Can Boom Supersonic Succeed Where the Concorde Failed? | Hacker News Reader

Can Boom Supersonic Succeed Where the Concorde Failed?

johncoogan.com

39 pointslukebutton148 comments

This is an entirely substance-free article. I'd recommend you save your time and not read it.

Author here, what do you think would give this kind of content more substance? Still very new to this and genuinely looking for feedback!

HN probably isn't the ideal audience for your article.

Your content would be novel to someone who wasn't following Boom, but... that person isn't here. Because [0]. Parent could have put that more gently.

That said, if you did want to target HN readership (which is non-representative of general readership!), you could drill down into each of your points. How is Boom doing these things?

For example, their struggles to find a moderate-bypass engine (even uprated and recertified) without having to fund novel engine development is critical to the entire endeavor, and is still an open question [1].

In short, recommendation would be to (1) know your audience, (2) research prior art (previous HN Boom stories), and (3) bring something novel in your article, either through new reporting or synthesis.

[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=boom

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_Overture#Engines

Wikipedia notes that a 1/3 scale Boom demonstrator plane is expected to begin flight testing in 2021. Otherwise, it sounds like they've produced zero planes that actually fly so far. Even the hype-ridden article admits that their founder/CEO has zero experience delivering real-world physical products.

Then there's the huge "SPACEX KILLER" banner at the top of that article...which has zero logic behind it, and is followed up by zero meaningful mentions of SpaceX in the article's text.

I'm sensing a really fawning fan-boy (writing the article), and/or a company that's absolutely desperate for credibility.

And the whole thing is full of factual errors as well. I’m not in aviation, but I’m quite interested in it and I know enough to get the sense that the only research this article was based on was some notes taken during a drunk hyperbolic conversation with the founder in a bar.

Confession - once the article opened by comparing a 250MPH Tesla (maybe true, for short periods, in a few extreme-high-end models, on certain test tracks) to Boom's 1000MPH+ speed (which all their products will need to routinely & economically sustain, in the real world), I stopped caring whether the article's "facts" were true or not.

If somebody is telling me that their radical new physics theory is true "because I'm an assistant examiner in the Swiss Patent Office, just like Albert Einstein was..." - then I don't see much point in fact-checking their Swiss Patent Office employment claim.

Pretty sure at one point that demonstrator was supposed to fly in 2019 if I remember correctly.

The same kind of delay for the main plane would put it close to 2030.

"...where Concorde failed?"

Hold on, when did Concorde "fail"? Concorde was profitable: https://simpleflying.com/did-british-airways-make-a-profit-f...

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The reasons for Concorde's discontinuation are legion - I think even if it weren't for the 2000 Air France crash it would have been discontinued simply due to the age of the fleet, what other airlines are still running 50+ year-old airframes today? Let alone those with very inefficient engines by today's standards.

But it didn't refresh its fleet, either. The Concorde itself might've been successful, but supersonic flight mostly died with it.

Politicians are notoriously impatient people with short attention spans that seldom go beyond a term. Concorde 2, which was more efficient, was cancelled while the planes we can think of prototypes were put in commercial service.

Mass tourism began in the 1970s. Airliners needed something that could carry 350 tourists to Spain or Hawaii cheaply.

A supersonic transport can carry twice as many passengers per day as a subsonic widebody.

How does cost per passenger-km compare?

Ticket should cost anything between 2 to 4 times a normal one. If it works, it’ll capture a lot of business and first class tickets from normal airliners

I meant cost to the operator... ;)

My guess is that it'd be twice as much. It uses about 3 times more fuel than a modern widebody, but flies about 3 times faster than them too, so they'd be able to fly at least twice as frequently. All things considered, I'd expect ticket prices at twice the price of coach, perhaps less, but the added convenience of extra departure times and shorter flights would enable a lot of elasticity.

> Concorde was profitable

Only because the planes were sold to the carrier for a nominal (£1, iirc) price. If you consider the development and construction costs, the Concorde is billions in the hole.

> Concorde is billions in the hole.

This is the role of governments. From this R&D hole, aerospace jobs were maintained, people were trained, technologies were developed and a whole lot of other side benefits to both countries involved.

It’s not unlike NASA’s space program - if you look at the market value of the equipment built, it’s just an enormous money sink. We all know it’s not.

