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Comment by class3shock | Hacker News Reader

I think if we were just talking about the airframe I would agree that is was possible. Not the engines though. Look at some of the costs and timeframes involved in one of the big 3's newer engines:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_PW1000G

Now consider that you aren't starting with existing knowledge base, talent, facilities, etc. (which SpaceX had already started to build up) but from scratch. SpaceX also had nearly a billion in Falcon 9 and Dragon, Boom in its totality looks like it's worth a few hundred million? Lastly SpaceX had 150 employees in 2005 and 1150 in 2010. Boom has 150 and Florida Turbines (the part of Kratos working on this) has 100.

All of that is to say they need more money, more people, and more facilities very quickly if they were to have any chance of hitting any of those timeframes.

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> Not the engines though. Look at some of the costs and timeframes involved in one of the big 3's newer engines

Compare the cost of rockets when SpaceX started. People laughed SpaceX off too.

SpaceX didn't start with an existing knowledge base, talent and facilities either.

The idea of starting a rocket company and building reusable rockets was so laughable at the time that they couldn't even hire anyone for the chief engineer (Elon assumed the role because no-one else would do it).

In 2002 SpaceX realised it wasn't going to be able to buy an existing engine from the Russians, and decided to make their own <- this is essentially the place where Boom is now.

In 2008 they successfully launched Falcon 1 to orbit (on the 4th attempt), and would've gone bankrupt if that 4th attempt had failed like the first 3 <- Boom might never get to this point, but good on them for trying.

2002 SpaceX is more where Boom was a decade ago when they were founded, what have they been doing since? They have one demo aircraft, not to scale of what they are marketing, and have not even demoed an engine yet. What about that makes you think they are the next SpaceX?

Even the comparison is poor. SpaceX had I guess the pieces that what would become ULA as competition? None of the players in the field had innovated for decades because they didn't need to, exactly the sort of area that is good for new people to come in and take a shot at getting a piece of the pie. And on top of that, you have an incredible amount of money and desire for the service. This has no where near the same market.

On top of that the commercial jet / engine world is incredibly competitive. Boeing/airbus and pw/ge/rr/safran have not been sitting idling by for decades reusing the same old designs with the same old technology. If you think that because this is supersonic it's not in competition with them... well I guess that's your choice in how to look at it.

No one was laughing at the idea of self landing rockets, because the DC-X did it 1993, and even by then it was known that it was probably feasible within Earth's atmosphere. The issue was always around the economic feasibility of it, since you have to carry the propellant needed to bring the vehicle back, and whether or not a silicon valley billionaire with no aerospace experience could break through into the industry. I think at this point, history is on Musk's side, but I also think there were valid reasons to be skeptical.

And I'm skeptical that these guys are going to be able to type certify a new engine in the timeframe they've given. Jet engines are harder than rocket motors in some ways. Certainly the way in which they're used imposes stricter reliability requirements. They run constantly, and can take weeks to spool down, for example, when a rocket might only fire a few short burns on a mission. Realistically, I think they would need similar government support as SpaceX received to bring this kind of product to market, but that's just my opinion. It's good that they're trying, and I hope I'm wrong, but this stuff is hard and expensive.

> SpaceX didn't start with an existing knowledge base, talent and facilities either.

This is just plain wrong, look up Tom Mueller's history.

> Look at some of the costs and timeframes involved in one of the big 3's newer engines:

Look at the cost and timeframes involved in spacecraft made by Boeing, Lockmart, Northrop Grumman and all their pals compared to SpaceX.

I'm about 99.99999% sure that there are considerable cost savings to be had in supersonic aircraft as well.

Based on what?

Knowledge of history?

Startups eating the lunch of entrenched, bureaucracy-laden organizations is a very old story indeed -- long before Silicon Valley.

Not in commercial jet engines. The four big players have been in the engine game since the 1920s-1940s. Others came and went, some were bought or merged into them, but no one has eaten their lunch.

If they were still using the same designs they made 50+ years ago (like the rocket industry in the 2000s) I would agree with you... but they aren't. They have been constantly pushing performance to get better thrust-to-weight, efficiency, noise, etc. Whenever they get lazy (which they have) one of the other players is the one that gets to dine well. Look up "The Airforce and the Great Engine War" for an example.

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