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Boom takes the wraps off its supersonic Symphony engine design

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Re: Boom takes the wraps off its supersonic Symphony engine design

#71

Post by constantcrying »

cm277 wrote: post #64
whinvik wrote: post #24

It's very disappointing to see how skeptical HN has become about new technology. Making aircrafts is hard, making supersonic aircraft even harder and making a new supersonic aircraft company hardest of all. That there's progress by Boom should be encouraged. Otherwise we are just saying that aircrafts will continue to be the domain of Airbus and Boeing only who don't have much incentive to innovate.

Hmm, all of these things are hard; they are also fairly easy compared to building your own jet engine . There are a handful of jet engine makers in the world, 2 or 3 that can build passenger-grade engines and 2-3 (small overlap) that can build supersonic jet engines. The physics within a jet engine are basically unknowable. The material science is the hardest we have. The tolerances and margins for error are insane.…

Kratos will build the engines. Plane manufacturers usually do not build their own engines.

Re: Boom takes the wraps off its supersonic Symphony engine design

#72

Post by Ekaros »

whinvik wrote: post #24

It's very disappointing to see how skeptical HN has become about new technology. Making aircrafts is hard, making supersonic aircraft even harder and making a new supersonic aircraft company hardest of all. That there's progress by Boom should be encouraged. Otherwise we are just saying that aircrafts will continue to be the domain of Airbus and Boeing only who don't have much incentive to innovate.

I think NH would laugh out a startup saying we are going to build up and conquer entire world with our new processor architecture or operating system. Not based on existing one such as ARM or Unix.

Re: Boom takes the wraps off its supersonic Symphony engine design

#73

Post by masklinn »

kitd wrote: post #66
masklinn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the original statement is that there is “new technology” which HN is “skeptical of”. The evidentiary requirements for a dismissal are no higher than what they dismiss. Which in this case is a PR bit completely devoid of evidence, so 0. But if you’ re interested in evidence I actually scratched a bit at one of the names mentioned, and I can’t say I’m impressed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33983419#3399687…

Sorry, but that wasn't his statement. It's quite clear that he states that what is presented as new technology is completely made up nonsense. He may be right, but he needs to show what in the article is completely made up nonsense so that we know if he is.

> Sorry, but that wasn't his statement.

It was my statement, and it was a reply to the previous unsupported assertion which I quoted here.

> It's quite clear that he states that what is presented as new technology is completely made up nonsense.

Yes.

> He may be right, but he needs to show what in the article is completely made up nonsense so that we know if he is.

There is jack shit in the article supporting the existence or likelihood of "new technology". It's window dressing, a PR release with no meat or bones promising a bright and spotless future out of essentially nothing. It has as much technological content as Blindsight, Altered Carbon, or I, Robot. Possibly less.

Re: Boom takes the wraps off its supersonic Symphony engine design

#74

Post by rakoo »

whinvik wrote: post #24

It's very disappointing to see how skeptical HN has become about new technology. Making aircrafts is hard, making supersonic aircraft even harder and making a new supersonic aircraft company hardest of all. That there's progress by Boom should be encouraged. Otherwise we are just saying that aircrafts will continue to be the domain of Airbus and Boeing only who don't have much incentive to innovate.

And making an aircraft that doesn't emit outrageous amounts of CO2 with equal access to everyone, irrespective of the size of their wallet, is the hardestest. Boom doesn't solve this, so why should we praise it ?

A technological progress isn't progress if it's a social or environmental regression.

Re: Boom takes the wraps off its supersonic Symphony engine design

#75

Post by masklinn »

constantcrying wrote: post #71
cm277 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, all of these things are hard; they are also fairly easy compared to building your own jet engine . There are a handful of jet engine makers in the world, 2 or 3 that can build passenger-grade engines and 2-3 (small overlap) that can build supersonic jet engines. The physics within a jet engine are basically unknowable. The material science is the hardest we have. The tolerances and margins for error are insane.…

Kratos will build the engines. Plane manufacturers usually do not build their own engines.

And Kratos is currently a minor manufacturer of engines for missiles and expendable drones ("attritable UAVs" in their own words), not a manufacturer of airliner engines, or even bizjet engines.