NASA and JPL and other ostensible civilian employers of rocket-scientists and other aerospace engineering experts has a nice side-effect of effectively giving the government a strategic-reserve of highly-skilled experts who can be reassigned to ASAT, ICBM and bomber weapons development at short-notice - and also means those same experts aren't employed by any rival or potential rival superpowers.

...kinda like how the US's civilian nuclear fusion programs were/are a way to keep people who-just-so-happen to be nuclear weapons experts gainfully employed and handily available after the cold war ended. Y'know... just in case!

> Concorde was profitable

Your own article points out that it really, really wasn't, especially not for the parties investing in its development, not their customers who profited mainly because they got the aircraft at knockdown prices (and operated it without any supersonic competition) in what was later described as one of the worst deals ever negotiated by any government

$3bn was spent developing an aircraft they hoped would be the next generation of flight. Only 14 ever saw commercial service, and most were basically given away because nobody else wanted them. The article suggests BA made $0.75bn profit (Air France less) over three decades, which meant they wouldn't have made a profit on operating it if they'd paid normal purchase prices for mass-market commercial aircraft, never mind if they'd had to underwrite the costs of the R&D programme which is what Boom needs customers to do...

But it jump started Airbus, a hugely successful aircraft manufacturer, the difference between Airbus and Boeing is the dependence on fly-by-wire a technology that was first used outside the military in Concorde. So yes it was £3BN down but Airbus supports > 100,000 jobs in Britain, France and Germany. If you compare it to the current Space Launch System, which is a vapourware project which exists to provide a channel for government subsidy to the US Aerospace industry it makes more sense.

I agree, indirectly it lead to another company being hugely successful, which was probably a net win in terms of indirect tax revenues for the government (less because of the tech innovation and more because despite writing off £3bn on the project itself they also see returns from Airbus and every other domestic aerospace supply chain company that came afterwards, and all profitable airline operations, and all businesses aided by more available, cheaper flight)

But if Boom did likewise their investors won't see a penny. Viewed from that perspective, Boom only succeeds if they make and deliver aircraft at a profit (or get strategically acquired by Boeing or Airbus).

That calculation rests on the assumption that Concord was a necessary step toward Airbus. Given that the Airbus A300 actually entered service prior to the Concord, it seems to me that Concord was not a necessary precondition.

Granted, the Concord was the first aircraft to have fly-by-wire. However, it used an entirely different technology (analogue fly-by-wire) to the Airbus A320 (digital) and preceded it by a decade.

Were there some lessons learned from the Concord that carried over to the Airbus A320? Maybe? However, the causal relation you've conjectured seems quite tenuous.

Well it set a precedent for Cross-European collaboration and presumably a whole bunch of engineers from Britain and France all started talking to each other sharing ideas, learning each other’s language and cultural differences in the early 1960’s. The development of the A300 was started about 8 years after France and Britain merged their SST projects, the bulk of the development of the A300 was done in the 70’s. The engineers that worked on the Concorde programme would have started to become available to begin work on the A320 in the late 70’s/early 80’s. Also there is at least one digital computer in Concorde, I think it was the engine/intake controller that prevents the unstart problems that the Blackbird suffered from but I don’t remember TBH.

> Well it set a precedent for Cross-European collaboration and presumably a whole bunch of engineers from Britain and France all started talking to each other sharing ideas, learning each other’s language and cultural differences in the early 1960’s.

Maybe. Hard to say. But, if the 'Concord' was a project to build a wide body subsonic passenger jet, then the outcome would have been much the same, with the exception of a genuinely useful aircraft being produced.

> The engineers that worked on the Concorde programme would have started to become available to begin work on the A320 in the late 70’s/early 80’s.

Again, perhaps. Maybe, they were employed more on military jets? Who knows? European aeronautical engineers knew how to build passenger jets before Concord and not every European aeronautical engineer worked on Concord.

> Also there is at least one digital computer in Concorde

Probably, they had pocket calculators before that bird took off for its first flight. I don't really see how that matters.

Generally, the problem with these X is justified because it preceded Y arguments is that they overlook the fact we could have directly applied our efforts toward reaching Y.

> But it jump started Airbus, a hugely successful aircraft manufacturer

Yes but that was also very, very lucky. Claiming this is some inevitable legacy of Concord is nonsense.

Airbus almost failed like so many other British-French-German partnerships of the time.

Using Airbus to claim Concord is a success is a huge strech.

So basically numbers any tech company can get multi-billion dollar IPO nowadays?

