For anyone else who finds the opening music infuriating, it stops at 35:50.
If anyone from Boom is reading this, please never do that again. Or at least pick better music.
Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
141–150 of 545 posts
Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boom is not currently flying their intended engines, the Symphony, which does not exist yet. (1) The XB-1 is flying with J85's just like a T-38 has, and just like a T-38 it can go supersonic with afterburners. If the Symphony is able to meet its design goals, it will not need afterburners for any part of flight. How much they will be able to deliver on that remains the biggest open technical question for Boom. (2) 1:…
> how much will people pay for civil supersonic? Do we know how much more it's likely to cost? I could easily see people paying 1.5x - 2x. Anything beyond 2x I imagine would start to price out the average person and anything beyond 5x would probably price out the vast majority of potential customers.
Their business model for a long time has theorized that they can deliver an operating cost that would allow airlines to offer tickets at roughly current business class ticket costs, which would be a fraction of Concorde ticket prices expressed in current dollars.
I don't know if those theorized efficiencies will be delivered (a lot depends on that engine) or if airlines will price tickets at that level. But it's the theory so far.
Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
#143I 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?
Concorde was a large program backed by two governments and designed and built by nationalized aerospace companies. This is a strictly private affair, so no tax dollars behind it, just private funds. The end goal is also to be much more efficient than Concorde, which was a pretty brute forced effort which multiple large afterburning engines. They hope to make the production model capable of supercruise.
> The end goal is also to be much more efficient than Concorde
I would think that is not very hard to accomplish. Their first flight is almost half a century after Concorde’s. Technology has progressed.
As an (imperfect) comparison, in subsonic flight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Past):
“Jet airliners became 70% more fuel efficient between 1967 and 2007, 40% due to improvements in engine efficiency and 30% from airframes. Efficiency gains were larger early in the jet age than later, with a 55-67% gain from 1960 to 1980 and a 20-26% gain from 1980 to 2000. Average fuel burn of new aircraft fell 45% from 1968 to 2014, a compounded annual reduction 1.3% with variable reduction rate.”
Supersonic is different, but there was half a century of development in military supersonic flight, so a new design need not start where Concorde stopped.
Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
#144“Currently, all civil aircraft flights are prohibited from operating above Mach one speeds over land in the United States.” [1] Mike Bannister’s excellent book Concorde talks at length about how “handsomely profitable” the BA service was (as opposed to the Air France one) from 1984 until the 2000 crash and subsequent grounding put them in to a spiral where keeping enough people certified was too expensive. One part o…
LA to New York or San Francisco to Honolulu in 2 to 3 hours would be a game changer. You could probably fill a plane at least once a day on those routes for a handsome profit.
Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boom is not currently flying their intended engines, the Symphony, which does not exist yet. (1) The XB-1 is flying with J85's just like a T-38 has, and just like a T-38 it can go supersonic with afterburners. If the Symphony is able to meet its design goals, it will not need afterburners for any part of flight. How much they will be able to deliver on that remains the biggest open technical question for Boom. (2) 1:…
> how much will people pay for civil supersonic? Do we know how much more it's likely to cost? I could easily see people paying 1.5x - 2x. Anything beyond 2x I imagine would start to price out the average person and anything beyond 5x would probably price out the vast majority of potential customers.
> could easily see people paying 1.5x - 2x
People pay more than that for domestic first class, which doesn’t even have lay-flat seats. $2,500 or even $5k for a New York San Francisco 2-hour flight would absolutely sell.
Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
#146Do you think SpaceX or similar would be attacking this problem space if there was a business to be had here? Seems like a fun pet project that will lose money indefinitely, but love seeing small teams do big things!
I haven't looked into Boom's business plan but I assume they wouldn't have gotten this amount of money for this long without a plan to make money that at least looks plausible to investors.
