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Comment by pajeets | Hacker News Reader

My question is, why aren't existing airplane manufacturers and airlines doing supersonic?

Why is it a startup without the same engineerforce or airline experience?

Is the goal to sell another dream after dream to enough whales to be able to cash out on secondary like Uber and WeWorks?

Seems like the most successful startups isn't actually finishing a product or providing forever jobs but sell enough of the half baked dream to enough investors to discover liquidity.

That doesn't seem like a very good thing for the economy in the long run. Money and resources are spent with the sole purpose of producing a few billionaires who will park their money outside the economy and pay little to no taxes and have it insured by bailouts by the people who made it happen.

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> why aren't existing airplane manufacturers and airlines doing supersonic?

In my opinion it's because it's been tried already and no one, including Boom, has managed to figure out how to make it part of mass market air travel.

Boom Overture will be slower than Concorde, carry only 80 passengers, and will only be allowed to be supersonic away from land. The range is 4 250 nautical mile which is a little further than Concorde's 3 900. Perhaps that might be enough to tip the balance and make it profitable but it seems unlikely to me. Concorde carried between 90 and 120 passengers.

An Airbus A340-500 has a range of 9 000 nautical miles and carries at least 270 passengers so it carries three times as many passengers the same distance in only twice the time. Which surely makes it more economical. But in can also carry them twice as far before refuelling.

So it looks like Boom is only competing directly with Concorde and it's only selling points will be reduced fuel consumption and more comfort.

I dare say I've missed something because a lot of smart people seem to think it will work.

There is little benefit to supersonic, most time spent traveling to far off places is wasted on time zone adaptation/jet lag, and it's nicer to do that in a slower plane with a roomier business class seat you can sleep in. They're solving a problem nobody has. Further, these planes pollute massively, much more so than regular flying, and the planet can't take that anymore. Wave that away with biofuels, but that just makes flying multiple times more expensive on top of the existing supersonic cost multiplier. Also, the sonic boom annoys the shit out of people trying to sleep on the ground. Sunset industry.

> My question is, why aren't existing airplane manufacturers and airlines doing supersonic?

Because for the most part their costumers aren't asking for it. And therefore the market is very uncertain. You need to sell a large number of planes, to make this work. Projects like the A220 have been selling 100s of planes and aren't jet profitable.

And even beyond that, they have plenty to do. They have huge existing backlogs, and they need their engineering talent to develop next generation planes that can pass future legal restrictions for noise and pollution.

I will believe Boom will actually make money when they actually do.

there's no market for supersonic mass transportation. the market is the ultrawealthy who will spend whatever on the fastest private plane. the startup insight here is : the rich are getting richer

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