It’s a good start but I wouldn’t say the critics are proven wrong already.
Even getting the full-scale version flying won’t be enough, you need to make the whole operation economically viable so it actually makes sense to operate it.
I’m not saying they won’t manage to do it, but they haven’t proven that they will be able to do it today.
I don't disagree that it's proof they will succeed, it is however proof that they can build a supersonic aircraft. That is no small thing.
Given that they can, they now need to build a larger one, which with more surface area will be more difficult than this one.
In terms of 'risk stacking'[1] they are definitely a big step closer to being in successful.
[1] Risk Stacking is the set of risks a company faces between the current time and being operational. Technology risk is always level 1 (can they build what they say they can build), after that comes market risk (will people buy it with enough margin for both continued operation of the company as well as further development), and the third is execution risk (can they operate efficiently enough to create a net positive economic product.)
> Given that they can, they now need to build a larger one, which with more surface area will be more difficult than this one.
Not only that, but the XB-1 uses "stock" engines, while for the full-scale Overture they want to develop (and build) an all-new supersonic-capable engine. So one more challenge to put on the stack...
They were testing (at a different scale, with a different powerplant) their air intakes for the engine which are designed to enable conventional turbofan engines to operate at supersonic speed, plus some control systems. And no doubt demonstrating to investors that they could fly something at supersonic speed before they ask for the funds to design and build a new powerplant and airliner-scale airframe...
It was originally envisaged as a maiden flight that would happen within a couple of years of founding, but aerospace is hard.
When taking another look at the Wikipedia articles for the XB-1 and the Overture, I also noticed that both of them mention the fact that the XB-1 still uses the original trijet engine configuration planned for the Overture, which has however since been changed to a quad-jet (https://airinsight.com/boom-supersonic-radically-changes-ove...). So the XB-1 is even less representative of the full-scale Overture than I thought...
they're early enough in their program to switch the Overture again to twinjets :)
(only half joking, if it turns out that adjacent engines in the quadjet configuration have a negative impact on their intake technology, a twinjet would work more similarly to the trijet...)
It is in the venture capitol / startup world, not sure how much it is used outside of that which was why I took time to explain it. A VC looking at a pitch is trying to understand the risks (a VC investment is basically pricing that risk) and each kind of risk has a different method of evaluation.
Concord was actually a cash cow for all airlines who had them. The only reason why airlines stopped using Concord was because of the crash and the inherent safety issues that were found. But the actual business model worked - limited in scope but it was highly profitable.
“That said, the airlines that flew the Concorde did make a profit. Concorde was only ever purchased by two airlines: BA and Air France. While the concept of the Concorde might not have been a worldwide hit, it was certainly a good market fit for these two airlines at the time.”
Overall it was obviously a money looser because of the high development costs (paid for by the governments).
It worked because not just the development costs were paid for by the government, but acquisition costs were, too. Planes were given to the airlines for free, completely paid for by the states.
Also, only be BA made good profit on it and only after mid-1980s. Air France could barely break even.
If not the PR effect that put those airlines above all others as the only ones flying supersonically, they'd never make any sense to either of them.
These days, they'd certainly not be viable as private planes are now much more available and much cheaper than they used to be back in the day and these save a lot more time than supersonic flights. BA fare for LHR-JFK roundtrip was 10K pounds back in 2000, $15.2K at the average exchange rate, that's $28K inflation adjusted! Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial flight?
Is Boom aiming to be faster than the Concorde? I don't think so.
Their website says:
> Overture will carry 64-80 passengers at Mach 1.7
Concorde flew NYC<->LON in 3.5 hours. I guess Boom will fly the route in about 4 hours. Also, regular commercial flights on NYC<->LON are currently 7 hours.
Also, using Google Flights, I priced LHR<->JFK on first class about T+1month for 7 days (Mon->Mon). It is about 5.3K USD round trip. I am surprised that it is so cheap. I guess that route is very competitive.
