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Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

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21–30 of 283 posts

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#21

If I recall correctly the Concorde used about 2 tonnes of fuel rolling on the ground alone.. I wonder how this new aircraft fares for fuel consumption? I believe the Concorde is a marvel. You could travel faster than the rotation of the earth in it! However I don’t think we need more environmentally unsustainable travel.

It's hard to say how efficient this plane will be before it's built (or more details made public) but from what I've read sofar the big version, 'Boom Overture', is meant to use turbofan engines. That alone should provide significant fuel savings over the Concorde, which used turbojet engines with afterburners on takeoff.

Even so, supersonic flight is less efficient than getting there a bit slower. Unfortunately, air resistance is nonlinear like that.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#22

Isn't one of the main drawbacks of supersonic flight the noise?

From their website: Overture flights will focus on 500+ primarily transoceanic routes that benefit from supersonic speeds—such as New York to London or San Francisco to Tokyo. Overture won't generate a sonic boom over land cruising at subsonic speeds. Its passengers won't even notice breaking through the "sound barrier," which will be inaudible and uneventful.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#23
As a (pre-Covid) extreme frequent flyer, supersonic and other rapid point to point initiatives are thoroughly unenticing.

Part of the reason I loved long flights was the ability to put away the laptop and zone out to a book or movie with some wine before landing, dealing with immigration, hotels, Ubers, and days of frenetic, high stress meetings afterward.

The prospect of trying to optimize how fast we can jump from one business trip to another is uninspiring.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#24

Isn't one of the main drawbacks of supersonic flight the noise?

In particular the sonic boom. There are ways to reduce that and they are trying to.

It's interesting... you'd think the military would have gone down this path already, and perhaps came up short?

The ability to fly supersonic NOE (Nap-of-the-Earth) into enemy territory without leaving a trail of very loud sonic booms seems like it would be something of interest. B1-B Lancer's exist to do exactly this, but are quite noisy.

Which either means I'm wrong and the military doesn't care about being quiet, or Boom will eventually reach the same conclusion... or Boom has something truly revolutionary that nobody else has achieved.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#25

If I recall correctly the Concorde used about 2 tonnes of fuel rolling on the ground alone.. I wonder how this new aircraft fares for fuel consumption? I believe the Concorde is a marvel. You could travel faster than the rotation of the earth in it! However I don’t think we need more environmentally unsustainable travel.

It's hard to say how efficient this plane will be before it's built (or more details made public) but from what I've read sofar the big version, 'Boom Overture', is meant to use turbofan engines. That alone should provide significant fuel savings over the Concorde, which used turbojet engines with afterburners on takeoff. Even so, supersonic flight is less efficient than getting there a bit slower. Unfortunately, air…

Recent discussion of Concorde-2 discusses the fuel improvements which would have come with adding spools and turbofan to the motor, and wing changes, and larger fueltanks.

Concorde didn't get to move beyond its first model. This boom jet is leveraging decades and decades of post-concorde engineering.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#26
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In particular the sonic boom. There are ways to reduce that and they are trying to.

It's interesting... you'd think the military would have gone down this path already, and perhaps came up short? The ability to fly supersonic NOE (Nap-of-the-Earth) into enemy territory without leaving a trail of very loud sonic booms seems like it would be something of interest. B1-B Lancer's exist to do exactly this, but are quite noisy. Which either means I'm wrong and the military doesn't care about being quiet,…

Or maybe the military has technology we don't know about yet?

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#27

As a (pre-Covid) extreme frequent flyer, supersonic and other rapid point to point initiatives are thoroughly unenticing. Part of the reason I loved long flights was the ability to put away the laptop and zone out to a book or movie with some wine before landing, dealing with immigration, hotels, Ubers, and days of frenetic, high stress meetings afterward. The prospect of trying to optimize how fast we can jump from…

I don’t especially get the supersonic flight love especially from people who will never pay the $10k or whatever to take a transatlantic supersonic flight. I don’t love long economy flights. But honestly there’s not a lot wrong with modern lie flat business. A few hours of my time is not that big a deal.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#28
post #16
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blake said last year to Forbes that development would take about 6 billion dollars. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2019/01/04/boom-... So yeah it’s gonna take a lot more money. I hope they get it!

They may also find SpaceX eating their lunch, if the rumors of ballistic flights have any substance to them at all. And the EPA doesn't curb-stomp them.

Ballistic flights make no sense at all. Consider how finicky rocket launches are about weather. So you need to go to the spaceport for your launch, hope that you don't get scrubbed by the weather and save a few hours? Hard to see how that makes any sort of business sense.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#30
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting... you'd think the military would have gone down this path already, and perhaps came up short? The ability to fly supersonic NOE (Nap-of-the-Earth) into enemy territory without leaving a trail of very loud sonic booms seems like it would be something of interest. B1-B Lancer's exist to do exactly this, but are quite noisy. Which either means I'm wrong and the military doesn't care about being quiet,…

Or maybe the military has technology we don't know about yet?

I'm not so sure. Airplanes are hard to keep secret when they're flying around, and existing planes have their capabilities pretty well figured out by now. It's not every day a new airframe is built.

I'd expect the $100MM USD F-35 to have all the latest tech, being the newest fighter available.

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