"$3bn was spent developing an aircraft they hoped would be the next generation of flight"

When we compare money spent on development, commercial projects will always win because they get to offload infrastructure, prerequisites and fundamental research onto the government.

The first iPhone offered navigation but didn't have to foot the bill for GPS satellites. In the advent of personal car, car companies didn't pay for highways (but train companies do).

The current crop of Fusion start-ups are benefiting from decades of research, and training spend on scientists - they would have no-one to hire!

If I were a VC, Boom wold be the easiest investment decision ever.

Here's the 3 questions I'd ask myself: 1. can they make it? 2. can they sell it? 3. if they make it and they sell it, could others copycat them, then out-execute and take the prize away from them?

The easiest to answer is 3. Out of all the unicorn startups of the last 2 decades, this one is the by far the one with the highest barriers of entry for the competition. The only ones coming close are SpaceX and Tesla. Why? Let's say Boom makes the first sale in 2025. If anyone wants to enter the market, they won't have a product for at least 10 years, and Boom can already be at jet 2.0 by that time, well into the R&D cycle for 3.0.

The first question: can they make it? Concorde was introduced in "prod" 45 years ago, but had the first flight 7 years prior. Technology has made huge advances in half a century. Obviously computers in general, and computational fluid dynamics in particular are many, many orders of magnitude above what was available in the mid-60's. But other things experienced impressive progress as well: theoretical CFD, materials, manufacturing to name just a few. Jet engines are also much more efficient, and what's super-important: Boom need to just buy them form some suppliers, they don't need to invent them as was the case with Concorde. There are basically only 3 suppliers out there (General Electric, Pratt&Whitney and Rolls Royce), but their competition is fierce, which means the engines are both extreme quality and reasonable price.

Finally, if they make it, will they sell it? Yes, the market for business jets can't wait for a supersonic jet, no matter what price level. A Gulfstream G700 comes at $75MM, and it goes without saying that it is subsonic. Think of all those billionaires who spend hundreds of millions on luxury yachts. A supersonic private jet would be the most exalted form of conspicuous consumption. Do you gather Abramovich will sign up for one?

Concorde could not target this market segment, since it was made with government money. But a VC-backed startup most surely can.

You seemed to have given positive answers to those 3 question yourself. It seems that Boom just had to pick the right topic.

Theranos undoubtedly convinced VC all 3 questions. I wonder how much VC had brought that onto themselves.

G700 has long legs. It can fly from New York to Hong Kong without a stop. Plus, it doesn't have to reduce it's speed when flying over land.

A Boom aircraft would presumably only be able to use it's selling point on routes over open water. That completely shuts out almost all of the Asia market - it's range isn't great enough to make it from Asia to the US, and most other routes Asians fly mainly cross land.

The only buyers would be American east coast billionaires that go to Europe often and European billionaires that come to the US often. Are there enough of these?

Unsure how feasible it is, but Boom does expect to have cross pacific flights as well as flights over land due to various improvements to the tech.

Their sub-scale prototype was claimed to be ready in 2019 at one point. And as far as I know its still has not flown.

So as for the 'can they make it', I am very skeptical. Even assuming they can make it, can they make enough of them fast enough to actually be a return on investment.

Even assuming that, is the market large in-enough that a real manufacturing line is going to be possible?

Could the company exist maybe, will it be widely profitable, questionable.

In my opinion the coming revolution in Electric airplanes is going to be 100x more disruptive and with a much larger importunity for profit.

I don't think Musk competencies (Tesla, SpaceX) have any interest in Supersonic Jet engines. Musk himself has often talked about wanting to build a Supersonic Electric Jet for shorter domestic route. Something that could really fundamentally change the industry.

The competition for Boom from that direction is actually rocket power transport in the form of Starship.

Rocket power transport it’s nonsense once you consider how much time the on boarding and outboarding is

There are some technical details to work out, but 1 hour to anywhere in the world is feasible with a ballistic missile, and impossible to beat with a supersonic aircraft. Whether those details can be ironed out to provide it commerically remains to be seen, but ballistic missile technology was proven in the 1970s. The ridiculous part isn't because of how long it takes to get on and off a spaceship. Even if it took 3 hours to get on and three more to get off, 7 hours would still beat 17 hours in a plane going Sydney to London.

But would it be comfortable?

edit: I meant 7 hours of which experience exactly compared to 17 hours of whatever class at whatever price per flight?

