81–90 of 545 posts
Wishing them all the best! Beautiful aircraft, beautiful demonstration, and hopefully more beautiful datasets that exceed their expectations.
Just don’t Milkshake Duck this.
I know nothing about Boom. Why is this impressive? We've achieved supersonic for passengers before. Are we meant to be interested just because someone is taking up the mantle again, or is there some new design that makes it impressive?
The Concorde relied on an afterburner to achieve supersonic flight, so it burned a ton of fuel. It also could not go supersonic over land because its sonic booms were too loud. This mean that flights could only go over the ocean, and they were expensive due to fuel costs. Boom's goal is to reduce the sound of their sonic booms 30x and eliminate the need of afterburners.
You can watch them kick in on the telemetry (which goes from "100%" to "A/B" for all three engines) at the bottom of the video around the 58:35 mark. https://www.youtube.com/live/-qisIViAHwI?feature=shared&t=35...
Boom Supersonic to break sound barrier during historic test flight today - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42852077 - Jan 2025 (99 comments)
How cool is that, hopefully will pressure Airbus into developing one too. So far they did silly concept vides only. I'm also quite worried about Airbus after winning against Boeing becoming complacent since Chinese or Russians are not even close.
How do you make this profitable?
Selling it for more than it costs to build.
Computer-based modelling, advances in our understanding of supersonic flight and sonic booms and a mature civil (and private) aviation industry make the profit case much more compelling than it was for the Concorde. (The real test will be in their engine.)
I know nothing about Boom. Why is this impressive? We've achieved supersonic for passengers before. Are we meant to be interested just because someone is taking up the mantle again, or is there some new design that makes it impressive?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Concorde relied on an afterburner to achieve supersonic flight, so it burned a ton of fuel. It also could not go supersonic over land because its sonic booms were too loud. This mean that flights could only go over the ocean, and they were expensive due to fuel costs. Boom's goal is to reduce the sound of their sonic booms 30x and eliminate the need of afterburners.
Boom also requires afterburners, at least for now. You can watch them kick in on the telemetry (which goes from "100%" to "A/B" for all three engines) at the bottom of the video around the 58:35 mark. https://www.youtube.com/live/-qisIViAHwI?feature=shared&t=35...
I know nothing about Boom. Why is this impressive? We've achieved supersonic for passengers before. Are we meant to be interested just because someone is taking up the mantle again, or is there some new design that makes it impressive?
there hasn't been supersonic civil aviation, as far as i am aware, since the concorde was grounded. there are no active commercial aircraft capable of going supersonic. this is significant because it's the first civil aircraft to reach that milestone since the ending of the concorde program.
And how is this a civilian aircraft? It is a cool one-off single seater with three military engines (oops, civilian engines derived from military and used in business jets - still not cheap for a one-seater). Two-seater for some definition of "technically". But perhaps they can sell a few of these to private pilots and then it would be a supersonic civilian aircraft. One pilot and one passenger if we insist on making it a business jet.
How cool is that, hopefully will pressure Airbus into developing one too. So far they did silly concept vides only. I'm also quite worried about Airbus after winning against Boeing becoming complacent since Chinese or Russians are not even close.
How do you make this profitable?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boom also requires afterburners, at least for now. You can watch them kick in on the telemetry (which goes from "100%" to "A/B" for all three engines) at the bottom of the video around the 58:35 mark. https://www.youtube.com/live/-qisIViAHwI?feature=shared&t=35...
The engine in XB-1 test plane is not the same that’s going in the production plane.
The original plan was a commercial partner for the engines, but the big three - Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney and General Electric - turned them down. It's one of the biggest remaining question marks in the entire project.
I know nothing about Boom. Why is this impressive? We've achieved supersonic for passengers before. Are we meant to be interested just because someone is taking up the mantle again, or is there some new design that makes it impressive?
There are some interesting technological developments around fuel efficiency and minimizing the "sonic boom" that's felt on the ground. Neither of those killed Concorde though, because the entire idea of Concorde turned out to be incredibly faulty. MOST people weren't in such a hurry to get from point A to point B that they'd pay 5x-10x a normal business/first class ticket to cut a trip down by 50% or so. The intende…
Me. Time is time. A lay-flat seat intercontinental is already $10+ k within weeks of departure, point to point. Not having to plan around sleeping on the plane or whatnot makes international trips feel domestic.