made the crossover argument wrt supersonic travel.

As I recall Mach 3+ aircraft development stalled with the pivot to stealth technologies in military aviation, and not necessarily due to technical limits.

I'd be curious what research exists for the viability of Mach 3 and hypersonic commercial aircraft.

Boeing came to the "Mach 3 beats Match 2" conclusion with this design in the 1970s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_2707

which came across as a bit too ambitious.

What are the labor laws that discourage E-195's in the US? Construction is different than use, I don't see how there could be labor laws affecting that. It's just a jet? There were complicated tariffs and counter tariffs. Even washington state couldn't resist giving boeing a big tax cut, & during all this Boeing asked the state to cancel it so they would be able to claim Embraer was the only one getting one (and the state did cancel it).

Labor laws: There is an arbitrary division between airlines that fly B737 and larger jets and those that fly smaller jets

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_clause

This is why "American Airlines" flights to smaller cities are flown by "Piedmont Airlines" or some other subsidiary. (eg. "United Airlines" runs ads and is concerned about their brand, they get people who work for their subsidiary to actually punch you in the face.)

If a company was trying to get the most of the E195 or A220 they'd probably replace some E145/CRJ200 flights with it and some B737/A320 flights but to do that the conflict between the real airline and the fake airline gets harder to reconcile.

Just as the B787 and B777 replaced the bigger B747 the E195/A220 should have been replacing the 737 in the last decade but the "scope clause" is a brick wall against that.

> Just as the B787 and B777 replaced the bigger B747 the E195/A220 should have been replacing the 737 in the last decade but the "scope clause" is a brick wall against that.

I can't think of many examples of 737/A320s being replaced by regional jets anywhere, even in countries with no scope clauses?

Lots of regional jets and props with SAS, Finnair, Air Baltic. Embraer, ATR, Bombardier, Fokker... https://www.sasgroup.net/about-sas/the-fleet/

At least in the SAS and Finnair cases they haven't been replacing larger aircraft, though, which was the claim above? Unquestionably plenty of European airlines fly regional aircraft, but I don't see them replacing A320/737s.

I assume of course they are replacing. Finnair (like SAS) had a bunch of DC-9s and derivatives, then when replacing those, instead of going full Airbus A32x, they also got Embraer 190:s, and now are probably looking at A220:s.

I can't say it is scientific, but I have seen fewer 737 class airplanes and more E195s over upstate new york with add-on since the second wave pandemic hit the US.

Southwest is still flying the 737 (they expect to be doing that in 2120) but JetBlue looks like an E series airline today.

From the linked article, the “scope clause” appears to be a ill-conceived contract provision, not a law.

One might argue that US labor laws are broken in that they encourage companies to agree to clauses like this, but one might also argue that the airlines blew it and should not have signed the contract.

(It does seem to me that the US has a lot of examples of deeply broken union contracts. I’m not entirely sure what, if anything, the US government ought to do about that.)

Who is the market for supersonic travel not already served by military aircraft that can go supersonic and space vehicles that go suborbital? I’m not saying such a market doesn’t exist, but show me these folks with their wallet open for this civil speed.

Crossing the Pacific ocean in five hours instead of twelve with be a pretty huge improvement for a lot of people with deep pockets

The projected range for the Overture craft is 8300km. That would just barely get you from San Francisco to Tokyo (shades of Concorde, which on days with contrary winds had to stop to refuel on the New York - London/Paris runs), but not from Los Angeles. Australia and NZ are far too far. With a refueling stop in Hawaii then Auckland is ok, though Sydney is still marginal.

So less wonderful than you'd hope: the Pacific is darned big.

Didn't realize. Pacific crossings seem like the ideal place to capitalize on high speed, and it seems silly not to make that the primary and expand from there.

Perhaps the supersonic range issue is just a really tough nut to crack?

>Perhaps the supersonic range issue is just a really tough nut to crack?

Almost certainly.

You're right that trans-Pacific would be more compelling. Even with decent food, nice drink, and lie-flat seating, a trans-Pacific flight is still a long time to stay mostly sitting. (Though airlines could have lounges like the old first class lounge in the hump of 747s; people just don't want to pay for the space.)

Honestly, transatlantic is really not a big deal. Very few people are interested in flying back and forth in a day. And if you're going to stay overnight, NY to London, say, is really not a bad trip in business and you don't even need to do it as a red-eye.

I'd add that, if it weren't already the case relative to when the Concorde flew, I suspect that this period will permanently damp flying across the ocean just to sign a deal or do a quick meet and greet. (Which was certainly part of the market for Concordes).

After the pandemic is over, there will still be some people that need to travel from the US to Europe or US to Japan semifrequently and want a much shorter trip and can pay (business trips). Of course everyone wants shorter trips on the really long flights (to NZ or whatever) but that depends on cost.