Well you have to get into planes or rockets, so that time is likely not that different. If its not worth it for rockets, its not worth it for supersonic flights either.

I wonder hot financing works for a project like this.

How can one push up the valuation of the company if it´s just doing R/D for years? Aren´t all the original investors and the founder diluted to nothing after two round of funding? Or did the founder start with a couple of million of his own money, meaning he still owned 100% after the first investment rounds? Also, how would this work with YC - don´t they take like 8% for a relatively small amount of funding?

Ambitious project, it’s great to see people going big even if it’s a long shot.

Name is a little off putting, plane go boom is usually a bad thing.

Right?! I also did a double take when he say he ‘crashed’ the Virgin Galactic event.

Can anybody tell how such a plane will sound like over land? Growing up in Europe in the 90s, we regularly saw fighter jets doing maneuver and we called the noise they make a sonic boom: a loud, scratching and thundering noise that seems to come from the wrong direction. But I've also heard that planes almost never flew supersonic over civilian areas and an actual sonic boom sounds like a double clap, and is much more terrible. So is the noise I remember a sonic boom or not?

I think I could live with the kind of booms we heard as kids, as they were not worse than "regular" airport noise and the double- or triple-glassed windows common here block them out mostly. Especially since a civilian plane will have >30 years of technological advantage and will take noise into consideration, which military designs likely don't.

Fighter jets are loud as hell, without the sonic boom.

I've heard a lot of fighter jets. But I also don't believe I've heard an actual sonic boom.

There is not really a sonic "boom": the sound you hear is shaped as a cone (behind the plane) so it's continuous and emitted as soon as the plane is supersonic. You only hear it one time because you're static, hence the "boom" (everyone on the path of the plane will hear it at different times). A supersonic plane is very loud, and if you're static it sounds like some explosion ( https://www.thelocal.fr/20200930/loud-bang-heard-in-paris-wa... for a "recent" example).

Usually military plane avoid going supersonic close to cities.

Extract from wikipedia:

  A sonic boom does not occur only at the moment an object crosses the speed of sound; and neither is it heard in all directions emanating from the supersonic object. Rather the boom is a continuous effect that occurs while the object is travelling at supersonic speeds. But it affects only observers that are positioned at a point that intersects a region in the shape of a geometrical cone behind the object. As the object moves, this conical region also moves behind it and when the cone passes over the observer, they will briefly experience the boom.

Another example was January this year when a couple of RAF Typhoons intercepted an unresponsive civilian plane, and their sonic boom was heard over large parts of southeast England https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-55645967

I think you were just hearing the engines, brother. The boom is two loud claps like you say and you might be worried about your Windows.

Former USAFE member here. You weren't hearing a sonic boom, just the normal engine noise. If I recall correctly, we would do supersonic training off the coast of Spain. Flying supersonic over populated areas would do things like break windows in people's houses and that's not good.

The engine noise you heard was loud because military aircraft are normally exempt from sound level limits (when non-supersonic). And the engines for the F-16, Tornado, etc. were designed in the 1970s. Even for modern military engines, performance comes first. So they are still going to be loud.

The chart in this PDF shows that for the F-16, the allowed exposure time could be as short as 21 seconds with the older "muff + plugs" hearing protection. They're just LOUD (and I have the tinnitus to prove it)

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/av...

Lol, dude, you would have loved flying in Germany in the 80ies. Nosuch nonsense having to care about broken windows.

Officially, maybe. In practice it was very, very different, and loud.

I was there in the mid-80's. We had a 100m tall microwave tower on base. The Luftwaffe pilots from Flugplatz Pferdsfeld would fly loops around it in their F-4 Phantoms during joint exercises. The US pilots had been told they would receive Article-15's if they tried that stunt.

An interesting story about property damage however, was during the REFORGER exercises. What I heard was that every convoy would have a Captain or Major in a Jeep at the end of it, and he would have a checkbook to pay for any damages to homes, vehicles, gardens, etc. caused by the tanks.

Strange. I lived and was born there. Though I can tell you my experience was very different from yours. Maybe it differed by region? Mine was mainly Bonn (Bad Godesberg) and surroundings, and later Burscheid, which seemed to be some sort of path where they did their low flying(though slower there, not near sonic). Nonetheless I feel there were times where almost no day went by without several sonic booms. Especially in Bonn from say 1980 to 1986. And those were F-15, F-16, F-18, rarely F-14, besides the stuff the German Airforce flew. Maybe Belgium, Netherlands? Oh, some Mirages and Gripen also! (But even more rare than the F-14) I could tell them apart because someone gifted me a set of cards for aircraft recognition ;->

> but there’s a good chance that engineers could lower the boom from 105 decibels to just 70 decibels. At that volume, US lawmakers might revisit the speed limit if it means getting from California to Washington DC in half the time.

