Hacker News Reader

Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

Boom Supersonic (US) has a Mach 1 test flight in 2 days, https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/boom-supersonic-mach-one-...

Test flight livestream (Tue Jan 28 6:45AM PST/9:45AM EST/2:45PM GMT), https://boomsupersonic.com/flyby/xb-1-supersonic-test-flight...

View on HN

It's going to be interesting to see where things go with this. I'm still struggling to see why their offering would have a different fate, if not worse. It's got a lower passenger capacity but still has the same cost issues that plagued Concorde.

I guess the only difference really is they arent shy about making it clear its for business customers and not commercial airliners, and tickets will be expensive.

The real product Boom hopes to offer is regulatory capture, so that restrictions on supersonic business jets can be lifted. Then the bizjet itself can sell as a luxury status symbol.

It is really going to come down to how much they can reduce the sonic boom. Supposedly their aircraft will produce more of a rumble like distant thunder rather than a bang. If its at a level that's agreeable to both regulators and the public, that would open up all the overland routes the Concord could never do. If they can combine that with higher production numbers with a corresponding drop in unit, operating, and maintenance costs, they _may_ have a valid business model.

Looking at how many people rent (or own) business jets with five figure+ price tags per flight, I think there's definitely a market for premium tickets, especially if you can do say LAX to Heathrow in ~5 hours instead of 10.5 hours.

I really hope this isn't the kind of innovation where the company breaks the law and asks for forgiveness later. Like "oh the sonic boom is only slightly louder than Concord but really it's just a bunch of first nations people in Canada who are impacted and we are super rich and our time is so precious please just ignore these marginalized people and we promise we'll throw them a few bucks"

The world and more importantly the wealthy are vastly richer today than in 1976 when the concord started flying, and the R&D costs should be far lower.

There’s thousands of billionaires in the world. Not all of them would buy a supersonic private airplane, but include non billionaire CEO’s etc and the market is plenty large to support moderate scale production assuming they can keep costs within a fairly low multiple of a business jet.

What killed Concord iirc is that only a few airports could handle them. A rich person would just prefer a slower private jet that can land much closer to their destination. Especially since today you can basically turn your plane into a private office.

The sonic boom limited them to only flying over the sea. They could technically fly at any airport that handles large passenger jets. But if you fly supersonic over land you will piss off everyone below you.

Something tells me that wouldn’t have been a problem if Concord had been made by Boeing.

Boeing knows how to make sonic booms that don't shatter windows?

I believe the idea of the parent comment is that Boeing knows how to get the government to let them shatter windows

We tried.

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

The outcomes were SUBSTANTIALLY worse than the US government expected. The results of this study are why even war planes rarely go supersonic over the continental US.

I remember the sonic boom over the Seattle area in the summer of 2010 when Obama was in town. A seaplane accidentally violated the 10 mile exclusion zone around Air Force 1 at Boeing Field and two F-15s were scrambled from Portland International Airport (Oregon National Guard operates the fighters tasked with protection from Northern California to the Canadian border). It was quite exciting.

Boeing did have a competing design, the Boeing 2707, however is was cancelled for the same market and economic reasons that Concorde struggled with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_2707

In addition to the sonic boom issue it was also cost. It cost a stupidly high amount in fuel to fly. The engines were horribly inefficient.

Not only that the low capacity meant that tickets would have to be orders of magnitude higher than even first class in any other commercial jet.

It's why I cant see Boom doing what people are assuming they'll do and make a commercial airliner. Unless you fancy spending $20k for a one way trip from JFK to LHR it's not really viable.

Not really. THat's an unmanned small scale model. Every credible engine manufacturer on the planet has declined to work with Boom. Viable engines do not exist and will not exist.

Yes, the 64-seat commercial version is years away, but this subscale prototype will carry a civilian test pilot, https://x.com/bscholl/status/1883218536476061803

  - YC incubated, 150MM+ total funding
  - quiet medium bypass turbofan engines
  - wing aspect ratio higher than Concorde
  - 5y of production orders, incl. United and American

> We wanted to build our safety technology and culture, sop we designed XB-1 without an ejection seat.

Wat.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com