Barring the availability of commercial point-point sub-orbital travel ( which comes with its own set of noise and technical problems ). There is considerable casual interest in shorter flight times. The three main challenges for this have always been fuel consumption, wear and tear on the aircraft, and noise issues while overflying cities/towns.

If the noise issue is solved you could meet private, and high-end commercial flight demands. Where the customer isn't concerned with an order of magnitude increase in flight costs. If you can make a big dent in the former using new materials, improved aerodynamics, or higher altitude flight then there is an opportunity to chase commercial customers.

Anyone who wants to travel to/from the US to Europe in 3.5 hours instead of 7-8 hours, and other similar length trips.

Similar to the history of regular air travel, it will be the wealthy that indulge in the convenience of those time savings at first, and then as economies of scale and efficiency improve, it can become the norm.

There's a reason why the term "jet-setters" came about in the 50s-60s to mean wealthy people. Nowadays flying somewhere on a jet is accessible to anyone in the lower middle class and up.

I am afraid the ordinary people are hitting on physical realities though. The jet fuel required will never be cheap enough for them to fly supersonic jets. Maybe rocket travel yes, though, because you can scale that way more than the jet.

> Maybe rocket travel yes, though, because you can scale that way more than the jet.

What?

Jets carry hundreds of thousands of pounds of payload - a 747 can carry nearly 250,000lbs of payload.

Rockets carry payloads in the range of thousands pounds at most. Simply making your rocket bigger isn't an easy solution, and you start burning a ton more fuel for marginal payload gains.

It also doesn't cost $90 Million to fly a 747 every time it takes off...

Spacex-Starship with a booster below it could put that weight suborbital to the other side of the world and should only cost a few million per flight since the hardware is reused each time

A few million?

$90 Million is the current cost of a reusable Falcon Heavy[1].

Even if you cut that in half, that's still 10's of millions more expensive than flying a 747 between two destinations.

For comparison, it costs - on the high end - $27,000 per hour of flight to operate a 747[2]. For a 12 hour flight, that's ~$324,000 of cost, or about 0.72% of the fictitious $45 Million-Per-Launch "Starship".

There is no reality where flying a rocket is cheaper than an airplane.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy

[2] https://www.opshots.net/2015/04/aircraft-operating-series-ai....

Rockets might not be cheaper but it could be close and they will beat the airplane by far on speed and views. Elon Musk is thinking/hoping that the cost for SpaceX to launch a 100 passenger Starship will be around $2 million[1] considering fuel and operational costs. The rockets will be fully reusable like airplanes and cost about the same to make. And, for long flights fuel use is similar. Hope it happens. Making rockets reusable was the key and SpaceX has been doing well with advancing that concept so far.

[1]https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-flight-passenger-cost-...

That's a whole lot of magical hand-waving right there.

For starters, even at these fantasy numbers, that's still $20,000 per seat. Who needs and/or wants that? Very few people, as Concorde found out, and as Boom will soon learn the same.

Rockets are also tremendously more dangerous and volatile than an airplane. If 1 out of 10,000 launches results in a total loss of the vehicle, and all passengers on board - we're not going to do it. Rockets are simply not a safe mode of transportation - particularly when compared to aviation.

Not to mention, you cannot launch with bad weather - or the possibility of bad weather... if it's too hot, or too cold, etc.

It's just not a realistic option.

Can't really know until you try. The physics does not prevent the possibility. Elon and the people at SpaceX are not just hand waving but actually working hard on making it a reality. Hope they do it.

A lot of people are willing to pay $250k for a minor sub-orbit hop in the Virgin spacecraft. I bet there are millions of people who would pay, at least once, to fly on one of these flights in conjunction with a trip from New York to Beijing or London to Australia. $20k is not much more than a two week luxury safari.

The comparison of the risk of rocket travel to the risk of helicopter travel is more realistic. That is the level of risk many wealthy people are willing to take to save time.

How many people actually go on luxury safari's?

How many people will actually pay $250k for a spaceship ride? I know everyone says they would, but who actually has the means to do so?

How many people will actually pay $20k for this fictitious rocket travel ride? That's the eqivilent of a decent brand new car.

The reality is there's a finite amount of people who have the means to do actual space tourism. You run out of these people after a short while... and then you go bankrupt.

And no, you cannot compare rockets with helicopter safety. It's well known helicopters aren't the most safe mode of transportation - but they do not spontaneously explode either. They are far safer than a rocket - arguing otherwise is disingenuous.

The first steam engines spontaneously exploded. The first internal combustion engines spontaneously exploded. I'm sure the first helicopters did also. Nobody has really tried to advance rocket technology since the early 1970's. That's only 25 years after Sputnik and 40 years after the V2. 1970 is 50 years ago.