I don't understand the excitement on HN about Boom. The market is tiny. This is a terrible investment. What is the global demand for this aeroplane (if they ever build it)? Maybe... max 200. Look at the order book from the 1960s when the Concorde first flew. Less than 100 total orders. Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a sonic boom? It is unlikely that it will get rights to fly over land, just like the Concorde. Also, it is terrible for the environment. The Concorde burned fuel (passenger miles per liter) at roughly twice the rate of non-supersonic aeroplanes.
> Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a sonic boom? It is unlikely that it will get rights to fly over land, just like the Concorde.
Remember a few years back when the Canadian-made Bombardier C-Series was selling well, so Boeing got their allies in the US government to impose a 300% tax on them as an "America First" policy?
Well, the rules around sonic booms were similar. Were there sonic booms? Sure. But the real reason for the ban was that they were foreign-made sonic booms.
Now the world's only supersonic passenger plane is being made in America, you might find Congress is much less worried about sonic booms.
This was done to prepare people and gauge the reaction to BOEING sonic booms, for the SST. Everything about a supersonic future was scuttled when it became obvious that people clearly suffered when planes flew supersonic above them.
Keep in mind that the US Air Force still does not go supersonic over populated areas except when absolutely necessary, like during 9/11.
This study mind you was done with SCHEDULED sonic booms. Now imagine, instead of being able to set your clock to a loud, disruptive noise and plan around it, you must deal with completely unpredictable and variable EXPLOSION of sharp noise (130ish decibels is standing 100m from a jumbo jet as it spools up or a trumpet being blasted directly into your ear from a couple feet away)
People already hate the noise of cities when that noise is an occasional quiet siren heard from a mile away a few times a day. Imagine instead if the noise was completely unpredictable explosions. Also imagine you can't move out of the city to get away from it, because the sound blankets an entire flight corridor.
Unless NASA finds a way to magically evaporate all the energy in a sonic boom such that it makes almost no noise at ground level, we would have to literally depopulate mile wide corridors of the US just so a bunch of stupidly rich people can get from NY to LA in an hour? Nah
This isn't true. The backlash to sonic booms grew well before Concorde and was part of why the US government canceled its support of the SST program. Boeing canceled their part of the 2707 because of the (extremely) unexpected success of the 747 program (a larger plane slower addressed a larger market) and the 737 success.
Sources:
Joe Sutter, Creating the worlds first Boeing Jumbo Jet
Sure, being a domestic enterprise might help here, but you will have to deal with regulations abroad, too (and Concorde had arguably the edge there because it had both London and continental Europe as home court).
I'm also fairly sure that softening/undermining noise regulations in general has become harder (less tech enthusiasm, more NIMBYism, especially in Europe).
> Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a sonic boom?
Is it? I lived in Kansas in the 1960s. Sonic booms from the AF base were common. They weren't that loud. Electric storms (a regular in Kansas) were considerably louder.
> The Concorde burned fuel (passenger miles per liter) at roughly twice the rate of non-supersonic aeroplanes.
5-7 times as much.
My dad said when he pushed his jet supersonic, you could watch the gas gauge unwind.
> My dad said when he pushed his jet supersonic, you could watch the gas gauge unwind.
Did your dad fly military jets? Most older jets can't supercruise, i.e. go supersonic without using afterburners, and afterburners consume unholy amounts of fuel. Concorde did consume quite a lot of fuel per passenger mile, but it could supercruise.
The one new factor is the route fragmentation that occurred over the Atlantic with the 757 and 767 and the fragmentation that occurred over the Pacific with the 777 and 787. These changed from a model where only hub to hub flights where every seat had to be sold to be viable from a financial point of view to enabling many city pairs to work, and airlines still to make a profit, even if the business class seats are not fully sold. This led to a much larger market, which plenty of room for 3-10k "business class" tickets on these flights.
If boom can hit that same number, they will have success out of the USA <-> Europe market and premium intra-asia flights - the two most profitable route systems in the world.
They claim they have sonic boom solved by modifying the airframe shape. Otherwise, i agree with you. It will be a thing of no real consequence just like the original Concorde.