"good chance"..."might revisit"

Talk about a wing and a prayer...

I remember Concorde coming over in London, below supersonic, and even then it was very loud. Also, I may remember incorrectly, but Concorde never went into a holding pattern. All other flights were put on hold. Not sure if it was due to manoeuvrability or noise. I suppose you can do that with government help.

Could also be lack of fuel. Concorde had barely enough range to fly to New York.

Yeah, sure, the 20 flyover state Senators whose constituents will have to hear the plane pass by (and never land) are going to vote in favor of a plan to make life more convenient for 2 Democrats from California.

> Boom plans to use fuel made from carbon removed from the atmosphere, meaning that supersonic travel will be carbon neutral from day one.

If this is economically viable - say, within a factor of 3 of current fuel prices - it sounds like it would be the solution to climate change. I am skeptical.

It’s not BOOM but Rolls Royce have an idea of using one of their Small Modular Reactors to generate synthetic aviation fuel at only double the cost of normal stuff.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-on-t...

So, if you remove the nuclear and couple it with wind or solar, it may end up cheaper than the liquid dinosaur stuff.

Unlikely. The cost involved would still be substantially higher than fossil fuel.

The required energy scales quadratically with speed. That's just basic physics and there's no way around it.

The real question we should ask ourselves is whether it's even worth it just to shave off a couple of hours on a trip that shouldn't be a regular occurrence anyway?

If you take the entire trip - that is door-to-door - into consideration, the time savings you pay for with about 6.25x the energy use comes down to 30% or so:

• 1 hour to get to the airport

• 1.5 hours security checks, check-in, getting on the plane

• 6 hours flight time

• 1.5 hours security checks, customs, getting out of the airport

• 1 hour airport to destination

That's 11 hours total for the subsonic flight and ~7.5 hours for the supersonic flight (assuming >mach 2.2 for the entire duration of the flight). That's a net time saving of 3.5 hours or ~32% faster for >6.25 the energy expense.

How does that make any sense?

Supersonic doesn’t make too much sense for short flights, but I routinely fly 10+ hour routes and it’d be wonderful if I could shave 5 hours from the total flight time. If they can do LA or SF to Tokyo or Taipei, it’ll make a miserable trip into a bearable one.

Exactly. Anything over five hours is very unpleasant for me. Over eight hours and I'll actually segment the trip with a hotel stay in between. Turning a 10-hour flight into a five-hour flight would save me a full day.

Sure, I'd take the shorter flight, everything else being equal. But what premium would you pay for that ability? The article only mentions being better than Concorde at 5x the fuel cost (I assume it means per passenger-km).

It may be a significant premium over coach, but would be much less significant over business and first class. A Lufthansa now retired 747 carries 8 passengers in first class and about a hundred in business. With a plane like this, LH would be able to carry more first and business passengers over the same amount of time at equivalent prices. Remember Concorde 2 would be much more efficient than the first iteration, and that was with late 60's technology.

I love nuclear energy more then 99.9% o people and even I don't believe this will happen.

"Boom is leveraging advances in engine design that yield greater fuel efficiency, which will mean cheaper ticket prices. But they aren’t stopping there. Boom plans to use fuel made from carbon removed from the atmosphere, meaning that supersonic travel will be carbon neutral from day one."

You can have cheap tickets and don't give a shit about the climate or you can claim you use extra expensive synfuels made from carbon removed from the atmosphere. You can't have both, except if you're talking bullshit.

Why not? Can you explain?

Even today's airline industry is unsustainable and can only continue to function because it's heavily subsidised.

Fossil fuel for airplanes is tax-free and cheaper than petrol, e.g. $3.31/gal w/o taxes in California [0] vs. $2.06/gal (average) for jet fuel [1].

Using atmospheric carbon to generate fuel is significantly more expensive than that as even just capturing the CO² costs more than the crude oil used for jet fuel [2].

The claim of "carbon neutral fuel" basically rests on super optimistic assumptions already. The cost can only be competitive if a world-wide carbon tax on the order of $200/metric ton is implemented, which is very unrealistic.

