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Comment by frankfrank13 | Hacker News Reader

I still can't really wrap my head around this company:

1. How did a SWE start and raise funds for this company

2. How did he/they recruit the kind of talent you'd need to actually build a test plane

3. How much is left to do before a real commercial flight, and can they really do it?

A few months ago the conversation was "if they depend on next-gen engines and next-gen fuel this entire company is hindering on tech that isn't even available yet" so as a very non-aviation person, what does this test flight prove? It's not the air frame, its not the engines, its not even the full control suite.

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Unsure on funding, but this is a proof of concept. It'll show that the modeling, design practices, manufacturing, etc are working. The "meta" of the plane. For example, while as you point out the air frame of the final production model isn't being tested, they are testing the ability to model the stresses and strains an airframe would undergo throughout the speed envelope. And that's huge

Supersonics are limited by regulation so it's also an attempt to overturn the ban.

The US is not the only country in the world, you can always sell internationally in countries with more flexibility.

I think this is really tough especially since the US is a big market and usually airlines don’t like to buy planes that only fly in specific countries.

It seems unlikely that airlines are going to lead the way here, just due to economics I think it's going to be the bizjet market leading the way(1).

So the obvious choice for domestic flights would be Russia: rich oligarchs, huge country, loose enforcement of laws. Unfortunately for the world that is impossible for the foreseeable future.

The next best target is going to be transpac- IFF they can get sufficient range. So wealthy businessmen who have to do a lot of travel between Asia and North America is a reasonable market, so long as they can do supersonic the entire way. If you have to stop and refuel I suspect that the numbers don't work so well. If they can only do a translant without refueling the market is going to be people who want the prestige of having the coolest toys, and Boom is stuck trying to compete with Gulfstream G650 on prestige.

1: R.E.G. Davies explained it best, the problem with commercial supersonic is that the earth is rotating. For commercial airlines, the killer app for selling "expensive but gets you there faster" flights is the ability to get someone to a meeting the same day versus having to travel the day before. If you can save an executive a day that is hugely valuable and worth the company paying a premium for. If you can't, paying extra for a faster flight just isn't worth that much.

As a thought experiment, let's say that everything else is exactly the same, but at the end of the runway a Star Trek transporter beams the plane directly to the runway at the destination. So the executive wakes up in NYC at 5:30AM, is out of the house by 6AM, takes an hour to get to the airport, that's 7AM. It's an international flight so they need to go through extra checks, it's 8AM when their flight leaves for Paris. It is beamed directly to CDG, thanks to time zones it's now 2PM. Then it takes another hour to get through passport control etc. and it's 3PM, and another hour for ground travel in Paris and even without the flight taking any time at all it's already 4PM after waking up at 5:30AM. That's tough to make meetings work. (Obviously the return trip can achieve this meeting on day 1 effect, but a commercial airline you can only charge good prices for on half of its legs is going to be tricky to earn its money back.)

What about the Gulf States? Also lots of money, lots of ocean if they're traveling to South Asia/South East Asia, opportunity for subsonic to Europe, etc

For bizjets, that's another good use case, thanks.

I don't know how much travel there is along these routes, but you could probably shrink Dubai-Mumbai, say, from 3 hours to 1 hour, and that would be handy for meetings- only a 1.5 hour time difference with IST. But regular subsonic flights can also give you meetings in a day over that, so I'm not sure how much extra companies would be willing to pay for a commercial flight along those routes.

Concorde was very popular with business travelers, though. 3-4 hours in the air is a lot easier to deal with than 7-8. Maybe you don't get to a formal meeting on the same day but it still frees up time in the evening to meet with local colleagues, and leaves you much more fresh for that meeting the day after.

According to stories I heard, BA was able to turn a small profit on Concorde, but Air France never did(1). That was with each plane being given away for free (excuse me, 1 pound/franc each) subsidized by their governments. So with the prices that they charged (2) and free planes both airlines were close to break-even in operating costs. Presumably Boom is planning on charging more than 1 dollar for these planes, which means that the prices are going to have to be even higher than Concorde's were decades ago. And that means that people are going to have to justify it to their company even harder.

