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Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

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Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#251

Post by sojournerc »

gsnedders wrote: post #211
TylerE wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single NY-LA route alone would cost over $500 billion. High speed rail is well $100m/mile, just for the track.

> High speed rail is well $100m/mile, just for the track. That's frankly an insane figure, and depends vastly on what you're building and where. For something that's largely running through rural landscape, you really should expect no more than half that for the total construction cost. Maybe US construction is that expensive, but… wow.

If we're talking east-west in the US, there are two major mountain ranges, many smaller ones, vast deserts, let alone getting contiguous land in the East.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#252

Post by smachiz »

bobthepanda wrote: post #93
smachiz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm... ask every 'business class only' airline that has come (and gone...) about that.

Building an entire airline around it is stupid. Building certain premium flights around it, not necessarily; Singapore Airlines operates a 67-seat business class on a plane from Newark to Singapore that only has business and premium economy. BA operates a 32-seat business-only flight from London City to New York via Shannon. And these are just the subsonic flights. JAL is one of the bigger investors in this project,…

They’re almost always money-losing ego flights.

BA1 rarely flies full. The ego is right there in the number. It’s a novelty.

SQ hasn’t operated business class only since like 2011. It has 67 business seats and 94 premium economy seats. And still probably loses money.

The one you didn’t mention was Stavenger to Houston which... only flies when oil is flying high. Because it’s not profitable otherwise.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#253

Post by Theodores »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #222
kolinko wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12 hours is a lot, but for shorter distances most people would prefer a good train to a plane. Living in Europe, I will take 4-5 hour train ride compared to a 1h flight, most of my friends as well. Many people will also prefer 5-8 hour 100mph train ride to 1h plane ride due to comfort, price and carbon footprint.

Not if your doing it more than once a year and certainly business travellers wont want to. I recall one of the senior marketing guys where I worked did London to Edinburgh on the overnight sleeper didn't get much sleep and was uncomfortable.

You can still work two consecutive days taking the sleeper train. Leave central London at 6.30 p.m. or later, have something to eat/drink, hop on the sleeper and get off at the other end in the centre of the city, bright and early.

Traditionally there has been a large jolt at Crewe where carriages and/or the locomotive gets changed on the train. This will wake you up. But if you are properly tired from working hard then sleep is no problem.

They changed the trains recently. They were with stupidly small 'bedrooms' with absolutely nowhere to put your stuff. Plus sharing a 'bedroom' with a random stranger in the other bunk is slightly weird when they snore and take up all of the available space.

The end carriage used to be a gambling den with an all-night bar. It wasn't supposed to be a gambling den but the large round table and movable chairs made it perfect for betting on card games. The crowd was a regular one for this, working on oil rigs in the North Sea. I liked this illicit activity not that I was involved.

I also did the plane option a few times, but this was not optimal if you were trying to get work done.

Rather than just take the tube across town to Euston for the sleeper train there would be a fraught journey out to the airport - Heathrow. So you would have to do this during working hours hoping not to get caught up in rush hour. At the other end you would need to get a taxi from the airport plus you would need to book a hotel room. There would be no working maximum hours at both destinations, any money saved by the plane would be wasted on taxi and hotel bills and it would also be a mad rush rather than sensibly paced. The 'bump in the night' at Crewe and the guy in the lower bunk snoring was a small price to pay.

Most plane flights are for leisure rather than business. What makes sense for work doesn't make sense for leisure, the cheap flight wins every time when it is you that is paying for it.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#254

Post by mrep »

adventured wrote: post #249
TylerE wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-speed rail isn't high speed enough. Even with way faster than current tech and NO stops you'd still be looking at taking 12+ hours for what a plane can do in 5. That's ignoring the trillions it would cost. The US does not have the population density to make HSR viable.

> The US does not have the population density to make HSR viable. The Democrats, after they take the Senate and Presidency, should launch a $1-$1.5 trillion regional HSR development project, partnering with Japan. Here are the regional routes, generally speaking, that make tremendous sense and should be built this decade: Oklahoma City, Dallas Ft Worth, San Antonio, Austin, Houston San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix, La…

That sounds like a massive waste of money to me. Those first 2 regions are full of cities with massive sprawl and little public transit meaning you will almost certainly want a car at the end of your trip and at that point, just drive, they are all like a 3-5 hour drive anyways which isn't bad (interstate traffic isn't bad outside of cities).

The older east coast cities make some sense at least since they tend to have some trains and density due to historical past but they mostly already have rail lines you can take (albeit not high speed).

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#256

Post by valuearb »

paulmd wrote: post #154
alfalfasprout wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason for that is that the concorde used afterburners (basically, pump fuel into the high speed exhaust for extra thrust) which are incredibly inefficient. Great for a fighter jet where you need a sudden burst of extreme thrust, but not something you want a long-haul airliner to use. Boom uses turbofan engines to reach supersonic speeds which are much, much more efficient. In fact, many airliners could theoretic…

Concorde itself could have been much more efficient, there were plans for a "Concorde B" with high-bypass engines that would have carried a larger payload with additional range at higher efficiency. https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-b

The Concorde B was a bandaid on a massive gaping wound.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#257

Post by valuearb »

jacquesm wrote: post #248
flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concorde didn't fail because it was expensive. It ran profitably for 27 years. [0] It failed because it crashed and killed 109 people 3 years before they threw in the towel. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Operating_economics [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590

It crashed because of a fault on another airplane , a 5 Kg titanium strip from a DC10 entered the wing at very high speed. Not a lot of aircraft of the day would have survived such an impact.

Almost all jetliners of the day would have survived it because their tires wouldn’t lushest accelerated it to 300 MPH.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#258

Post by credit_guy »

DomenicoMazza wrote: post #18

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.

> I don’t think we need more environmentally unsustainable travel.

Why do you think Boom is environmentally unsustainable? Boom is working with fellow YCombinator startup Prometheus to use synthetically produced fuels that are net zero emissions.

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#259

Post by stareatgoats »

jonplackett wrote: post #161
latchkey wrote: post #39

Their parallax website is pretty entertaining... https://boomsupersonic.com/xb-1/build

Nice, anyone have some suggestions for quick ways to build parallax sites like this? Like themes, frameworks etc

Wappalyzer says they use GSAP (https://greensock.com/)

Re: Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout

#260

Post by twic »

bluGill wrote: post #218
mertd wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say like it is a bad thing but I'll take 12 hours in a nice stable train over 7 hours spent in going in and out of airports and sitting on economy airliner seats. I would actually pay a premium. This actually is reality today. Acela on the Northeast corridor is more expensive than comparable air fares and it's not even that good.

Maybe you would. We know from other countries that in general 5 hours is about the max time people will spend on a train before they choose to fly instead. Because of air resistance planes are more fuel efficient as well for those longer trips (don't forget about energy lost to brakes when the train needs to stop)

> don't forget about energy lost to brakes when the train needs to stop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_brake#Electric_ra...

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