Products or technologies that launch new markets often look like 'bad ideas' until someone figures out a way to make it work profitably. Otherwise we'd already be doing them. Paul Graham wrote a good essay on this, saying basically a startup entrepreneur's job isn't just finding a good idea that hasn't been done, because anything that looks like a good idea is probably already being done. It's finding something that looks like a bad idea (so isn't being done) and figuring out it's not bad if you just do it a different way or add a certain innovation. Of course, most things which look like bad ideas are actually bad ideas but searching the edges for exceptions is the valuable thing entrepreneurs do (along with creating new jobs).
Also, you might be surprised there are several companies selling high-end transcontinental private jets. One of the newer features of the latest generation is that they can fly at .9 to .95 mach instead of .8 to .85 mach. That shaves more than an hour off a flight. It's a relatively small market but this new generation has a waiting list of those lining up to pay ~$20M more to save a few hours per round-trip. Sure, it's a small market but it's profitable. Note: I have no idea if Boost's plan involves that market but paying more to go faster, and especially having the fastest option, is usually of interest to someone.
Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Air travel is more popular than ever and 2024 broke basically all records. Why would there be less case for faster flights? Supersonic flight will be the preserve of the 0.1%, but the vast majority of private jets can't fly trans-continental (without stops along the way) and there are people out there paying $50k per flight for Etihad's The Residence suites. So, yes, there are people who will pay for this.
the way i've heard it explained is functionally that the ultra rich are either leaning towards things like those private suites onboard a large plane, or flying in a private jet. people don't mind the experience of flying in a plane or the time it takes for the most part - they mind being uncomfortably crammed into a seat for hours on end with another person spilling into their lap in a loud, stuffy cabin. otherwise,…
> the ultra rich are either leaning towards things like those private suites onboard a large plane, or flying in a private jet
Anyone making $1+ mm / year is not in regular private-jet territory. That leaves commercial, which doesn’t have suites on most routes. (Most domestic routes don’t have lay-flat options.)
In between you have a $5k to $25k window in which something like Boom could operate. Same, dense domestic business seats. But lower service costs because you don’t need to serve a coursed meal on a 2-hour flight.
Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted because you're right: they have the technology, they don't have an engine, and this just looks like a civilian version of a fighter jet pretty much (except it has 3 turbojets). And what people always fail to mention when it comes to supersonic flights is one of the main issue is neither a technological nor an economical one nor a supersonic boom one. Traveling west bound is gre…
Right. Whether I arrive in London at 4pm or 8pm doesn't really make much of a difference. (Admittedly it probably lets you arrive on the continent without a red-eye--depending on supersonic over land rules--as you pretty much have to do today.)
I still prefer shorter flight time. I rather spend those hours in hotel bed or eating at restaurant than sit/lie in the airline seat.
Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... meeting the same strict regulatory noise levels as the latest subsonic airplanes Extremely dishonest: as far as I can tell (CFR title 14, B36.5) there are no specific noise level regulations for subsonic cruise flight (i.e. not take-off and landing) because you can't hear subsonic aircraft at cruise altitude. On the other hand, however, you will be able to hear sonic booms.
I think that statement is saying it will meet those noise levels for takeoff and landing, not during cruise which will be over the ocean.
It's intentionally misleading, they are technically saying they will meet the takeoff and landing requirements (which they are required to meet by law) but implying that the plane is going to be quiet at cruise (which they want to perform over the continental United States, not just over the ocean).
Moreover, their statement falsely suggests that Concorde does not "[meet] the same strict regulatory noise levels as the latest subsonic airplanes" but 36.301 says that Concorde also has to meet the same standards as subsonic planes (standards which exclude operation at cruise which didn't matter for Concorde because it was over the Atlantic).
Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]
#150I 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?
Concorde was a large program backed by two governments and designed and built by nationalized aerospace companies. This is a strictly private affair, so no tax dollars behind it, just private funds. The end goal is also to be much more efficient than Concorde, which was a pretty brute forced effort which multiple large afterburning engines. They hope to make the production model capable of supercruise.
> Concorde was a large program backed by two governments and designed and built by nationalized aerospace companies. This is a strictly private affair, so no tax dollars behind it, just private funds.
Why is this interesting?