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This is quite scary for a non-engineer. You're telling me that this little supersonic plane has the whole wing structure held together by a handful of 4mm thick metal struts, manually glued to the wing surface, with wire pulleys running on the inside :O
From their web page: “Faster travel brings the world’s people, cultures, and experiences within reach. Life happens in person, and at Boom we see breaking the time barrier as a moral imperative. XB-1 is the first step in bringing supersonic travel back to the world.” -- Blake Scholl, Founder and CEO The life happens in person part currently sounds like a relic from the past. I hope Boom makes it through the travel re…
Supposedly it is inherently 3X as expensive as subsonic planes from a cost per seat mile point of view. It is basically a cheaper replacement for the Concorde.
Also it seems that their biggest difficulty is coming up with suitable engines. The engines that they need don't exist and there doesn't seem to be an affordable way to create them.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_Overture
It is definitely cool from a tech point of view.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Building a plane in my garage. You'd be surprised how minimal yet how strong a lot of these structures are. The vast majority of the material I use is thinner than a credit card.
I want to hear more about building a plane in one's garage. Are you using a kit? How hard is it? Cost? How will you transport it to an airport once it's finished? It sounds like it would be a great project. Thanks.
Hard: I took a class from a licensed A&P mechanic and while not mandatory, gave me a pretty good idea of what I'd be up against. It is extremely challenging even with a kit however. Lots of learning, lots of redoing stuff because of mistakes, many many hours.
Cost: whatever you want it to be really. You can do safe builds probably from around 40-50k for something like a Sonex or Kitfox to several hundred thousand for a Velocity twin or even something turbine powered.
Transport: most people build in their garage and leave the wings off then stick it in a trailer or U-Haul to complete final assembly at a hangar. It's mostly a non-issue.
The level of care and organization in this photo feels equivalent to what I would expect for a ground robot prototype out of a startup. Can any aerospace engineer comment on what they see? Does their setup inspire confidence?
What in particular would you have expected to see?
Does this mean if any repairs are needed they'll have to rebuild the wing from scratch? I'd love to hear from someone at Boom what the main goals are for this aircraft. And how it will differ from the larger transport craft they're planning. Beyond size and capacity.
The company's goal is overland supersonic flight. Profitably, ideally. To make that even a legal possibility means demonstrating they can be somewhat quieter than prior supersonic aircraft. This aircraft is a proof-of-concept.
I think I'm curious specifically whether this is more about internal R&D and building systems, or if it's meant to demonstrate they have the capability to to create a performant supersonic aircraft, which they can take to potential investors.
From their web page: “Faster travel brings the world’s people, cultures, and experiences within reach. Life happens in person, and at Boom we see breaking the time barrier as a moral imperative. XB-1 is the first step in bringing supersonic travel back to the world.” -- Blake Scholl, Founder and CEO The life happens in person part currently sounds like a relic from the past. I hope Boom makes it through the travel re…
They are targeting $5K for round trip tickets between NY and London. It is really just making it faster for the rich to travel for fun or work. Supposedly it is inherently 3X as expensive as subsonic planes from a cost per seat mile point of view. It is basically a cheaper replacement for the Concorde. Also it seems that their biggest difficulty is coming up with suitable engines. The engines that they need don't exi…
Air travel itself is already only for the rich, and travel in general is mostly for the rich, if you want to look at it from the poorest in the world.
Elon made this point the best with Tesla, and in 10-20 years the cheapest electric cars will likely be cheaper and better then current cheap gas cars.
I don't believe these 3x cost are actually 'inherent'.
The level of care and organization in this photo feels equivalent to what I would expect for a ground robot prototype out of a startup. Can any aerospace engineer comment on what they see? Does their setup inspire confidence?