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How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware development

bscholl.substack.com

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Re: How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware development

#101

Post by jdeibele »

From the first paragraph:

"It was designed, built, and flown successfully by a team of just 50 people—compared to the hundreds or even thousands that would have been employed by a traditional big aerospace company. And we did this with roughly a tenth of the budget that would traditionally be required. People have marveled at how our small team of just 50 people at Boom designed, built, and successfully flew the XB-1, the world’s first independently developed supersonic jet. And we did this with about a tenth the capital as any other supersonic program."

Is the repetition a sign of AI writing the article?

Re: How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware development

#102

Post by fluorinerocket »

TheHideout wrote: post #85
saagarjha wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a little confused how this differs from standard constraint optimization.

In standard constraint optimization you know the constraints at compile time. In MDO many constraints are generated at runtime and constantly change as you search for solutions.

In MDAO you definitely know all the constraints at compile time, but inequality constraints can be active or inactive as the optimizer progresses.

That's how SNOPT, IPOPT, presumably KNITRO and nonlinear programming optimizers work.

Yes MDAO is "just" constrained nonlinear optimization.

You come up with a model for your thing, which often involves multiple "disciplines" like mass, propulsion, aerodynamics, loads, trajectory/equations of motion, and then usually use some framework to calculate the constraints values and objective value and their gradients

Re: How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware development

#103

Post by FireBeyond »

notahacker wrote: post #84
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Premium cabins tend to be a very small proportion of overall seats Most of the profit on a plane is made in business class. If airlines could fly an all-business configuration, they would. The problem is the smallest planes that can do high-paying routes like LON-NYC are bigger than that customer set. So the airline throws in economy seats, often barely breaking even on those, to fill space. In a world with small a…

Smaller jet aircraft on the same route generally means relatively expensive operating costs: some costs like landing slots and pilots are essentially fixed, whilst others like maintenance, fuel and capital costs don't scale down linearly. The marginal profit on an individual economy class seat might be small, but 100+ of them cover a large portion of the fixed and semi-fixed costs of operating the aircraft, and are r…

> some costs like landing slots

Small detail: most landing slot costs are variable based on aircraft weight.

Re: How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware development

#104

Post by TheHideout »

fluorinerocket wrote: post #102
TheHideout wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In standard constraint optimization you know the constraints at compile time. In MDO many constraints are generated at runtime and constantly change as you search for solutions.

In MDAO you definitely know all the constraints at compile time, but inequality constraints can be active or inactive as the optimizer progresses. That's how SNOPT, IPOPT, presumably KNITRO and nonlinear programming optimizers work. Yes MDAO is "just" constrained nonlinear optimization. You come up with a model for your thing, which often involves multiple "disciplines" like mass, propulsion, aerodynamics, loads, tra…

Constraints can very much be dynamic and emergent from complex event chains.

Re: How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware development

#105

Post by FireBeyond »

everfrustrated wrote: post #71
JoshTriplett wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> True business class / upper class travelers get discounts of 20-50% for J. And no, they’re not using Amex/Chase Travel. What are they using, then?

Corporate discounts

Huh. Where? I work for a company that's not a FAANG but $200B market cap, and what we get through Concur, Spotnana is at most, 5, occasionally 10% below what I see for the same fare class on Expedia. I have never seen anything approaching 20% cheaper, let alone 50%.

Re: How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware development

#106

Post by notahacker »

FireBeyond wrote: post #103
notahacker wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smaller jet aircraft on the same route generally means relatively expensive operating costs: some costs like landing slots and pilots are essentially fixed, whilst others like maintenance, fuel and capital costs don't scale down linearly. The marginal profit on an individual economy class seat might be small, but 100+ of them cover a large portion of the fixed and semi-fixed costs of operating the aircraft, and are r…

> some costs like landing slots Small detail: most landing slot costs are variable based on aircraft weight.

Landing charges levied on each landing usually have a significant weight component (amongst other variable components like emissions, noise, handling and passenger charges) but the relationship usually isn't linear with passenger capacity. Landing slots required at busier airports to have the right to land at a certain time each week are generally traded between airlines with the slot coordinator's agreement with the value of the slot based mainly on the commercial attractiveness of the time slot.

Re: How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware development

#107

Post by class3shock »

fbd_0100 wrote: post #95
class3shock wrote: post #55

TLDR: We changed our plane design and lost range, we used ai in helping tweak our engine design to get back our range, we were successful in our computer models. This article is just another from what are fundamentally hardware companies proclaiming how they're implementing "ai" and it's doing so much to help to gather more stock/venture investors but with no actual substance. Everything he discusses taking into acco…

Agree on most points. However as someone who has worked on new aircraft I can tell you that friction/mis-communication/finger-pointing between airframe and powerplant manufacturer is a huge issue. There is a common saying in the industry, that you should never design a new airframe and a new powerplant at the same time. Each new aircraft certification program should be one or the other

Sure, as there is when any two companies work together but to say they have no ability to communicate performance parameters, that they have no ability to work together, is just wrong.

Re: How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware development

#108

Post by class3shock »

saagarjha wrote: post #69
TheHideout wrote: post #48

AKA they're doing what every other aerospace company has been doing for decades, multidisciplinary design analysis and optimization [0] with simulation in the loop. If you were to ask them how they're leveraging Design of Experiments I bet it'd be met with "design of what?". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multidisciplinary_design_optim...

I’m a little confused how this differs from standard constraint optimization.

It doesn't, they just want to use a buzzword to make it look like they are doing new and advanced things.

Re: How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware development

#109

Post by imglorp »

everybodyknows wrote: post #99
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There wasn't much more to be learned about large passenger jets using their intended custom engines from a small GEJ85 powered platform, This is key to me. I'm a layman in Aviation, so I'll unpack that. The Boom XB-1 demonstrator (1) uses GEJ85: the General Electric J85 engines, as seen on military jets (2). This is not the desired production jet's "Symphony" engine (3), which at a guess has to be both larger and m…

From [4]: > Rolls-Royce's work over the last few years So Rolls sank several years of investigation into it before cutting their losses. From [3]: > Boom aims for production of the engine to begin in 2025 at the Overture factory at Greensboro, North Carolina Mark your calendar ...

It seems developing a new engine a relatively rare, difficult, expensive, and risky endeavor in aviation. Notice none of the aircraft companies make their own, right? It's CFM, PW, and RR.

But Boom has a bunch of propulsion engineer openings so it looks like they're really going for it.

Re: How Boom uses software to accelerate hardware development

#110

Post by FireBeyond »

notahacker wrote: post #106
FireBeyond wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some costs like landing slots Small detail: most landing slot costs are variable based on aircraft weight.

Landing charges levied on each landing usually have a significant weight component (amongst other variable components like emissions, noise, handling and passenger charges) but the relationship usually isn't linear with passenger capacity. Landing slots required at busier airports to have the right to land at a certain time each week are generally traded between airlines with the slot coordinator's agreement with the…

Absolutely, good point. I don't know why I latched onto charges vs slots.
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