Boom Supersonic to break sound barrier during historic test flight today
space.com
space.com
It is hard to think that this tech will ever be common besides a few "high status" (NY->London) routes like the concord was. It is my understanding that fuel costs increase as speed increases so there is no way this could ever be cheaper than non-hypersonic flights. But of course there is a market even if it is very limited, just like there was one for the concord. I expect this tech might displace some of the private plane market.
To me it seems more likely that we will see short-haul smaller electric aircraft take over for even cheaper costs with more stops along the way. Think like NY -> Açores -> London or LA -> Hawaii -> Japan.
edit: reading about this it seems the fuel-efficiency calculation is not as simple as I thought, there are some savings to be had in fuel by going above sound-speed. It seems the lowest fuel-efficiency happens at just below speed of sound. I am no expert in the subject though.
To me it seems if those numbers can't get better then the endeavor is not going to pay off the investment for the few routes that would be able to work at those numbers.
Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42853633 - Jan 2025 (79 comments)
So about what a Golden Era international flight cost, inflation adjusted [1]. Not bad.
[1] https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-o...
No, it’s not. A domestic non-transcontinental charter costs about as much as a top-of-the-line international first-class ticket (~$25k).
But also that charter is more expensive than I thought then yes. Though top execs rarely travel alone of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je5R3_br8So
Boom is having to develop their own engines, which is a huge ask, especially on the schedule they are promising.
(spoiler: the video's answer is "yes")
The only photo of the Concorde flying at supersonic speed
Well it's a modern design for one. IIRC the Concorde was given an exemption to one of the FAA standards in the US that requires that a catastrophic engine failure not be able to affect another engine. The Concorde could not meet this due to the way the engines were paired right next to each other, and that is one contributing factor to the last crash - one engine failed and took out the other on the same side. This new design is probably going to be cheaper in terms of maintenance as well, which was another problem with Concorde.
Why?
It would definitely breed some significant resentment against the rich to have my house even gently shaking day by day.
My gut tells me this is in no way a solvable problem. But I too fear that after it's built, it'll be the LLM story of "yes we had to illegally access & use every book & piece of art in existence to train this, but now that we've built it, how could we turn back?"
Even if you can muffle that sonic boom somewhat, I'm highly skeptical it's going to be anything but very noticeable & intrusive.
You’d prefer we buy them from China? If the physics works, it works and will happen.
> military (and concord I guess) have had this technology for nearly a millennium
Since the millennium, maybe? Charlemagne wasn’t flying in a supersonic PJ.
And no, the military has not obviously solved large-body, sustained and fuel-efficient (i.e. non-afterburning) flight. The USAF didn’t get supercruise until the F-22 [1]. (The Concorde is the only non-military example.) It’s a tremendously new technology, as are modern numerical methods for fuselage and shockwave modelling.
Efficient by what metric? Fuel use? That’s the new master of our existence, our six-proton czar?
If there is one way to kill sympathy and support for climate-change action, it’s by not only insisting but actually hoping that living standards don’t improve (or regress) because it reduces emissions.
Instead of seeing a new super-premium air-travel market that can pay for the scaling of synergic jet fuels, you’re essentially hoping that technologies that could e.g. single-handedly eliminate the organ-transplant geographic mismatch problem do not exist. I’m surprised there isn’t an element of shame to such views.
It's the typical cyclist versus cars problem. I like cycling and I don't like driving and nothing will change that.
?
> I like cycling and I don't like driving and nothing will change that
Nothing has to. If you started advocating for banning cars, on the other hand, you’d expect to see an anti-cycling lobby crop up.
That’s the intention. My question is why others’ time is of so little value to you?
An hour I spend stuck in traffic we're at a airport is a conversation I'll never be able to have with a loved one when they're gone.
If it can be cheap at supersonic speeds, it will be much cheaper at subsonic, always. And use less fuel. The only advantage you get is speed.
The limiting speed of subsonic aircraft is Mach .96 approximately.
For the u2, at its cruise altitude, this means about 100mph of airspeed… barely above its stall speed.
But if you go supersonic, you can break through that barrier and make use of the fact that there is much less air resistance at those altitudes. Not only that, but by riding past your shockwave, you can pick up a bit of recovered energy.
In some corners of the envelope, supersonic actually uses less fuel for the trip than Mach 0.9ish travel - which is where we fly our jetliners.
Also, we nasa has been experimenting with aerodynamic shapes that all but eliminate the sonic boom effect.
It’s not all bad.
If they are planning to make it more efficient than subsonic trips, it would be the first thing you would see in the website, or at least the FAQ. Supersonic flight is very cool, but for me this is just like Bugatti announcing a faster car for the rich, or an airline showing its first class luxury cabin: not very interesting.
It’s like props vs jets. Jet aircraft were less efficient but faster… until the altitude benefits made them more efficient and faster. Flying at the edge of space is the next step in that speed/ efficiency curve, and that is necessarily supersonic.
Still happy for the engineers working on this, they are probably having a great time designing a new aircraft.
Yes, they've been trying to do that since the 1960s. I haven't seen any signs that they've been what I would call successful.
Lots of people have to regularly travel between Europe and US, and if they can save 50% of the travel time, it ends up being a significant amount of time. I believe the market for these flights aren't families going on a holiday, rather people who have to travel on business 3-4 times a month.
