361–370 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.
Honest / naive question. How do you even start an aerospace company "in your basement"?
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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 honestly started laughing halfway through scrolling because I thought this was satire mocking the startup scene. Wow.
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.
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).
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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).
"Bombardier" is French for 'bomber', an aircraft built to drop bombs; certainly a curious choice for a commercial aircraft supplier.
http://www.bombardier.com/en/about-us/history.html
> Today’s Bombardier grew out of a young mechanic’s inventive genius and entrepreneurial spirit. Born in 1907, Joseph-Armand Bombardier builds his first “snow vehicle” at the ripe age of 15. His motivation? To help people travel across the snow-covered roads of rural Québec in Canada.
> In 1937, J.-Armand achieves his first major commercial success with the launch of the seven-passenger B7 snowmobile.
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I wonder if you should just sell exclusivity per company. 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.
TBH we really don't want to lock people out. I was disappointed that I never got to fly Concorde, not even once, and we want to open this to everyone (eventually make it routine).
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"Bombardier" is French for 'bomber', an aircraft built to drop bombs; certainly a curious choice for a commercial aircraft supplier.
The company is named after Joseph-Armand Bombardier, who built his first snow vehicle at 15. http://www.bombardier.com/en/about-us/history.html > Today’s Bombardier grew out of a young mechanic’s inventive genius and entrepreneurial spirit. Born in 1907, Joseph-Armand Bombardier builds his first “snow vehicle” at the ripe age of 15. His motivation? To help people travel across the snow-covered roads of rural Québec i…
That's actually a perfectly reasonable explanation of how they ended up with such a name, but it's still unfortunate.
That's good news for ozone layer. Luckily this seems to be only a few guys, a wish, and a rendering.
> That's good news for ozone layer. Luckily this seems to be only a few guys, a wish, and a rendering. Sorry, what connection does this have with the ozone layer? The most sense I can make of your comment is that you're concerned about CO2 emissions from supersonic flight and don't understand the difference between global warming and ozone depletion.
I'm serious. My immediate association for "boom" is an explosion sound, not a sonic boom. I would feel just as comfortable flying an airline called "Bang", "Crash", "Kaboom", "Blast" or "OhMyGodWeAreGoingDown".
Please, do rethink that name, I dream of shorter trips to Bora Bora every single day of my life (not serious now).