Basically, the critics: "unless you build a 100B company, we are not wrong"
I mean, yeah, sure.
I mean, yeah, sure.
Supersonic planes are already proven technology. We made the Concorde and the Tu-144 in the 70s, and have plenty of supersonic military planes in active service. The assumption was simply that you can't make a profit by selling them as civil aviation planes. That's the assumption Boom is challenging, and to be proven correct they have to turn a profit. And not just an operating profit by selling planes for more than they cost to make but make back the research and development costs as well
The Tu-144 was famously not reasonable at all.
The TU-144 made 102 commercial flights, with 55 of those carrying passengers -- the others I assume were cargo.
Not 102 flights per day or month -- 102 flights TOTAL between the first commercial flight in December 1975 and retirement from passenger service in 1978 and from all commercial service in 1983.
With 16 built, that's an average of 6 flights each in their lifetime.
SpaceX has Falcon 9 rocket boosters with 4x as many hypersonic flights on them.
> Concorde at least made more money than it cost to operate (and maintain).
> Delays and cost overruns increased the programme cost to £1.5–2.1 billion in 1976, (£11–16 billion in 2023).
The fact that the aircraft manufacturer spent far too much on development relative to the sales they made is of course important to the manufacturer -- or at least to whoever is financing the manufacturer, but that is a DIFFERENT question. In fact more than one question.
There is the question of whether the price they were sold to airlines for was greater or less than the incremental cost to build one aircraft. If the price was greater than the cost then there was some hope for a successful program, and they simply overspent on development and/or didn't sell enough copies.
If they were sold to airlines for less than the marginal cost then it's just an all-around manufacturing screwup that could never be solved by any amount of sales.
You should look at the costs of the F-35 :)
And yes, the program is expensive but there will be thousands of F35s by the end of it all (1000+ already)
Could we at least limit it to choices made by elected governments?
yes. From the POV of the supplier, every gov't contract is going to be profitable.
That's why the military industrial complex is so big, and profitable. It's why some people go into politics to extend it. Esp. in america.
> How do you measure the profitability of military aircraft?
what you truly meant is how to do you measure the value obtained from a purchase of a military aircraft. And scholars have studied this for centuries and not arrived at a true answer.
> Basically, the critics
You're being uncharitable and hyperbolizing the criticism to more easily dismiss it. Would you hyperbolize any praise as "identifying another way this won't work is also a success in itself"?
It's like with modern husbandry: you can make money selling milk, eggs and meat by sustainably raising animals living comfortable lives, but you can make more money by sticking them in cages, pumping them up with antibiotics and optimized fodder, to maximize production rates and minimize costs. The two approaches are inherently incompatible with each other. And I dare to say, modern startup ecosystem kind of entered the era of "factory farming" some time ago now.
It’s unsustainable in that the profit is a one time event, but that doesn’t mean you’re not to turn cash into something worth more than what you spent and then sell that thing.
Cooking books and falsifying projections is fraud.
Asking for investments with a clear disclaimer that the goal is a social good that won’t be profitable? If that’s fraud, then every major arts institution everywhere is guilty.
But an actual investment isn’t “investing in our community” it’s asking for money in exchange for to potential to gain more money etc.
This is not even remotely comparable.
But just for comparison, Aérospatiale and BAC actually built a real supersonic plane (Concorde) and managed to fly and operate that plane for decades. It's hard to find much measurable impact on the world at all. What do you propose would be different here, given that the discussion is already presuming a world in which they haven't succeeded economically?
However, when you’re asking for investments your goal better be profit or you’ve just committed fraud.
(I know Boom isn't gigantic, and of course it's losing money at this stage which is right and proper. However losing money in aviation is extremely easy and so I think we call it a successful business when it's profitable. Today, it's proven itself a successful prototype engineering endeavor.)