Believe me, I would love to have flown on one. I know a couple of guys who did, and it sounded really cool. But if the economic case doesn't close, then the only way they get sold is as toys for rich people, hoping to eventually trickle down to us mere mortals. Eventually. Maybe.

1: This is why after the crash AF decided to retire the Concorde, and going from having to pay half of the maintenance facility upkeep to paying all of it pushed BA from small profit into the red, hence BA following AF into retirement.

2: Which were high! Back as a teen in the 1990's I looked into it, hoping to talk my parents into flying one for a translant we were doing, and the cheapest ticket on a Concorde was like 3x more expensive than even 1st class on a 747. We flew steerage on a 747 instead.

Makes sense that NYC/London would be more lucrative than NYC/Paris, given all the finance industry travel.

I think US West Coast/East Asia city pairs would be the real killer app for passenger supersonic, if aircraft range permits.

3-4 hours in the air is a lot easier to deal with than 7-8 hours on a 1960s B-707.

On a Dreamliner with modern entertainment, higher cabin pressure, satellite internet, big windows, far better seats and much, much quieter engines? Meh, NBD.

They don't need to do that on their own though. They just need customers who want a supersonic plane who are willing to put their backing to overturning the ban. If a few dozen super rich people say they'd be able to create a million jobs by shaving 20 minutes off a trip 'the people' will often listen.

> a few dozen super rich people

Overture is an airliner [1]. With a $5k price target (I’d guess $10k), their market is habitual business-class travellers. Not even the low-end private jet crowd.

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

Going after business class travelers in a world with Zoom and 'doing more with less' being the zeitgeist of corporate spending is starting to sound like doubling down on making gold-plated horse buggies five years after the first Model T rolled off the assembly line.

> business class travelers in a world with Zoom and 'doing more with less' being the zeitgeist of corporate spending

Not sure if you’ve flown recently, but the front cabin is full, increasingly of leisure travellers who can work remotely. (Not upgrades, either. RASM is up and growing.)

Also, Zoom meetings are great for middle management and start-ups. But middle management wasn’t being flown around in business anyway. If you’re pitching a billion-dollar LP, you’re flying to meet them.

> Not sure if you’ve flown recently, but the front cabin is full, increasingly of leisure travellers who can work remotely. (Not upgrades, either. RASM is up and growing.)

It seems like US legacy carriers have gotten a lot better at offering discounted business class fares vs. simply throwing it open to upgrades and standbys when they can't fill the cabin with full fare pax.

I suppose maintaining exclusivity is less of a concern these days; they've probably figured out that competing with Middle Eastern and Asian carriers on luxury is a losing battle.

> Also, Zoom meetings are great for middle management and start-ups. But middle management wasn’t being flown around in business anyway.

Many companies still allow business class for transcontinental flights, for all employees. Big Tech is kind of an exception here from what I've heard.

IMO for domestic US travel business is rarely worth the premium anyway vs. premium economy; I'd rather grab a window seat with added legroom and work (or game on my Steam Deck) through the flight. Business class service is often a distraction, and in return you get food that's frequently worse than what you can find in the airport.

> for domestic US travel business is rarely worth the premium anyway vs. premium economy

Lay flat was a game changer, for me, for transcontinental travel. It’s easily worth the premium (or an inconvenient flight time.)

> what does this test flight prove?

This? Nothing of general consequence. Once XB-1 goes supersonic, which Boom says it’ll do later this year, we’ll get real-world sonic-boom reduction data that could influence the FAA. It will also demonstrate the drag of their nose design, which should inform fuel-burn estimates for their airliner.

Following that, the hurdle is the supercruising engine. The XB-1 uses afterburning J85s to go supersonic. Presumably, getting the FAA to flip on overland bans would unlock the capital needed to finish Symphony [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_Symphony

> Development of the engine will be by Kratos subsidiary Florida Turbine Technologies for engine design, General Electric subsidiary GE Additive for additive manufacturing consulting, and StandardAero for maintenance.

Impressively experienced folks behind the Symphony engine.

Never heard of Kratos or FTT, they just bought a small turbine maker. GE Additive doesn't sound like they're doing any design work, just manufacturing.

None of the majors were interested in making a 35K engine (or apparently modifying their cores with the previous 4 engine design), it would be in a zone between large biz jets and commercial single-isle. The former are hundred million dollar iterations of existing designs, the latter are billion dollar developments now. As this is not a conventional engine, it will cost $1B to certification if they're lucky.