Firstly, my claim that they say this is evidenced by the link. I did not assert it as historic fact that this thing works, just that this is what they say. The words "Selling point" and "proposed" are in that sentence for a reason: it's not actual yet. But if you think it's a deliberate fraud, then say so.
Secondly: Although the final proof of it is in the full scale aircraft for sure, a lot can be done with software modelling (1) and wind tunnels these days. And with the scale model that just flew, to be followed by "checking the actual performance that was demonstrated against what our models predicted, and how we expected it to fly." (2)
Thirdly, I point you to other "quieter supersonic" aircraft work in progress, the X-59. Some of their evidence-gathering process is detailed at the Wikipedia link, "development" section. (3)
It will be interesting to see how these work out; but if they do not, then it's a failure of modelling and design, not because they missed the directly obvious. But if you are an aerospace engineer and know more about this subfield, then say so.
1) "Boom has perfected its aircraft’s efficient, aerodynamic design using computational fluid dynamics, which “is basically a digital wind tunnel"."
A sonic boom is not necessary when moving faster than sound, the Busemann biplane resolves that completely.
There's been considerable work on sonic boom mitigation for many decades. Boom's long nose, flat underside, top engine, small wingspan delta wings are all designs expected to mitigate a sonic boom. Let's see if it works in practice.
> Concorde flew NYC<->LON in 3.5 hours. I guess Boom will fly the route in about 4 hours.
I feel that you're getting diminishing returns at the point of reducing 4 hours to 3h30, given that flight time is just a part of the whole "door to door" time, there are several hours at least that aren't flight time, and that the expensive tickets all come with an hour or three in an airport lounge.
I think the real advantage would be for transpacific flights. San Francisco to Tokyo is currently about 11.5 hours, assuming a similar ratio (maybe slightly better due to flying supersonic for longer), Boom’s time would be around 6.5 to 7 hours. Savings would be more significant for East Coast flights, ATL-HND would go from 14.5 hours to under 8.5.
East Coast US to Japan supersonic? This is the stuff of fantasy. With the insanely high fuel burn and very small aeroplane body size, where are you going to put all the fuel for a trans-Pacific flight? NYC<->LON was already nearly the limit for the Concorde. As I understand, they had high priority when landing due to low fuel.
Interesting, I hadn’t realized the range was so short. I guess if they did trans-Pacific it would mostly be limited to Seattle to Tokyo, or routes with a stopover in Hawaii.
The problem with $50,000 tickets is a higher price means fewer customers, and at a certain point that means less money coming in overall, worse economies of scale, and less ability to cover your upfront engineering costs.
The Toyota Camry is a $30,000 car that sells 300,000 units per year. The Lamborghini Huracan is a $300,000 car that sells 600 units per year. Much easier to cover the costs of developing a reliable electrical system, or a new hybrid drivetrain, when you're Toyota.
Concorde couldn't repay its development costs for the same reason.
In fairness, there's little practical benefit (and, in fact, a lot of downsides) to a supercar whereas a plane that does trans-oceanic in half the time is useful--of course, if you can build it, and sell tickets economically for maybe today's business class prices--keeping in mind that a lot of people flying business are doing so on upgrades/miles.
I used to work for a big 6 accountancy and audit firm. their senior partners used to fly concorde, wheras us underlings flew virgin upper class (like first class on other carriers).
> Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial flight?
Nobody. That's part of Boom's plan: they want to make the Overture jet cheap enough to fly that tickets will cost about what business class costs on regular intercontinental flights. They're keeping the problems of the Concorde in mind as part of the design process.
> Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial flight?
People willing to throw money at connecting with others who do the same thing. That was the main value proposition back then I think, getting from continent to continent in a short time has never been more than a tangential benefit. Of course this type of business only really works when everybody involved claims the opposite.
It only needs to be economically viable for billionaires bored with collecting yachts and $100 millionaires who want to flex with charter flights. Scheduled commercial service is a pipe dream but not a requirement for success.
