Are there any other US companies today that could ostensibly be viable alternatives to Boeing's spot 20 years from now?
Electric-first-and-only was the differentiator for Tesla vs big three... what differentiator will it be in the aero industry?
In the US we have Cessna and Gulfstream, and in Canada we have Bombardier which designed and sort of made the CSeries/A220 in Alabama in conjunction with Airbus.
The whole Bombardier CSeries fiasco was basically Boeing using the US government to try to kill Bombardier because they had managed to put together a plane that was very competitive with with the 737-MAX in a number of categories. The takeaway though is that it is possible, with significant government support, for a small jet manufacturer to put up a feasible competitor to Airbus/Boeing.
The Alabama A220 production started while Bombardier was still a partner which is why I used past tense "made" and "sort of"
Bombardier now makes no commercial jet aircraft. Zero. None. They still make a few general aviation jet aircraft, but that product line is also dwindling. They completely stopped production of all their Lear products in 2021.
Both are wholly owned subsidiaries of their respective parent corporation ownership chains, and are commonly known by Cessna and Gulfstream.
Bombardier competes in the same segment as Cessna and Gulfstream and designed a plane that is actively in competition with the 737.
A lot can happen in a century, especially when the government puts its thumbs on the scale, which is the rule rather than the exception when it comes to commercial passenger planes.
Combine all that with the inherently high costs of running a commercial airline manufacturer, and there just isn't enough demand to support more companies in the space. Changing that would require huge technical breakthroughs, or fundamental changes to how passenger air travel works. Neither of those seem to be likely in the near future.
Hired an experienced propulsion guy away from Boeing to run the show. https://boomsupersonic.com/team-members/scott-powell
They are not going to be able to do it, my opinion. There are very few people in the world who have deep experience doing 3D CFD on supersonic turbofans, I've talked to a few of them and none have been headhunted. The will need good analysis work, they are asking for a LOT out of a single stage fan. They certainly will not have the metallurgical research and manufacturing technologies of the engine manufacturers to use. But best of luck to Scott, his Porsche GT3 was getting kind of old and needs to be upgraded to the latest model.
At the end of the day, it's almost certainly going to be an expensive airline ticket and even if United was (rather inexplicably) touting Boom in their advertising, I'm not sure how many customers there are to pay out-of-pocket for supersonic flights that are likely to be a premium over current top-end seating. I'd love to zip over to Europe a lot faster from the East Coast of the US. But I'm not going to pay as much to save time as I would for the rest of my trip.
But dor sure, said Boeing hire will be royaly paid for his service, good for them. And good for Boom, a prominent Boeing hire will make fundraising so much easier.
But sure, as if building a new commercial airframe manufacturer isn't hard enough, becoming a new jet engine manufacturer on top of that is a winning strategy...
However you would be completely mistaken to think that Boeing, and Airbus, and my friends down there with Embraer, do not have people who actively pursue and develop the core technologies needed to develop, analyze, and test all types of turbine engines, even if they do not result in market products. It is a necessary tool in order to evaluate offerings from the different competitive engine vendors. And at the senior level of engineering, there is basically a revolving door between the airframe manufacturers, the engine manufacturers, and a few of the high-level engineering focused airlines. People are constantly jumping around between them, there is a lot of cross-pollination going on.
The last time they actually developed something is quite a while ago. And managing engine suppliers, and component suppliers only gets you so far in developing the engines yourself. And we are talking super sonics ones.
Civilian super sonic airframes so are novel, nobody did that since the days of the Concord and its Tupolev clone.
There is a new heli player trying to start from clean-sheet, called Hill Helicopters.[0] They are building a sleek new carbon fiber fuselage, but what I am wondering about is the fact that they are also making their own turbine engine.[1]
I have assumed that their new turbine is the hardest part of their plan, am I correct in that assumption? Is it crazy, or not crazy, that they are trying to do this themselves?
The engine itself is a fairly standard centrifugal compressor design, not particularly challenging from an engineering, or material science standpoint. But with no new technology being brought to the table, there is no performance reason roll your own engine, and you are going to have to beat existing engines that have decades of refinement behind them.
I know of two other companies developing microturbines that are considerably smaller than this in an market where there is no real competition, with some cool new technologies like regenerative microtube recuperating heat exchangers. One of them is in development, one is flying their turboprop and developing their turboshaft.
https://www.turbotech-aero.com/
There is a design/prototyping/manufacturing company called ConceptsNREC https://www.conceptsnrec.com/home that specializes in turbine engine and pump design. They do analysis work for basically every jet engine manufacturer and automotive turbocharger manufacturer, have manufacturing facilities to prototype just about every part of a jet engine, and an extensive testing facility. I would just about bet that Hill has used their services in the design and prototyping of their engine. It's a great place to work if you have a PhD in aerodynamics but want to live in rural Vermont. They also sell a CAD design and CFD analysis software package specific to turbomachinery.
If you like industrial stuff, here's a video of their prototype shop, showing some of the parts they make. My favorite is a tiny titanium impeller for a jet fuel starter system on the F-22, at 3:35. It's about the size of a quarter, and took 40 hours to machine with an 0.020" / 0.5mm diameter ball end mill. I've met both the guys in the video, they are brilliant machinists, but definitely not well polished youtube influencers, lol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v98_oxqY7E
It would have to be a horizontal play by an existing company with large amounts of capital and relationships, like a Lockheed Martin or something.
Somebody, somewhere will make an electric jet that is good enough. It will be very destructive for the old manufacturers, for old airports, and for many airliners. It won't need the long airways we are used to so we will likely get more point-to-point like travel to/from city centers (multiple sites for bigger cities).
Longer-distance travel will still remain the remit of traditional jets -- but they will have a much smaller market so there won't be much R&D, except through state subsidies and military contracts.