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Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]

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Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]

#241

Post by nine_k »

chgs wrote: post #188
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspect if Concorde had been made by an American company the “overland” issue would have been solved.

I suspect many more Americans could potentially sue the airline for the noise than English or French, due to the structure of the respective legal systems. So the financial risk of overland operations over the US, even with the ban lifted, could be too high still.

Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]

#242

Post by mlindner »

mikeyouse wrote: post #162
thereddaikon wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"No tax dollars behind it" is directionally true since it wasn't built by one of the Primes, but not literally true. As is the wont of every company these days, they've extracted tens/hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds.. $200 million in North Carolina for production: https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/subsidy-tracker/nc-... $60 million from the US Air Force for development: https://www.aerospacetestinginter…

I think these types of arguments are somewhat disingenuous when it's referring to tax breaks on future taxes. It doesn't harm the state at all because the company wouldn't have located in the state in the first place without it. It just acts to remove the drag on the company being successful. If they're successful then the amount of tax revenue the state will get will be tremendous. So there's no downsides.

And it also doesn't immediately act as funding or tax dollars for the company.

Just talking about the "$200M" number.

Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]

#243

Post by chgs »

adastra22 wrote: post #134
teractiveodular wrote: post #98

Earlier 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.

Would you pay $5k to fly basic economy? Air travel is popular, but extremely price sensitive. Ryanair and its ilk have shown that people will suffer humiliation to save even $50 on ticket prices. Supersonic will have to serve the rich, who are willing to pay to fly private. But how big is that market? Especially if you’re still going to raise prices 2-3x?

There are thousands of business and first class seats sold between London and New York every day, most in the 5k plus per leg range.

Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]

#244

Post by senko »

echoangle wrote: post #225
senko wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First class NY to Paris in a couple of weeks, one way, is ~$6k "best overall", with $10k for "fastest" (checked a random flight on Skyscanner).

And how many people are booking that for that price? Is that enough to build a dedicated service on?

I wouldn't know, tho I am sure there's a McKinsey deck somewhere that calculated this :)

Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]

#246

Post by chgs »

ghaff wrote: post #94
bangaroo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nope. commercial and private jets generally cap out around mach 0.9 i am very rusty on the economics and details of supersonic commercial flight, but the general gist as i recall is: - going much faster scales up the cost of flying at a rate that's hard to justify for how much time it saves. there is less case in the 2000s for "having to be in london in 3 hours from NY" than there previously was, too. - noise restric…

And the range in which supersonic really gets interesting (to wealthy people/execs) is trans-Pacific. My dad got upgraded to the Concorde once from NYC to London and his reaction was more or less eh. Glad to have done it once but I'm now arriving in London at rush hour rather than having a nice dinner in first class.

There ar every few day flights from the US to Europe. A lunchtime flight arriving at 8pm is far nicer than 5 hours sleep on an overnight flight or the 7am flight.

West bound being able to leave the office at 6pm and be in New York to pay the kids to bed is great.

Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]

#247

Post by chgs »

rbanffy wrote: post #50
talldayo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"in a long time" kinda doesn't matter to me. America hasn't built a supersonic bomber "in a long time", you'll have to excuse me for not caring. The value of such a weapon is dubious and only made sense in a hype-laden Cold War environment. Similarly I don't think we've learned the lessons of the Concorde yet. Not only do people not need hypersonic flight, it's going to create a premium class of hydrocarbon emissions…

> Not only do people not need hypersonic flight, We do. It takes me more than 14 hours and two flights to visit my son in Brazil. Even if there was a direct flight, it wouldn't be much less than that. At this time, very few people visit places more than 10 hours away from their homes. Knowing places faraway and different expands one's horizons. You learn that there are different ways of living, different ways of thin…

If there’s no direct flight now it seems unlikely there’s enough demand to justify a supersonic flight.

Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]

#248

Post by dghlsakjg »

chgs wrote: post #188
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspect if Concorde had been made by an American company the “overland” issue would have been solved.

As a pilot, Americans are incredibly sensitive to aircraft noise. And regulators do all sorts of stuff to route planes around noise sensitive areas.

It breaks noise regs to fly most subsonic 1960s eras jets with their original engines these days, you have to modify them with hush kits, etc.

They forced a lot of these very American jets to be quiet for the sake of just the landing and takeoff phases. I have a hard time seeing that they would/will find a way to make sonic booms acceptable to the general public.

Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]

#249

Post by OnlineGladiator »

pembrook wrote: post #228
itsoktocry wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a long way from a supersonic passenger flight, isn't it?

Endless pessimism, even in the face of evidence to the contrary is a hallmark of HN. Thank you for continuing the tradition. May you never hold out hope for anything positive in the future.

Blind optimism is just as obnoxious as blind pessimism - both are based on ignorance. Boom still hasn't solved the 2 hardest problems after nearly a decade. Currently regulations prohibit supersonic flight over land. It's a total guess whether or not they'll be able to overcome this, but I remain skeptical both of their noise claims and their ability to overturn legislation. Also they don't have a real plan for an engine...9 fucking years later (because all the big engine manufacturers refuse to work with them).

If anything the pessimists are being proven right.

Re: Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]

#250

Post by two_handfuls »

__loam wrote: post #118
actionfromafar wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't let go of the suspicion that this could become some kind of military (drone or not) airframe.

The military has had supersonic aircraft since the 1950s, why would they care about this?

If Boom succeeds in making a supercruise engine that can stay supersonic without needing afterburners, then the military may be interested because that will be cheaper than their current engines that need afterburners and use more fuel.
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