The IEA have an estimate of €190 per tonne. Which is €400 per passenger on a return transatlantic flight (assuming no mark-up). But there are already some taxes and surcharges on flights, and some of that is carbon-related, so a "full cost" price wouldn't be €400 more than today's. AIUI they use a "harm" model to try and land on that number, i.e. X gigatons of carbon => Y amount of climate change => Z economic damage.
Another way to look at it is "if each tonne of carbon can be burned only once, and in a scenario where future carbon is committed towards manufacture renewables (or nuclear capacity), how many kWh of renewable/nuclear electricity can be bought with 1t of carbon". That yields a much larger number.
Or you can look at it through a carbon capture and storage lens. Industrial CCS yields a much lower number, but it's talking about capturing from factory boiler exhaust streams, where you can have the plant capture the CO2 at source. Not an option on a jet airliner. Direct air capture (ground-based stations mopping up aircraft exhaust) is an order of magnitude more expensive, currently in the $1000/tonne range, you're trying to vacuum gas out of the air that's at a 400ppm concentration by mass.
A 2-3 hour reduction in flight time is appealing on its own, but probably not at a significant price increase.
I show up 20 minutes before boarding, often later, at my small-town airport. For international flights out of JFK, I’ll show up 2 to 3 hours before, but there is still a world of difference between a lounge you can walk around and shower in and even the most luxurious lay-flat suites.
NYC > SFO is 2 hours at Mach 1.7; if I’m not checking a bag that’s an entire day returned both ways.
The lounge thing, IMO, is also a challenge for Boom. It’s gonna be a cramped plane. The folks shelling out that sort of coin for a flight expect certain amenities on it.
If I’m carry-on only, I try to show up to domestic flights out of JFK an hour before boarding. Between Digital ID and Clear, it’s a fuss if security takes longer than 15 minutes from entering the airport.
> folks shelling out that sort of coin for a flight expect certain amenities on it
Less cramped than Concorde. At $20k NYC <> SFO, I could see it selling out. You’re only on board for 2 to 3 hours. At $10k or less (Concorde was $13k, inflation adjusted) it’s crossing into prices paid for a lay-flat seat as it is.
The Concorde was expensive because everything around it was expensive, not just the nature of high speed flight. They built 20 planes total and never actually capitalized on large scale cost savings. The planes also used afterburner and burned a ton of fuel doing it. There is nothing stopping current transcontinential flights from being supersonic. Heck, the time savings can lead to cost savings as well.
They never capitalized on large scale cost savings because there was no demand for large scale operation: most of the planes built were given away at nominal fees!
Boom's stated intent is to enable the aircraft to be profitable at business/first class prices, which is absolutely targeting the 1%. The engine will have better fuel efficiency than Concorde's afterburner-supported turbojet but that isn't saying much, and everything else about the operating economics (small capacity for long haul to major airports, niche type rating, clean sheet airframe and engine design from new OEM hoping to amortise development costs over a relatively small production run) screams expensive
Flights halfway around the world are looong. I've been to Australia once, and honestly not sure I'll ever be back. Just because it is a lot of time in a seat.
You don’t see an ultrapremium flight option improving chances for synthetic jet fuel?
You can’t do that for ordinary air travel because consumers have already anchored price expectations and it’s a mass-market product.
If you look at the Overture's website (https://boomsupersonic.com/overture), it sounds like that's exactly what they are planning to do - it's advertised as "MACH 1.7 Cruise Speed, 2X Faster over water, 20% Faster over land" - if you take Mach 0.8 as the current cruise speed of subsonic jets, 20% faster would be just barely under the speed of sound.
I’ve never seen this cited as a major problem for the Concorde. Assuming the tickets are under $50k, it wouldn’t be a problem today—someone paying $10 to 30k for first class isn’t kept a back-up jet for their convenience. Flying was immature in the Concorde’s era.
The Boom aircraft incorporates some quiet supersonic technology but until they actually test it they won't know whether it's actually quiet enough.
We have one plane—soon to be retired—that can supercruise, i.e. sustain supersonic flight without afterburners, the F-22 [1]. It’s absolutely incorrect to treat this technology as anything but bleeding edge.
Air NIMBY!
On a serious note, the only way this gets overland approval is if it’s comparably loud to existing options. Which given the work that’s been done on sonic booms, and some of the old kit that still flies, isn’t as hard as you’d think.
Clearly you don't have kids.
That means the cost of the plane, crew, fuel, etc. will be split among a small number of passengers. Fuel burn at supersonic speeds is also going to be higher per passenger mile than traditional airliners.
No matter what this is going to end up as a premium option with a premium price tag. Modern high capacity airliners are optimized for efficiency and that translates to low ticket costs.
According to the data I could find, the Overture is advertised as having fuel efficiency similar to the Embraer 175, while carrying the same number of passengers.
Are you talking about trains?
I'm sure people told the Wright brothers similar things. You're simply being extremely short-sighted. Which is very ironic since you're also talking about climate change concerns around this post.
Supersonic flight will likely increase emissions per person by a larger proportion than the time saved per person. It's a brute-force energy-wasting solution to the problem.