[0] https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/transp...

[1] https://www.iata.org/en/publications/economics/fuel-monitor/

[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/carbon-en...

"Fossil fuel for airplanes is tax-free and cheaper than petrol, e.g. $3.31/gal w/o taxes in California [0] vs. $2.06/gal (average) for jet fuel [1]."

This is total insanity, why are we doing this

Cheaper than Concorde is still very expensive I assume.

Why can't you have both?

Fuels made from carbon filtered from the air are expensive. Like... not a bit more expensive, but really expensive.

While there's some uncertainty about how expensive - this is technology that doesn't exist today - it's gonna require massive amounts of energy, which is simple physics.

It doesn't really make sense to make fuels from CO2 drawn from the atmosphere if we're still pumping oil. Instead, make jet fuel from the oil, then make that carbon neutral by capturing and sequestering the CO2. This will change if green hydrogen becomes very cheap, but not yet.

One way this could work is if we massively scale up renewables. While from a climate perspective you'd want energy to be as expensive as possible as long as there's fossil in the mix, from a social perspective you'd want it to be as cheap as possible. Ideally, all neccessities (power, food, water, transportation) could be made so cheap that everybody can afford them, and they cease to be commodities.

If you produce so much power - think solar on every rooftop, maybe one day fusion or clean fission becomes available - you will neccessarily have some way to store surplus energy. Especially with solar and wind. I can imagine that one way to do that will be synthetic fuel from air or from trash.

So yes, today it is not feasible (with today's technology and society). But I think it is not more unrealistic than other ideas popular around here, like hyperloop, fusion, or self-driving cars.

I assume Boom will be owning the global IP on the carbon neutral fuel. because otherwise all other planes will equally carbon neutral.

"I assume Boom will be owning the global IP on the carbon neutral fuel"

How would they come to posses it? I don't think it's patentable given the breadth of the topic and amount of research already published.

Exactly, which means the carbon neutrality claim is just PR...

Cheaper than Concord is not cheap in absolute terms.

Can supersonic aircraft be as big as the 747 etc jumbos without much worse energy requirements?

Or does the fuel consumption rise by a factor?

I can see the Concorde had almost mach2 as top speed?

Is there another Sonic boom at mach2,3 etc?

Unless it's a fuel efficient mach3, there's not much point to it, most flying time improvements should be done on checking in and boarding, the flight itself for flights less than 2 hours in duration can't be optimized , a supersonic plane wouldn't even accelerate to top speed before it has to slow down on short flights like paris-london.

There is only one boom, when you cross the sound barrier.

No. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_boom

The boom isn't from crossing the barrier; it's from being at that high speed. A plane traveling at Mach 1.5 cross-country will leave a boom at every point along its travel

Going that fast requires significantly more energy. You start to worry about things like the cross section of the aircraft (which is why fast plane commonly have knife-edge wings) and smooth airflow over the fuselage.

One of the advantages of the composite construction being used by Boom is you don't have those thousands of rivets sticking out. And panel gaps. Which is why the 787 is as fuel-efficient as it is compared to traditional aluminum bodied aircraft.

One of the main reasons the US banned supersonic flights overland is that the only plane capable of them wasn't American. The ban came only after Boeing abandoned their plans for a competitor.

It's rather more a consequence of the very bad handling by the FAA of the sonic booms campaign over Oklahoma City in 1964, and subsequent bad PR associated with supersonic aircraft.

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

You ignore the fact that sonic booms are really fucking annoying, so I will dispute your claim and say that there is no way to put lipstick on this pig and say it was mishandled by the FAA. The booms annoyed everyone. This issue is further compounded by the fact that there is no useful purpose served by supersonic passenger flight; it causes little inconvenience for a small benefit to a infinitesimal fraction of the population when done over water, it cause an ongoing inconvenience to a large group for that same small gain for a tiny group of wealthy people when done over land.

You're right that the booms annoyed everyone; but the end result is that all supersonic aircraft have been banned, even those that would make less noise than a regular passenger plane.

Boom claims that they can reduce the sonic boom considerably; If the project is sucessful, I believe the ban for overland supersonic flights would change to be based on noise level, rather than aircraft speed.

Its still an insane dumb regulatory response to ban all super-sonic travel.

Its totally unnecessary and restrictive and will block and hinder many of the technologies that could overcome the initial problem.

