After a certain point, airplane technology is no longer going to be the limiting factor, and we'll have to finally eliminate the TSA to get under 5 hours of total travel time.
'eliminate the TSA' is a kill list phrase, I'm so sorry
Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes
321–330 of 488 posts
Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes
#322Hi - 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.
What will your pilots do, just as a for instance, if ... say a lone Cessna asks tower for his ground speed ... and then a bit later a navy F-18 pilot also asks tower for his ground speed ? What will they do in that situation ?
specially if the F-18 pilot is making sure that every bug smasher from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is.
I've read and re-read that story so many times, each reading results in a fresh batch of goosebumps. I'd love to read the book (Sled Driver, I think?), but it is over $500 on Amazon. I wish they either ordered another print OR published as an ebook.
Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the price you quoted, what will the seating situation be? Comparable to existing international coach, or somewhere between coach and business class? Do you have approximate seating charts and spacing? Will that vary by airline, or do you plan to standardize it?
We're baselining an experience better than domestic first class. One seat on each side of aisle, so everyone gets a window and aisle. There's more footroom and more headroom than the typical first class on a 737 or A320. But this is something airlines can customize.
Ah, I see; it wasn't obvious from the pictures on your site that the plane is significantly smaller, closer to commuter-jet sized than 747-sized.
What's the total plane seat capacity?
Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
What will your pilots do, just as a for instance, if ... say a lone Cessna asks tower for his ground speed ... and then a bit later a navy F-18 pilot also asks tower for his ground speed ? What will they do in that situation ?
specially if the F-18 pilot is making sure that every bug smasher from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. I've read and re-read that story so many times, each reading results in a fresh batch of goosebumps. I'd love to read the book (Sled Driver, I think?), but it is over $500 on Amazon. I wish they either ordered another print OR published as an ebook.
There is an ebook version floating around the internet.
Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes
#325Hi - 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.
Im thrilled to see something like this taking flight, congrats!
I have two questions:
1) Can you tell us about your start-up process? Aside from your all-star team, I can't even imagine how you could have brought this to reality. I can't even imagine how much capital and space a prototype would have taken. At what point did you decide that it was time to apply to YC? Were there other investors? How much design work did you have completed/prototyped when you starting talking to investors? (sorry I know this is 5 questions)
2) Are you hiring?
Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think that other established players haven't entered this space (i.e. Boeing, etc)?
Nobody wants to be first in this space. Because of the fuel costs of supersonic travel (the flow is inherently dissipative above Mach 1), the margins are too tight for anything but business class travel. As soon as you have a supersonic option, you've moved business class out of your subsonic fleet, along with that revenue. With the loss of the effective subsidy of business class, coach costs go up, and the market sh…
>Nobody wants to be first in this space.
Yeah, there already was a first in this space, and it went down in flames.
Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes
#327Pretty 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…
> Very skeptical this little company can go all the way with this.
I suspect they intend to become a bigger company.
Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes
#328Hi - 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. The airline industry needs innovation around product and service to get out of it's current race to mediocrity.
2 questions:
1) Why 2.2 times the speed of sound? (Why not aim higher?)
2) Where will you get the capital? Seems like a very big ask compared to the typical company coming out of YC.
Again - good luck! I would love to clip 4 hours from the SF to NYC flight.
Re: Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes
#329[deleted]