Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

boomsupersonic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 531 posts

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#301

Post by foo92691 »

credit_guy wrote: post #291
mmaunder wrote: post #262

Burning more Jet-A to get less people around the world faster has got to be the most tone deaf idea this decade. I'm a pilot, I just attended Airventure, and I love the history around SR-71, Concorde and the other incredible high speed planes we've built. But this is an idea that had its time and aviation has moved on to high bypass turbofan engines, reliability, safety, fuel efficiency and reducing our environmental…

> to get less people around the world faster What does “less people” mean? You mean Boom is targeting only the ultra-rich? That’s not their aim. They aim to make supersonic flight both possible and affordable.

According to their propaganda, they are going to make jet transport cheaper AND faster AND greener.

I see no evidence that this is at all realistic, and a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Do they even have a story explaining how their new supersonic jet could possibly reduce costs?

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#302

Post by jinder »

mrcartmeneses wrote: post #283
gnfargbl wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's en_gb and not en_uk (although UK is exceptionally reserved [1], and we recently begun using UK on car nationality identifier stickers). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Exceptional...

GB is the more neutral term, UK is pushed by the Conservatives and nationalists/royalists

GB is not more neutral - it excludes Northern Ireland, which is a part of the UK.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#304

Post by humanistbot »

foo92691 wrote: post #299
mmaunder wrote: post #262

Burning more Jet-A to get less people around the world faster has got to be the most tone deaf idea this decade. I'm a pilot, I just attended Airventure, and I love the history around SR-71, Concorde and the other incredible high speed planes we've built. But this is an idea that had its time and aviation has moved on to high bypass turbofan engines, reliability, safety, fuel efficiency and reducing our environmental…

Agreed. Boom claims they will be "sustainable" because they are going to invent some kind of synthetic biofuel. Wait, it looks like I either misremembered that claim, or they have backed away from it: > "Overture’s fleet will be able to run on 100% sustainable aviation fuels." https://boomsupersonic.com/sustainability Color me skeptical. Making existing aviation more climate-friendly would be a much more worthy goal…

Meanwhile, my data center has been fully prepared to run on electricity supplied from cold fusion reactors for years!

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#305

Post by mhandley »

kloch wrote: post #234
gbronner wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concorde was not very pleasant to sit in from what I've heard. Great food, but the seats were basically economy 2x2.

There is a Concorde on display at the Museum of Flight near Seattle. You can walk down the aisle but the seats themselves are protected by plexiglass. The seats do look very cramped and the windows are very small. The museum of flight is amazing and much more interactive than most air museums.

The windows are so small because Concorde cruised at 60,000 feet. At that altitude the usual oxygen masks won't keep you conscious. The windows are small so that if one ever failed, Concorde could descend fast enough to an altitude where the masks would work before the pressure dropped too low.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#306

Post by foo92691 »

ucha wrote: post #298

To everyone saying this will not work because it's more expensive... jets were more expensive than turboprops. And even though the former use more fuel, we prefer them. The costs of flying an airplane isn't proportional to its fuel usage. The faster an aircraft is, the more flights it can perform per day. The carbon emissions impact of flying a gas-guzzling supersonic aircraft aren't evident either. Of course, more g…

The fuel burned by an aircraft is almost certainly the dominant portion of its lifecycle carbon emissions. I expect the carbon emissions due to its manufacture are negligible by comparison. Have you seen a source either way?

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#307

Post by zucked »

mmaunder wrote: post #281
mmaunder wrote: post #262

Burning more Jet-A to get less people around the world faster has got to be the most tone deaf idea this decade. I'm a pilot, I just attended Airventure, and I love the history around SR-71, Concorde and the other incredible high speed planes we've built. But this is an idea that had its time and aviation has moved on to high bypass turbofan engines, reliability, safety, fuel efficiency and reducing our environmental…

Just want to reply to my own post here to add that most people don't realize that the Cirrus SR22 is the world's best selling single engine piston aircraft and has been for the past 20 years. And it's wholly owned by the Chinese government. I'm aware this is a different market, but I want to illustrate how we're losing our lead in some critical areas, while we focus on creating solutions looking for a problem. Incide…

TIL Cirrus was owned by CAIGA - looks like they're also building some light bizjets for Cessna...

Neat. Love to watch traffic at KAPA - saw a Walton plane land there the other day an hour or so before Condi was named part owner of the Broncos.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#308

Post by runarberg »

mmaunder wrote: post #262

Burning more Jet-A to get less people around the world faster has got to be the most tone deaf idea this decade. I'm a pilot, I just attended Airventure, and I love the history around SR-71, Concorde and the other incredible high speed planes we've built. But this is an idea that had its time and aviation has moved on to high bypass turbofan engines, reliability, safety, fuel efficiency and reducing our environmental…

That was my first thought as well. We are in a climate emergency, and currently airlines are not paying for the damage they are systematically adding to the catastrophe. I don’t see a future where this just continues. Either we really mess up the climate with all the societal collapse that entails, or we make these polluters pay for their damage. In either case there is hardly a future for this “innovation”.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#309

Post by jfk13 »

mrcartmeneses wrote: post #283
gnfargbl wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's en_gb and not en_uk (although UK is exceptionally reserved [1], and we recently begun using UK on car nationality identifier stickers). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Exceptional...

GB is the more neutral term, UK is pushed by the Conservatives and nationalists/royalists

Aside from any such associations, they mean different things.

People often use the terms imprecisely, but (for example) if Scotland were to leave the United Kingdom, it'd still be part of the island of Great Britain.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#310

Post by jollybean »

mmaunder wrote: post #262

Burning more Jet-A to get less people around the world faster has got to be the most tone deaf idea this decade. I'm a pilot, I just attended Airventure, and I love the history around SR-71, Concorde and the other incredible high speed planes we've built. But this is an idea that had its time and aviation has moved on to high bypass turbofan engines, reliability, safety, fuel efficiency and reducing our environmental…

The world is a big place, it can handle 100 or so of these fluffing around.

And there actually may be realistic optimization scenarios.

People don't want to have sympathy for 'world leaders' for example, but often physical presence is an important thing. And they waste so much time.

I don't like my own PM but I'd rather they spent a little more to cut his travel time down; his time is extremely expensive.

And this sounds ridiculous at first glance: but even if he could literally get reasonable sleep more often. His decisions are so impactful, the leverage so much, it matters. And I don't even like the guy at all.

That aside the secondary advantages from it might be positive, we need R&D that's ahead of the curve.

I'm fine with this as long as everyone isn't flying it all the time.

Post reply on HN