SpaceX was founded in 2002 to start advancing rocket tech again and has made amazing advances so far. I agree that the West's safety first environment of today that rocket travel seems way too unsafe for most, but there still plenty of people that don't have that mind set. I would say too each their own, but would you advocate that no one should even try?

This transportation idea with rockets is also just a side business opportunity for the Starship. If the Earth flights work out then many more of them can be sold and launched, bringing down cost and increasing the rate of improvements. The main reason for building it is to dramatically reduce the cost of putting things into space and traveling to and from Mars.

I think supersonic flight will never become the norm. Boom Overture would, if Boom succeeds, be more fuel efficient than the Concorde but definitely not more fuel efficient than a modern subsonic airliner. And subsonic jets are 'fast enough' for most people who don't have cash burning a hole in their pocket.

It really depends on the price, if it's 2 x subsonic-econ then I think they have a real winner (I would personally pay that, its like doing premium economy), but if its 5x or 10x maybe not

> Similar to the history of regular air travel, it will be the wealthy that indulge in the convenience of those time savings at first

That was the theory behind Concorde half a century ago.

Flying somewhere on a jet is accessible to anyone in the lower middle class and up because the industry learned from the lack of demand for Concorde and optimised for fuel efficiency instead of speed

1. The people who used to fly on Concorde.

2. But more modern and fuel-efficient

3. And air travel is just plain a bigger market these days than it was in the 1970s

4. As it's made by an American company, they hope to avoid the US protectionism Concorde was subject to.

> 3. And air travel is just plain a bigger market these days than it was in the 1970s

It remains to be seen whether post-COVID wealthy travellers will subsidise BOOM development costs as opposed to not flying or continuing with smaller private jets as at present. Although Boom is “designing Overture to be the first post-pandemic airplane", they will need a massive investment to scale from the single-seat prototype (still to fly) to an operationally profitable vehicle.

It's interesting to speculate about what a ticket might cost and what would be worth it to you. Instead of a non-stop almost 10 hour flight to west coast to London at $1,000 (9:20 hours), where my company gives me an extra $500 for an upgrade in class because it's so long, I'd pay an extra $500 of my own money for a 4 or 5 hour trip probably. But I'm not paying $5k more for that quicker trip.

> 1. The people who used to fly on Concorde.

Concorde failed because there wasn't enough of these people.

British Airways actually made money on Concorde travels.

The route schedule needs to be routine, constant and predicable to be of any use for the types of people requiring 4 hour trans-oceanic flights. That means having at least one flight to London each day, and one flight back to NY.

Eventually you run out of people willing to pay $10k a seat for this type of travel. Which is what happened to Concorde - after the novelty wore off, all you had was an extremely expensive seat.

Who knows how to account for projects that span the inflation-addled 1970s?

I think British Airways could have kept the Concorde flying longer than they did if it were not for this incident:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590

which happened at a lower passenger*mile count than the 737 MAX accidents and would have required a Space Shuttle style shutdown-and-reform phase. Concorde's avionics and cockpit were completely out of date and fixing that would have been expensive.

they also paid a pittance for their concordes, which helped.

They suggest "business class prices". There are a growing number of routes where there are all-business class flights, where getting people there twice as fast would be a major competitive advantage.

People sometimes took the Concorde London->NYC to attend meetings and then returned to London the same day. I've done London->Dulles for meetings and then back on a regular boring jet, but it was exhausting and if there had been options to halve that flight time it'd have been fantastic.

Which routes are growing? I recall around the time that OpenSkies died the number of routes with business class-only planes appeared to be shrinking quite a bit. I don’t doubt your claim per se but would like to see some support for it.

In general, it's hard to fill a plane full of paying business class customers. (In a typical business class compartment, a lot of those seats are being filled with upgrades of one sort or another.)

At least a couple business class-only airlines didn't last long. The only current route I'm aware of is the BA London City to NYC route. Though there may well be others in the Middle East, etc.

I know Swiss and Singapore used to have them but I think both may have since been eliminated. I don’t think any US carriers do unless United has one and I’m pretty sure BA doesn’t anymore now that OpenSkies is gone, so that doesn’t leave many obvious contenders. Thai? LH?

Many international companies already pay for business class flights for their employees going between US <-> Europe. There's plenty of market there. It just depends on whether Boom can get their costs down to be comparable to an existing business class flight. If it cost, say, 50% more but took half the time for a flight from San Francisco to London, I think that would be pretty compelling for the people currently taking business class.

Doesn't matter if it would be compelling to the people. What matters is if it would be compelling to their companies. Many business travelers are not on such a strict schedule that saving 6 hours or whatever is a particular business benefit. By and large, although paying for business class is framed as a justified expense because the employee will be more rested, it's really mostly a perk.

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