I guess it's theoretically possible if KSA is funding it like Lucid and your expectations are way lower than Lucid.

> GE Additive doesn't sound like they're doing any design work, just manufacturing.

Not even that; per the article it's "manufacturing consulting." Presumably someone else is doing the actual work - I'd guess FTT.

FTT definitely knows how to design and build jet engines, but iirc all their designs so far are small subsonic engines for drones and cruise missiles. I'd love to see it happen, but his is brand new territory for them in both size and performance.

edit: not a Fourier transform

For context, the prototype of the T-38 chase-plane that Boom employed went supersonic on its first flight in 1959. And that was a Northrop private-venture, not a government contract.

2 is pretty easy to explain in my opinion. It's not hard to find people who are passionate about aeronautics who want to build a radical new product, rather than be cog number 13482 in the machine of Airbus making fixtures for testing wing spars or whatever, but there aren't many opportunities to actually do that because the cost barrier is so high. But that rolls around to how is 1 possible, so I see your point there.

1. Smart people can learn new things. Musk was also a SWE before starting his companies. I don't know what he demonstrated to convince investors, but if nobody else is pitching you a supersonic jet company and you think a supersonic jet company is a good idea, you don't have the option of a different founder, you have the option of the deal in front of you.

2. People want to work on cool stuff, if you have the cash for it, it's not actually that hard to find talent, particularly if you are working on something without a competitive hiring market (ie jets, not AI atm).

3. I feel pretty confident they can build a plane, there are many people who have worked on planes, many components are off the shelf, etc. The question in my mind is if they can meet somewhere in the middle on sonic boom reduction with regulators in a reasonable amount of time.

He didn't get investors really, that why he financed it himself. Later he got a few friends to invest. They were able to get some loans based on NASA fixed-price contracts. And then they only raised again later when they were further along, much further then Boom.

Building a large jet-liner isn't something many companies have done. Let alone a supersonic one.

Lots of great founders and engineers have even less pedigree.

Ultimately being a great founder requires humility to hire people smarter than yourself, drive to face adversity, and storytelling to build allies + capital.

Doesn’t matter if you’re a high school dropout or a PhD if you can’t rally a team to believe in a mission.

Peter Beck of Rocket Lab comes to mind (recommended read - Ashley Vance's When the Heaven's Went on Sale).

Beck didn't attend Uni, was a tool and die maker at Fisher & Paykel (they make fridges and respirators).

He then went on and took on the world who said "you can't build a rocket company in New Zealand".

Even crazier is that Blake is a high school dropout who then went on to work closely with Bezos at Amazon as an SWE: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/27/boom-founde...

Pretty interesting story overall

Funding: money used to cost next to nothing just a few years ago. Recruiting: where would you rather work, at bureaucratic AF bean counter run Boeing with zero potential upside, or at a startup which even pays more? Can they do it: I think not. Not for any particular technical reason, but due to the higher cost of money, of which they still need a metric ton, and due to how long it all takes. Eventually they’ll pivot into something they can actually do. Probably military.

> 1. How did a SWE start and raise funds for this company

Back when I was a CompSci student two of my friends did their dormmate's fluid dynamics project overnight in exchange for half a liter of fluid dynamics. Personally I was more into helping my other friend with his analog circuit assignments.

What I'm getting at is that Software engineering is not completely removed from the rest of STEM fields.

Well, he was an employee at Amazon in 2001, and started a company that was acquired by Groupon in 2012 when they had reams of money to throw around (hope he wasn't paid in stock!).

He was a SWE at one point but it seems like his career was more in the executive/leadership space before starting Boom.

I get the feeling that companies like this are trying to get a bunch of IP together, and then get acquired by a major player that wants to get ahead.

This seems like the ultimate strategy, not actually ever planning on releasing a well tested supersonic plane and airline but rather selling the dreams for somebody else to take on a highly risky and niche space.

If nobody else is doing it already that just means very smart people have crunched numbers at those giant corporations and decided against it.

10 years ago I would've been excited but when I see outlandish valuations and startups without relevant experience in the very field they are going after, I assume bad faith

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