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Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes

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Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes

#51

Post by aidenn0 »

rdl wrote: post #9

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…

If they could make it quiet enough to go over land, transcontinental US flights would be great; LA/NY in 2.5 hours would likely have a pretty high demand.

[edit] As someone who flies LA/DC fairly regularly I do have to mention my favorite record of the SR-71 doing that flight in under 65 minutes.

Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes

#52

Post by busterarm »

robjan wrote: post #36

There are many reasons why Boeing and Airbus have not entered the supersonic market, the most important being that there is simply very limited appetite for supersonic travel other than for novelty purposes. It's much more economical to build big, subsonic airliners but increase the comfort and level of service.

The Concorde is the most uncomfortably small aircraft that I've ever been aboard.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone over 5'9"/180lbs...though I guess that's a non-issue now (except for as a museum attraction).

Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes

#53

Post by vidarh »

sremani wrote: post #14

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.

London on New York are two of the top finance industry cities in the world. There are few other city pairs that are close enough that Mach 2.2 makes the difference between comfortably being able to pop over for a business meeting and return the same day vs. getting a really long and tiring day, and that has such a large population of people where their salaries are high enough that paying $5k to cut a few hours of a trip is cheaper than hiring more people.

On top of that, unless their planes revolutionise supersonic flights, sonic booms is a major limiting factor - they need city pairs where very little of the flight goes over land that anyone cares about, because otherwise permits becomes a major problem.

Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes

#54

Post by bscholl »

tommynicholas wrote: post #32

Super smart - make good margins on a use case for the wealthy to subsidize R&D and development of scale economics, hopefully eventually get that price down so we can all use it. Hope it works! (Writing this just to pre-empt the inevitable $5,000 THIS IS ONLY RICH PEOPLE comments :) )

Exactly. Already, this is way more affordable than private jets or Concorde. We'll keep innovating on fuel efficiency, so prices can keep coming down.

Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes

#55

Post by imglorp »

robjan wrote: post #36

There are many reasons why Boeing and Airbus have not entered the supersonic market, the most important being that there is simply very limited appetite for supersonic travel other than for novelty purposes. It's much more economical to build big, subsonic airliners but increase the comfort and level of service.

It seems to be a race to the bottom if anything. People like to complain but really they want cheap. The market has spoken.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2016/02/bottom-class...

Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes

#58

Post by jerf »

teraflop wrote: post #37
caractacus wrote: post #23

The photo of the engineer in what is clearly a cardboard mock-up: http://boom.aero/assets/boom-3-cd0822d52cb5c9ecaac404d5cfd09... .... does not inspire confidence.

Presumably they're just testing the ergonomics of their seat/cockpit layout, or something along those lines. Unless you're worried that they're actually going to try to build an airplane out of cardboard, I don't see what the problem is.

"Unless you're worried that they're actually going to try to build an airplane out of cardboard"

I dunno. They do say "carbon fiber" a lot... and that is a description of cardboard....

Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes

#60

Post by yxhuvud »

rdl wrote: post #12
jakozaur wrote: post #4

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.

The world is only awash in capital if you can convince people you can repay them.
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