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XB-1's wings are officially closed out

blog.boomsupersonic.com

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Re: XB-1's wings are officially closed out

#151

Post by stedaniels »

MasterScrat wrote: post #149
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #9

The blog post is hyper focused on the wings and didn't make a lot of sense without context. This link[1] was extremely useful to better understand what Boom is doing and how far along they are. [1] https://boomsupersonic.com/xb-1/build

Yeah that's like companies who send you a newsletter detailing new features, when you have 0 memories of who they are and what they do. Take-away: add a one line summary of who you are and what you do at the top of any such communication.

Nothing says Unsubscribe like a newsletter from a company I don't know about a product I've no idea what it does.

Re: XB-1's wings are officially closed out

#152

Post by Reason077 »

fcanesin wrote: post #144
Reason077 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's also one of the big reasons that supersonic passenger aircraft have failed in the past - restrictions against supersonic flight over land due to the extreme noise. It seems strange to me that Boom would want to draw attention to this in their brand name!

The whole premise of the startup is to build a silent supersonic airplane. Building atop several years of existing research and experimental programs around silent sonic boom.

Sounds good. But might then a more appropriate name for the company be "Shhhhh"?

Re: XB-1's wings are officially closed out

#154

Post by aetherspawn »

xiphias2 wrote: post #150
aetherspawn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the website was really cool. But the first image really sucked. The other 30 images and animated constructs were super cool, but the entire experience was wrecked by the first image that you see, which looked like a jpg of a plane drawn in ms paint.

Probably you're not looking at it from a laptop with touchpad...it's really hard to scroll, also it's really hard to use the keyboard. I can imagine that with a tablet/mobile phone it's a nice experience.

I was scrolling on a laptop with a mouse which worked really well.

Re: XB-1's wings are officially closed out

#155

Post by chrismorgan »

adwn wrote: post #139
chrismorgan wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And these bonds can be stronger than the base materials, so that it’s actually least likely to break where you glued it.

Cue the obligatory "Then why don't they build the entire plane out of that glue?"

Various reasons. Chemical bond glues are only strong if there’s something for them to bond to; it’s expensive glue; it’d be much harder to make the entire plane out of that stuff, especially given the desired tolerances; sometimes it has other problems that make it unsuitable, e.g. how it reacts to environmental conditions it’s exposed to; it’d look and sound silly…

Re: XB-1's wings are officially closed out

#157

Post by dmos62 »

fragmede wrote: post #148
gr2020 wrote: post #68

Somewhat OT - but from their FAQ they say they're targeting a price of $200M for the Overture. I'm certainly no expert, but this feels to some extent a bargain given the capability. Capacity 55-75 passengers. A few data points for comparison (all of these approximate of course, with multiple variants available of each): Airbus A220 - $90M Airbus A320neo - $110M Boeing 787 - $140M Boeing 777 - $320M Airbus A350 - $325…

The data-point for the elephant in the room: Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde - $169M 150 passengers. Cruising speed: Mach 2 The Concorde was a thing of beauty. Massively expensive to produce and run, and fuel inefficient, it was a passenger airliner that could outrun fighter jets. Fighter jets of that era could get to mach 2 using afterburner, but that's especially fuel inefficient so they could only keep up for 15 minutes…

One of my great travel-related discoveries has been that if I can find a train that takes even about the same amount of time, it will always be much more pleasant and less energy-draining than air travel.

Re: XB-1's wings are officially closed out

#158

Post by tlamponi »

bronson wrote: post #147
AWildC182 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aluminum aircraft go together more or less the same way. There will be some inspection panels but the interesting stuff is already exposed, there's very little reason to go inside the wings, particularly on a composite aircraft where corrosion isn't a problem. If you really need to see something, use a borescope.

What if a cable snaps or a pulley breaks?

You can see in the article that now no cables are in there during closing, they are in extra canals/tubes which can be accessed later on, be it for installing them in the first place or maintenance.

Re: XB-1's wings are officially closed out

#159

Post by Symbiote »

dmos62 wrote: post #157
fragmede wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data-point for the elephant in the room: Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde - $169M 150 passengers. Cruising speed: Mach 2 The Concorde was a thing of beauty. Massively expensive to produce and run, and fuel inefficient, it was a passenger airliner that could outrun fighter jets. Fighter jets of that era could get to mach 2 using afterburner, but that's especially fuel inefficient so they could only keep up for 15 minutes…

One of my great travel-related discoveries has been that if I can find a train that takes even about the same amount of time, it will always be much more pleasant and less energy-draining than air travel.

Was it like this for the final years of Concorde? I don't know, but I doubt it.

With an entirely first class plane, and service, I expect they had special gates, and priority everything for the passengers.

Re: XB-1's wings are officially closed out

#160

Post by benhurmarcel »

gr2020 wrote: post #68

Somewhat OT - but from their FAQ they say they're targeting a price of $200M for the Overture. I'm certainly no expert, but this feels to some extent a bargain given the capability. Capacity 55-75 passengers. A few data points for comparison (all of these approximate of course, with multiple variants available of each): Airbus A220 - $90M Airbus A320neo - $110M Boeing 787 - $140M Boeing 777 - $320M Airbus A350 - $325…

These are catalog prices. In practice airlines pay almost half that.
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