Don't care. No one is banning supersonic travel, just supersonic travel over land. If it can't be made to work economically over the long oceanic routes then it is a dumb idea that deserves to die. Again. If it works over water then it can stay there.

if it can't be made to work economically then there is no need for regulation to explicitly ban it. That is like saying 'nuclear fusion can't be made to work economically, so lets introduce regulation to ban it.'

That is just an incredibly mindbogglingly stupid way to handle regulation in this sector.

If anything regulate the SOUND being produced and how loud or often they can be.

In fact, with the coming revolution in electric aviation, we could actually have super sonic over land travel. A possible solution beyond the airframe for the BOOM problem is to fly higher and in lower density air.

But if you start flat out with regulation that makes any such innovation incredibly difficult and risky its unlikely people are gone invest in such innovation.

And with electric flight its exactly the case that it would be overland, as it would start out with shorter routes and not cross Atlantic flights. Thus this regulation literally kill possible investment in such architecture.

Be clever and smart. Ride your own shock wave forever and hard.

Use compression lift [1], as the Valkyrie [2] did.

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie

Less boom, more lift, can it be that hard?

Am I the only one here thinking this is an unwanted future ?

Aerospace is already profiting to few rich people on earth and represents 2% of global emissions and this is saying "well we need to go faster consuming yet huge amount of fuel" for the wealthiest. Please stop these technos solutionists gadget and start to think real problems like the climate crisis.

This is 100% correct. The last thing we need is more inefficient aviation for the super-rich.

Historically, things that were only meant for the super rich eventually got commoditised for everyone. And: Under current capitalist regimes, this is how humans push the envelope of possibilities, like it or not.

Climate crisis is urgent but token efforts to strike down nascent businesses on the cutting-edge such as Boom is not how the world solves it (discounting the fact that Boom has a path forward to be carbon-neutral: https://boomsupersonic.com/sustainability)

> Historically, things that were only meant for the super rich eventually got commoditised for everyone

That would make the situation much, much worse.

> Under current capitalist regimes, this is how humans push the envelope of possibilities, like it or not

"Not" would be the choice there. This is exactly the reason why we are in this crisis.

Would you have said the same thing about the Tesla roadster 20 years ago?

No, because physics. Electric engines are twice more energy efficient than their ICE cousins.

Supersonic jets are 2-3 times less energy efficient than 'normal' jets, and all methods to make them carbon neutral can be applied to both modes of transport.

You are forgetting one thing: how the electricity is generated. Nuclear reactor is clean, hydro energy from waterfall in Norway is even better. Or a coal power plant in Germany. Electric engine might be super efficient. But at the end it could also be coal powered vehicle.

And?

Efficiency does not matter when you burn coal!

Wouldn't it be nice if we could half our coal usage by doubling efficiency of everything using it?

It's always entertaining to see techno-luddites on HN - where the average person is wealthy and probably drives a gasoline car for most daily activities.

This is like criticizing the automobile back when only the ultra wealthy could afford them and most people still road around on horse or foot.

You haven’t really refuted any of the points the OP made, though?

It's also fun to see people who believe in global capitalism and make Ben-Shapiro-level of arguments.

The people posting here may be wealthy, but I’d wager the vast majority aren’t Concorde wealthy

Are you talking about buying one or traveling in one? Latter is very accessible at least according to projections.

There is a difference being potentially Concorde wealthy and actually choosing to spend money to fly in one.

Also, some of use are not exactly Concorde young haha.

Basically your post reads like this meme:

https://pics.me.me/we-should-improve-society-somewhat-yet-yo...

So, according to the article, Boom intends to make their plane carbon neutral from day 1 (by using fuel generated from atmospheric carbon). Clearly that is intended to address concerns like yours.

Does that change your opinion in any way? If so, how does it change? If not, then why not?

No. That fuel could be used for other things, to offset more emissions, rather than wasting it on the ultra rich.

Have you considered that it could be used by more than just the ultra rich. For example, medical flights. Or emergency family travel (like when my mother was dying last month and I was on the other side of the world and missed my chance to see her alive due to lenghty air travel).

I not against Boom but this claim to me is not credible. Maybe they will do this for their testing of the airplane. The claim that all their planes will fly with such fuel is not currently credible.

If this succeeds, it won't just be for rich people. Anything technological goes down in price over time. And there are huge benefits to modes of affordable travel become faster, which the article details.

That is even worse.

