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Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

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Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#141

Post by mrguyorama »

bombcar wrote: post #111
njarboe wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the story is that Elon wanted russian engines and they snubbed him so he got vindictive, like he does, but this time in a good way.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#142

Post by starfallg »

pstuart wrote: post #65
nickff wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engine manufacturing is much more profitable, and seemingly challenging than airframe manufacturing. The engines they'll use are unlikely to be very different from those in other applications, so I'm not sure there's room for a new entrant. Keep in mind that the R&D and capital costs of becoming a turbine engine manufacturer are immense, and likely much higher than the costs to develop a new aircraft.

The real money is in the service contracts.

Yes, but the key to getting service contracts is to have a product that people can put into service.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#143

Post by signatoremo »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #133
nfw2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also know nothing about the subject, but just to play devil's advocate here, doesn't SpaceX show that a startup could potentially solve hard physical engineering problems more effectively than established incumbents?

It does, but a supersonic personal jet is a much bigger feat of engineering than a rocket that lands. Most people don't appreciate that. We had landing rockets in the 80's, but Boom was trying to do several things that are completely new. SpaceX's real technology is about launching the rockets cheaply, not re-using them (which is only part of the problem). And SpaceX started with engineers who knew a lot about the do…

Boom isn’t trying to do something completely new. Concord was in commercial services for many years. Benefits and shortcomings are well known.

OTOTH, there was never a rocket that could land, only suborbital prototypes. Shuttle doesn’t count since it’s reusable in name only, as it still cost substantial amount of money and time for refurbishing. In fact there are still no other reusable rockets, seven years after SpaceX did it for the 1st time.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#144

Post by macshome »

hef19898 wrote: post #120
ajross wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honda builds both the engines and airframes for the HondaJet.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#145

Post by mrtksn »

mrguyorama wrote: post #136
mrtksn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay but the genius of Musk was this computerised car stuff and it's exactly where the traditional car manufacturers fail. Just recently the CEO of VW changed and the important part of the failure of the previous CEO was their shit software on their electric cars. It's not like Tesla managed to make cheap electric cars? They managed to make cars with good computers and this is something that people actually want. Ess…

Actually, I desperately want the software world to stay as far away from cars as possible. Even in a VW, I know I will go 100k miles with zero issues with most of the stuff. Someone somewhere wants to put javascript between me and that, and I hope they have a bad life.

I suspect you are thinking of touchscreens, not necessarily the computerised cars?

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#146

Post by signatoremo »

hef19898 wrote: post #116
samatman wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which rockets landed in the 70s?

Note that SpaceX didn’t get any meaningful defense contract until they’ve proved themselves with Falcon 9.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#147

Post by mrguyorama »

jjk166 wrote: post #122
oivey wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even things like semiconductors benefitted massively from government research and funding. They’ve certainly taken off from there, though. I’m trying to think of what industries this might not be the case for. Research thin industries like entertainment and media? Has the development of things like OLED mostly been by private companies? I guess finance? Seemingly if it involves engineering the government at least mad…

Just because the government has at some point invested in something doesn't mean it had to for it to take off. Once something is already going strong, it's to be expected that everyone who might stand to benefit will want to hop on the bandwagon, especially once the utility is proven. For example the government was not particularly involved with aircraft development until WW1 when it proved to be of considerable mili…

Government funded research being basically throwing money into the ether and hoping some entire brand new world of chemistry or physics or communications or anything like that is the whole point of government investment. Research into one area providing gains in other unexpected areas is a direct goal of the kind of research the government funds.

You know, like, the internet. The government wanted to make sure that nuking one air force base couldn't prevent the retaliation strike, so let's make a big network that is scalable, re-routable on the fly, and simple to put together. Creating a brand new sector of the economy and dominating the new sector with the likes of google and microsoft and apple was the exact outcome optimistic government employees would wish for.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#148

Post by Ajedi32 »

chadash wrote: post #83
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 agree with you, but to play devil's advocate, what if I changed your comment to: Agreed. I know nothing about automotive engineering or car design, but the hype around Tesla always puzzled me. If this start up can all of a sudden make an economical electric car, then surely the existing automotive manufacturers could do it quicker and cheaper. Toyota, Mercedes, Ford, etc... already have existing designs from decade…

Yeah, I hate this kind of weakly justified pessimism. Sure, if you just assume every new idea will fail you'll be right 95% of the time. But if everyone did that we'd be stuck in the dark ages.

I applaud people and organizations that take that chance, innovating and trying new things even when there's a high chance of failure. Worst-case, they fail and other people can learn from their mistakes and hopefully do better next time. Best case, they change the world.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#149

Post by rollinggoron »

klintcho wrote: post #99
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…

This argument could be made about any big SV company the past 30 years. - Anyone of IBM, Microsoft or Yahoo could build a better (quicker and cheaper) search engine than what a bunch of new grads from Stanford can (Google) - Anyone of the car manufacturer can build a better (quicker and cheaper) electric car than a software millionaire (Tesla) I don't agree with the statement, I think there are numerous reason people…

Eh, I figured I would get this response but writing software e.g. your IBM, Yahoo, and Microsoft example is much easier and faster to do than building a cutting edge, physical, supersonic commercial jet. To build Google, all you needed was a computer, and a new approach/algorithm to solving web search. Software companies are much easier to disrupt than physical product companies.

As others have pointed out the Tesla isn't a great example either because building a car is still 100x easier to do than building aircraft, let alone supersonic planes.

"Unexpected Insights" and "A new research breakthrough from some other field" seems to be handy wavy. A supersonic jet breakthrough is not something that can be discovered in a dorm room. It requires millions in research and expensive materials to build and test against.

Re: Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

#150

Post by MichaelCollins »

signatoremo wrote: post #146
hef19898 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which rockets landed in the 70s? Note that SpaceX didn’t get any meaningful defense contract until they’ve proved themselves with Falcon 9.

He must either be talking about the Apollo Lunar Module which first landed on the Moon in the 60s (but was not "landing a booster", much less on earth.), or more likely he's talking about the Delta Clipper which was in the 90s (and also not a rocket booster.)

Probably the latter, because there are some low-brow skeptics on reddit and youtube who inexplicably seem to think the Falcon 9 is a stolen Delta Clipper with a new paint job.

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