251–260 of 488 posts
Hi - I'm Blake, Founder/CEO at Boom. After watching no tangible progress in supersonics since Concorde was shut down, I started Boom because I want supersonic flight in our lifetime. Not just as a private jet, but something most anyone can afford to fly. Will try to answer as many questions here as I can.
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're building our prototype now—and will fly late next year. Will fly late next year? Where have I heard that one before...
A line like that sets off some big flashing red lights for me. Either they're incompetent and have grossly underestimated the amount of work needed to complete this, or it's a scam.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously. People here are way underestimating the costs to develop and certify a major commercial airframe, especially across the multiple regulatory regimes inherent to international flight. You're probably talking about on the order of a billion dollars even if you're playing it cheap. If you want to start re-engineering components instead of buying off the shelf, that number will go uphill rapidly. This is not a…
cost of developing the falcon 9 is estimated at about $300M (wikipedia quoting spacex). that's a surprisingly small mountain of money. a supersonic passenger jet should be probably in the same ballpark, right?
It also probably helps significantly that they could fly unmanned missions right away to make money while working out the bugs. You can't fly an uncertified aircraft for commercial purposes.
That's also the figure for just the Falcon-9 rocket. The Dragon cost another $800M. The engines were also developed in-house and may not be factored into that cost either (can't tell). So the total system is costing north of $1.1B.
The Boom model looks to be about the same size as a regional airliner, or a small narrowbody. For some recent points of comparison: the Bombardier CRJ1000 (developed 2007-2012) has a flyaway cost of $46M [1] and an estimated development cost of $300M [1]. A small narrowbody like the Bombardier Cseries costs $72-82M each and cost $5.4B to develop [3]. The Embraer E-jet E2 series (a second iteration on the E-jet airframe) is estimated to cost $1.7B [4].
It's much easier to develop iterations on a single airframe than to certify a new airframe from scratch. And those are all conventional construction, no carbon fiber or anything like that. And while you can develop components in-house - those need to be certified too. So much like any Not-Invented-Here syndrome - you really need to ask the question of whether you want to be a company who makes airplanes, or a company who makes airplane parts.
You can certainly do it some cheaper, but probably not a factor of 10. Overall I think Embraer tends to be one of the more budget-minded manufacturers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CRJ700_series
[2] https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/crj1000-takes-on-...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CSeries
[4] http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/embraer-e-jet-e...
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…
Very skeptical this little company can go all the way with this. Look at how hard it is to get a new automobile company up and running. Tesla almost went completely bankrupt more than once. I do think there is a need and market for faster than sound air travel. We have the technology to even minimize the sonic booms for over land travel. Still, it would take an enormous amount of capital to get a new company up and r…
I know several people (starting by my brother) who build their own plane (granted, it was a two-seater several several times louder than a grass-mower and seemingly slower, but you get the idea). One plane feels fairly doable as far as hard- to-predict financial issues go — if you have engineers who know super-sonic, and I can’t imagine having the idea without.
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Well it hasn't hurt "Bomb ba dear" :-) (that is the pronunciation I've heard for Bombardier) So no, name is probably not an issue. Getting a passenger plane to market without any other supporting business, that is much much harder than explaining the name. Not a lot of people can raise funds for 10 years of expensive runway (no pun intended).
Bomb bar dee eh
Hi - I'm Blake, Founder/CEO at Boom. After watching no tangible progress in supersonics since Concorde was shut down, I started Boom because I want supersonic flight in our lifetime. Not just as a private jet, but something most anyone can afford to fly. Will try to answer as many questions here as I can.
Obviously, shortening an international flight provides the highest value for your first major route. How well can this scale down to domestic flights? Turning a 3-4 hour flight into a 60-90 minute flight, or a 90 minute flight into a 30 minute flight, appeals quite a bit. EDIT: your answer at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11330935 applies here. Do you have concrete plans to change those regulations? Do you hav…
It does appeal, but then you have to factor in the travel to and from the airports on both ends, and various additional inherent delays.
Hi - I'm Blake, Founder/CEO at Boom. After watching no tangible progress in supersonics since Concorde was shut down, I started Boom because I want supersonic flight in our lifetime. Not just as a private jet, but something most anyone can afford to fly. Will try to answer as many questions here as I can.
Imagine if Goldman Sachs were the only bank in NYC with supersonic transport for staff and customers for 5-10y. That might be worth more to them than $5k per seat on every flight. Maybe also to a law firm. Etc.
Exclusivity within a vertical is worth huge practical and status advantages.
Hi - I'm Blake, Founder/CEO at Boom. After watching no tangible progress in supersonics since Concorde was shut down, I started Boom because I want supersonic flight in our lifetime. Not just as a private jet, but something most anyone can afford to fly. Will try to answer as many questions here as I can.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does the environmental impact per passenger compare to a modern passenger jet? Do you actually think most anyone can afford $5000 round trip to London?
We have the same gas mileage (fuel per seat mile) as a lay-flat bed in business class. Since the aircraft can do nearly 3X as many trips in the same time, on net it's better. That's just the start of course—with more innovation on fuel efficiency the price and emissions both come down. $5,000 is what a business class ticket NY/London costs today, and many business travelers are able to do that routinely. This compare…