Comment by mandevil | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mandevil | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Boom is not currently flying their intended engines, the Symphony, which does not exist yet. (1) The XB-1 is flying with J85's just like a T-38 has, and just like a T-38 it can go supersonic with afterburners. If the Symphony is able to meet its design goals, it will not need afterburners for any part of flight. How much they will be able to deliver on that remains the biggest open technical question for Boom. (2)

1: Well, their Plan B intended engines. Their Plan A was that one of the Big 3- RR, PW, GE- would make engines for them, but none were interested in taking the risk that a difficult engine could be designed and built in enough volume to make the investment back.

2: Their biggest legal question is over-land supersonic regulations. Their biggest economics question- and probably the biggest and most important of all of them- is how much will people pay for civil supersonic?

> how much will people pay for civil supersonic?

Do we know how much more it's likely to cost? I could easily see people paying 1.5x - 2x.

Anything beyond 2x I imagine would start to price out the average person and anything beyond 5x would probably price out the vast majority of potential customers.

Their business model for a long time has theorized that they can deliver an operating cost that would allow airlines to offer tickets at roughly current business class ticket costs, which would be a fraction of Concorde ticket prices expressed in current dollars.

I don't know if those theorized efficiencies will be delivered (a lot depends on that engine) or if airlines will price tickets at that level. But it's the theory so far.

> could easily see people paying 1.5x - 2x

People pay more than that for domestic first class, which doesn’t even have lay-flat seats. $2,500 or even $5k for a New York <> San Francisco 2-hour flight would absolutely sell.

A number of US carriers offer lay-flat seats for at least some of their coast-to-coast domestic flights. UA has over a half dozen Dreamliners flying back and forth daily, all with Polaris cabins. I know AA and Delta have routes with them, too. I agree, a two-hour flight time would be better!

> number of US carriers offer lay-flat seats for at least some of their coast-to-coast domestic flights

They're limited. And I regularly see them going for $4k+.

With the amount of billionaires increasing, I'd think more people than Concorde had pay for civil supersonic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com