I would say the critics are already on average proven wrong in the sense that they were betting on something that had a prior of 90% chance of being true. And now those odds might be say 50%. If they were betting people, they would have lost half their money already, while the people betting it would come true have already made 4x. In that competitive sense, they're already wrong.
It takes little skill to predict something like "it won't snow on New York on 3/15/2025". Whereas if you said it will snow on 3/15/2025, and it's true, that's skill.
Probably optimism talking, but I'd put Boom's chances of bringing to market an airliner capable of supersonic travel at equal-to-first-class-ticket-prices at 60%.
Now I'd put their wilder hopes of eventually taking over the subsonic economy market at considerably below 1%.
But I'm hopeful for that $5-10k ticket to London within the next twenty years.
You also have to make it environmentally sustainable like they did when they talked about a partnership with Prometheus fuels back in 2019, even then what's the point compared to regular planes if these "are likely to burn between 4.5 and 7.5X more fuel than subsonic aircraft in 2035." [0]
I'm so glad that buried deep in the HN commments in an individual who cares about the environment. In the other conversations I've seen about this no one mentions or thinks about fuel consumption. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes. It's like "Yay! We figured out another way to accelerate the disastrous consequences of climate change. Go us!"
My metric for success is simply making more money than they spent.
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
Concorde at least made more money than it cost to operate (and maintain).
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.
Of course you can exclude them, to determine whether the aircraft themselves are a viable commercial proposition for the people who bought them (the airlines) -- which they were, just as other aircraft such as the A380 today are. The people who bought A380s are happy, and will be using them for decades. Emirates would still like to buy more (and may end up buying used ones from less successful airlines)
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.
Flying fish that are increasingly not sustainably harvested on insanely fuel in-efficient supersonic planes is exactly humanity deserves to go extinct.
Hence why everyone thinks supersonic passenger planes are a bad idea. Lots of profitable military supersonic planes, but every existing example of a civilian supersonic plane is only justified as a Cold War dick-measuring contest.
> And make every government purchase ever, successful?
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.
Success should be measured against the stated objectives, the promises made to investors, or general positive influence on society. In this case the objective was "supersonic flight in our lifetime. Not just as a private jet, but something most anyone can afford to fly." [0]
> 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"?
This is only true from the point of capital - if a startup changes the world in a way you like it can be a success to you. Profitability brings a certain approval and sustainability, but don't confuse that with your goals in what you are working on.
Sort of. There's a class of startups that's not meant to be profitable, except maybe by happy accident. Many (most?) tech startups are like that now. After all, the investors don't care about creating profitable companies - they just want to make money, which they're positioned to do in many ways. One of them is to help create profitable companies. Another is to help grow companies to be sold to other companies and/or to the public for maximum value, giving the investors back a large multiple of initial investments, after which... they don't care anymore.
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.
Aiming to build a company to be bought by Microsoft or whoever is still aiming to be profitable, the product is simply the company’s assets (IP, customer list, etc).
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.
There is a reason we usually use the word donation in that context. And don’t call it investments. As those tend to be associated with an expectation to be paid back times x.
If you want money to provide a social good without the expectation that the money will be paid back, you're asking for a donation. You can also ask for money as a loan, fee for service, etc.
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.
The cost of putting a single car and driver-for-hire on the streets is a handful of dollars, so it's easy to do many of them at a loss. The cost of putting a single instance of a new airplane design of this scale into the air with even a single paying passenger is in the range of billions if not tens-of-billions of dollars.
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?
if your only measure of success is monetary profit, then sure. i think that shouldn't be the only metric, and in fact, the focus on that so completely is a big part of the problem with what people term "late-stage capitalism"
I'd say the opposite actually, that the idea that an established company can lose money and still be considered a success is absolutely a hallmark of late-stage capitalism - and not a very healthy one either.
(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.)
Even getting the full-scale version flying won’t be enough, you need to make the whole operation economically viable so it actually makes sense to operate it.
I’m not saying they won’t manage to do it, but they haven’t proven that they will be able to do it today.