I hope they have billions of dollars in the bank. Concorde production was stopped for a reason.
Given SpaceX's well documented experience, I would not trust any cost estimates from the legacy aerospace industry. It's a deeply moribund field as a result of decades of stagnation and dependence on government/military funding.
Still I would be absolutely floored if they could do it for under $500mil, so what you say still applies-- maybe just not quite to the point of billionS with an S.
Great idea, but even with optimistic assumptions it will require a lot of capital. Something in order of SpaceX $100 mln to get first commercial plane.
We live in a world right now where interest rates are bouncing off zero and sometimes going negative. Capital is probably the least limiting factor here, assuming there's a viable plan and clear market.
Sorry but is "Boom" really a good name for an aircraft company? I get it's supersonic, but my first association was an exploding airplane.
Agreed, terrible name. Can you imagine getting on an airplane with Boom painted on the side or waiting in the Boom terminal? I like fast airplanes, but I think they need to come up with a better name.
As tangent, instead of focusing on NYC to London, a Mach 2.2 travel actually will make travel from Americas to Asia more comfortable. US to India and US to China routes benefit the most, and perhaps where people will be interested in paying top-dollar vs. Europe.
One issue with this is the "boom" (from their name). It only works across non-populated areas due to the noise as their sample routes show. It's going to severely limit the opportunity.
Sorry but is "Boom" really a good name for an aircraft company? I get it's supersonic, but my first association was an exploding airplane.
It could work until they have an accident, at which point the double meaning will kick in hard-core... especially since the traditional airline industry will PR flak them. (Flak pun intended.)
Pretty amazing that materials science (lighter, carbon-fiber aircraft; hotter, more efficient/powerful turbines) has made this economic. Concorde never was. NYC-LON seems like the one market where this enables something fundamentally new (well, Concorde did); single-day business trips between two major business centers which were otherwise a full day apart. Transpacific flights would be nice, too, but cutting an alre…
The issue with it is that supersonic flight (due to noise) is only allowed over non-populated areas so a business jet variant is less useful unless you spend most of your time flying over the ocean (and not coast-to-coast for instance).
It's great for you to leave SF in the morning, go to Sydney to watch the opera and be back in SF by midnight. But is the environmental impact of you doing that worth it for everyone else?
So are they building their own plane, and launching a new airline? Will they also sell the plane to other airlines? Or is this trying to be vertically integrated, like Apple / Tesla?
Also, I echo the other sentiments here about the name, really don't want to fly on an airline named "Boom". Nor "Explode", "Kapow", or "Blast". And god forbid if one of their planes crashes during test flights, the PR nightmare that would result.
Pretty amazing that materials science (lighter, carbon-fiber aircraft; hotter, more efficient/powerful turbines) has made this economic. Concorde never was. NYC-LON seems like the one market where this enables something fundamentally new (well, Concorde did); single-day business trips between two major business centers which were otherwise a full day apart. Transpacific flights would be nice, too, but cutting an alre…
The issue with it is that supersonic flight (due to noise) is only allowed over non-populated areas so a business jet variant is less useful unless you spend most of your time flying over the ocean (and not coast-to-coast for instance).
Yeah, it's also super inefficient/cramped/etc. compared to a G650/BBJ/etc, so it would only really make sense as a "second" business jet in a corp/personal/royal fleet, or, more likely, part of a fleet somewhere like NetJets. It's the "entire aircraft, on demand" part on a mostly finite set of routes, not the "fly anywhere you want", with this.