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Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

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Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#111

Post by bombcar »

njarboe wrote: post #96
bombcar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the main way you distinguish the grifters from the movers. The grifters work on the final product, the movers work on the first step, having a plan to make that profitable, so they can build toward the final product. SpaceX is probably the example that comes to mind, even if they did borrow engines.

FYI, SpaceX developed all of their engines in-house[1]. Other American rocket companies use Russian engines and Congress's bill forbidding that going forward has put ULA in a very bad place because Blue Origin's BE-4 engine still is not ready after more than a decade of development. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_rocket_engines

Ah, then it fits even better. I could have sworn someone had been launching on borrowed Russian engines, but maybe that was Boeing.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#112

Post by trhway »

datavirtue wrote: post #61
ajross wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mentioned this elsewhere, but it belongs better here: If there's a market for a product that existing suppliers don't want to provide, that sounds like exactly what a startup should be doing. Boom is wasting their time building an airframe but what they really need to win is an engine. They should have built the engine first.

Spot on. If you build a more efficient engine P&W, GE, Honeywell, and a few other companies would be clawing eachothers' eyes for the chance to buy you out. Boeing and other airframe mfgs would throw you a huge contract immediately if they thought you could actually build the engines and deliver them.

>If you build a more efficient engine

Even if you just build an engine on-par with everybody else. Or even just a bit sub-par. Not everybody wants or able or have use case for those large top of the line very efficient and very expensive engines from the top manufacturers. You can check out the global international drama during the last few years around Ukrainian Motor-Sich engine manufacturer - one of the main engine manufacturers from the USSR times. There are just too few of those engine manufacturers, even if sub-par, around for the current world demand. Anybody wanna make a startup for the engines, initially for UAS market? It is going to blow up after the war as drones have been showing their future dominance. And just look at that beauty (uses the Motor-Sich engines as Turkey don't have their own) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baykar_Bayraktar_Ak%C4%B1nc%C4... .

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#113

Post by samatman »

rollinggoron wrote: post #76
rocket_surgeron wrote: post #60

Regarding Boom there are only two reasonable conclusions one can reach: 1. They are a Theranos-style operation 2. They are a Madoff-style operation I, a lone aerospace engineer working out of my garage in my spare time, have a better chance of achieving supersonic flight than Boom does. Even their technology demonstrator is an obvious scam. It demonstrates nothing. It does not demonstrate the ability to design, build…

Agreed. I know nothing about aerospace engineering or aircraft design, but the hype around Boom always puzzled me. If this start up can all of a sudden make an economical supersonic jet, then surely the existing plane manufacturers could do it quicker and cheaper. Boeing, Lockheed, Airbus, etc... already have existing designs from decades past that they could at least use as a base. They have experts in material scie…

I would say that a brand-new rocket company making a rocket which can land itself would sound more implausible than what you're describing, if we didn't all know that it in fact has happened.

That doesn't mean Boom is that, however.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#114

Post by hef19898 »

lyind wrote: post #103
lacker wrote: post #47

I'm rooting for you, Boom. The world needs supersonic planes and you're so close. Good luck.

I would like to travel like this, assuming they have wifi and tickets are affordable: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/15/eco-airship... Maybe they could fly fully autonomous when used as freighters.

Supersonic freight is not economical. You can get air freight from any airport to any other airport in the world in max. 24 hours flight time. Customs clearance on either end alone takes longer than that.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#115

Post by detaro »

hef19898 wrote: post #114
lyind wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to travel like this, assuming they have wifi and tickets are affordable: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/15/eco-airship... Maybe they could fly fully autonomous when used as freighters.

Supersonic freight is not economical. You can get air freight from any airport to any other airport in the world in max. 24 hours flight time. Customs clearance on either end alone takes longer than that.

somehow I don't think they plan for their airships to be supersonic.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#116

Post by hef19898 »

samatman wrote: post #113
rollinggoron wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I know nothing about aerospace engineering or aircraft design, but the hype around Boom always puzzled me. If this start up can all of a sudden make an economical supersonic jet, then surely the existing plane manufacturers could do it quicker and cheaper. Boeing, Lockheed, Airbus, etc... already have existing designs from decades past that they could at least use as a base. They have experts in material scie…

I would say that a brand-new rocket company making a rocket which can land itself would sound more implausible than what you're describing, if we didn't all know that it in fact has happened. That doesn't mean Boom is that, however.

Landing rocket boosters happened in the 70s already, and said rocket company benefited heavily from NASA, government and defence contracts and research. If Boom would have had access to supersonic jet research from the government, along with government contracts, development or production doesn't matter, RR wouldn't have stopped the cooperation.

Edit: Reusable or VTOL rocket were tested, successfully landing, in the early 90s by McDonnel Douglas under the DC-X program. No idea where the 70s thing came from...

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#117

Post by MichaelCollins »

bell-cot wrote: post #94
MichaelCollins wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. They are a Theranos-style operation If they were that, they'd be lying about having their own engine in development that is an order of magnitude better than the competitions but won't show it to anybody.

That would not be a credible lie - it is too widely known how very difficult & expensive the technology needed to produce any such engine is.

Theranos' lie wasn't credible to people in the biomedical technology industry. That's why Theranos had to get investors who knew nothing about it.

If Boom's lies(or wishful thinking?) were as egregious as Theranos, they never would have gotten their foot in the door at Rolls-Royce.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#118

Post by deepnotderp »

rollinggoron wrote: post #76
rocket_surgeron wrote: post #60

Regarding Boom there are only two reasonable conclusions one can reach: 1. They are a Theranos-style operation 2. They are a Madoff-style operation I, a lone aerospace engineer working out of my garage in my spare time, have a better chance of achieving supersonic flight than Boom does. Even their technology demonstrator is an obvious scam. It demonstrates nothing. It does not demonstrate the ability to design, build…

Agreed. I know nothing about aerospace engineering or aircraft design, but the hype around Boom always puzzled me. If this start up can all of a sudden make an economical supersonic jet, then surely the existing plane manufacturers could do it quicker and cheaper. Boeing, Lockheed, Airbus, etc... already have existing designs from decades past that they could at least use as a base. They have experts in material scie…

Agreed, SpaceX has no chance against ULA /s

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#119

Post by neximo64 »

aresant wrote: post #89

In 2020 COVID decimated Rolls Royce given their concentration of revenue associated with selling & servicing existing aero engines. They have yet to recover from that era which saw a ~10x decrease in enterprise value and record losses. That said I would interpret this news as a "cut the $!@$! R&D bleeding in anything that won't be generating revenue in the next 4 quarters" vs a reflection on the feasibility or health…

That's not entirely true, in the industry it's sort of known Boom still has a lot of work to do to get an engine made for those planes.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#120

Post by hef19898 »

ajross wrote: post #107
jjk166 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying a well established and experienced engine manufacturer to design the engine you need which is only one part of your product is much more economical than becoming an engine manufacturer yourself. By analogy, if an AI startup needs custom chips, that doesn't mean they need to nor should build their own fab and try to compete with TSMC.

That's just the "off the shelf" argument. Which has just fallen apart because RR doesn't have the product and doesn't want to build it. You're right, that if Boom could just buy their engine it would be better for Boom. Boom can't just buy their engine though, and now it looks like their company is going to fail because they decided to build the easy part and not the hard part.

There are very valid reasons why no ariframe manufacturer is building its own engines and vice versa.

And having a civilian suoersonic turbofan engine nobody needs or wants doesn't get a comoany anywhere.

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