Not if the fuel comes from carbon-neutral sources.

Wasn't the Concorde a failure because of noise pollution? It could only do trans Atlantic flights.

It was a truly massive fuel hog.

i'm not boarding a craft made by a company called BOOM...

I will never understand why Boom chose such a terrible name.

Of course it is a novelty to hear a sonic boom once or twice, but who wants to hear them repeatedly? I imagine they will fly mostly overwater like Concorde, but why remind people on the ground of the most annoying thing that a supersonic flight does?

Much worse, as safe and reliable as they can build and fly these airplanes, eventually there will be a flight that does not make it to a safe landing. When that happens, there will be a loud...

For me it's instead a really cool name.

SV edginess

> I will never understand why Boom chose such a terrible name.

It’ll be the core of countless jokes. I remember a TV series called “Fireball XL5” about a spaceship with that name and I always found it amusing someone would want to board something named like that.

Spaceships always land as a fireball (atmospheric re-entry), so it's a fitting name IMO.

Only the real ones. When you have sci-fi rated engines, you can do a full propulsive reentry down to the landing area without the need for atmospheric braking.

If powered flights were invented today it would have been banned for noise and safety concerns. Just look at how upset people in SF get about the once a year Fleet Week aerial demonstrations.

That's a good point. I'd guess that it's optimized more for investor/employee attention than the broader market. It's evocative of cool physics and "disruption" instead of the blandly pleasant tone one takes to appeal to consumers.

I wouldn't be surprised if they rebranded if/once they start offering flights.

> To put that into perspective, a Tesla travels at 250 miles per hour

Is this how you write super-relatable PR pieces now?

I'd also like to know which Tesla can get to 250mph (400kmh). The 100PD tops out at a "measly" 155. Only the most extreme hypercars can reach 250mph, and even out of those, a small handful are road legal.

Of course the Roadster in space is doing something like 20,000 mph relative to the earth but that also isn't 250 mph.

> 20,000 mph

And that on a single battery charge!

Didn't they take the batteries out before launching the thing?

Even better!

Or no battery charge at all! :)

Maybe if you push it off a cliff?

155mph is 250km/h, I suspect that's where they miscalculated

With these kinds of miscalculations, I hope the Boom can glide well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider#Miscalculation_du...

Yeah it sounds pretty suspect to me. The lowest powered cars I could find that would do 250 MPH were around 800HP, most were 1000+.

Also, the hyper cars that can reach 400km/h cannot travel at such speeds. They don't have enough range and their tires would blow relatively quickly.

> The Model S Plaid's official top speed is rated at 200 mph (321.9 kph), according to Elon Musk and Tesla,

P100D is no longer the newest generation

Aside from being a funny way of putting it, it also seems wrong. The top speed on the Plaid is about 200mph.

Looks like they fixed the article.

> Boom is building for reliability from day one, and by simplifying the design of the plane and using software solutions wherever possible, they should be able to avoid many of the pitfalls that the Concorde faced.

Oh boy.

Given softwares track record when it comes to reliability and safety I think that's a mistake.

I do trust engineers, I don't trust software engineers.

What do you mean? Airbus planes have been using software very heavily ( fly by wire for instance) since the first models, and recent ones ( A350) have pretty serious server rooms onboard.

Just because Boeing are incompetent and criminally negligible doesn't mean that airplanes shouldn't use any software.

There's a view that over reliance on software contributed to the total loss of flight AF447 (since pilots were not sufficiently experienced in how to fly the plane in the various fallback modes to be able to react appropriately in an emergency).

That's more of a training issue than a software issue.

The two are closely related. It’s like saying SQL injection bugs are a training/code review issue. But what if the software eliminated that risk (e.g. ORMs).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72

We still don't know what went wrong there.

Good, finally an aerospace company that considers reliability and uses software. I have to tell my engineering colleagues, they will be happy to hear they can stop drawing on paper. Also that they can replace the sextants for navigation.

By "software solutions," I believe they mean simulating wind tunnels so they can rapidly iterate. Once they have something that works, they still build a physical prototype and test it. There's no real software risk. (See bullet 1 under "Why Did The Concorde Fail.) There's another article on Boom that talks about this approach.

These kind of projects remind me of elaborate fronts for money laundering... why?

Presumably because you're too reflexively cynical? There's an option between rabid optimism and wild conspiracy theories, and it's just "mild optimism/pessimism + wait and see"

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