Re: Boom takes the wraps off its supersonic Symphony engine design

#76

Post by avidphantasm »

cycomanic wrote: post #69
mmustapic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concorde used afterburners for take-off and while transitioning to supersonic, then it cruised at Mach 2 without afterburners. The thing with Boom is that they are saying "we are doing this new great thing", and it's not new, Concorde did it. How are they specifically going to be better than Concorde? Just not using afterburners during taking off? Are they going to be cheaper? How? Just by saying they will? That's wh…

On top of that nobody needs it. The issue is that supersonic jets are really anachronistic, it's the most wasteful way of flying and it doesn't even buy you much time for most distances because you have to fly subsonic over land.

It feels like Boom is a product of the zero interest rate frothy market, where there was lots of money chasing “disruptive” technologies, which breeds not-so-good ideas. In particular, Boom seems to have attracted investment because it purports to solve a classic rich guy problem: how to fly overseas a bit faster, but at a price premium. They still have some momentum from the zero-interest rate environment, but how long can that last?

Re: Boom takes the wraps off its supersonic Symphony engine design

#77

Post by fakedang »

whinvik wrote: post #24

It's very disappointing to see how skeptical HN has become about new technology. Making aircrafts is hard, making supersonic aircraft even harder and making a new supersonic aircraft company hardest of all. That there's progress by Boom should be encouraged. Otherwise we are just saying that aircrafts will continue to be the domain of Airbus and Boeing only who don't have much incentive to innovate.

The challenge with supersonic flight is that you not only have to build engines that are capable of pushing your aircraft to the maximum limits of speed, but also it has to be able to carry a proportionate amount of fuel for it to be viable for flight. Supersonic aircraft consume fuel at a much higher rate than normal aircraft, hence you are forced to make a tradeoff between higher aircraft capacity and higher fuel capacity. This is not a problem for current military applications of supersonic flight, but for commercial purposes, it makes it financially unviable. You can only sell a limited number of tickets, which makes the proposition unattractive for large carriers. Thus your market would be limited to niche carriers/charters who cater to carrying a few UNHWs and execs, which in the grand scheme of things isn't a large enough market to recoup your investment.

Not to mention, Boom hasn't innovated in any way to solve the two key issues here - they aren't using a significantly lighter fuel to compensate for the tradeoff, nor have they radically changed the engine design to consume less fuel at supersonic speeds. If they did, they would be touting that instead rather than hiding behind a proprietary "superfuel".

Re: Boom takes the wraps off its supersonic Symphony engine design

#78

Post by constantcrying »

masklinn wrote: post #75
constantcrying wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kratos will build the engines. Plane manufacturers usually do not build their own engines.

And Kratos is currently a minor manufacturer of engines for missiles and expendable drones ("attritable UAVs" in their own words), not a manufacturer of airliner engines, or even bizjet engines.

Yeah, apparently actual large scale manufacturers, GE, Honeywell, Safran, etc. have no interest in producing supersonic engines.

Gotta take what you can get I guess. Honesty I don't think you are wrong with the scepticism, if some actual large engine company took up the challenge I also would be more confident.

Re: Boom takes the wraps off its supersonic Symphony engine design

#79

Post by hef19898 »

constantcrying wrote: post #78
masklinn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Kratos is currently a minor manufacturer of engines for missiles and expendable drones ("attritable UAVs" in their own words), not a manufacturer of airliner engines, or even bizjet engines.

Yeah, apparently actual large scale manufacturers, GE, Honeywell, Safran, etc. have no interest in producing supersonic engines. Gotta take what you can get I guess. Honesty I don't think you are wrong with the scepticism, if some actual large engine company took up the challenge I also would be more confident.

Rolls Royce, the only company that ever made civilian super-sonic jet engines, for the Concorde, dumped Boom in September. So, it is not tha Boom doesn't have an engine OEM partner. They had, and that partner was not interessted beyond some initial research.

Re: Boom takes the wraps off its supersonic Symphony engine design

#80

Post by masklinn »

constantcrying wrote: post #68
perihelions wrote: post #38

- "And it is built specifically for use with Sustainable Aviation Fuel, a cleaner alternative to ordinary jet fuel — albeit one that costs several times more right now." I've been thinking about this for a while, in the context of multiple different startups. There's this (anti)pattern I see repeatedly: a startup says they're doing something that's an obviously an overwhelmingly bad idea from a business sense, but th…

>I'm overlooking something obvious and reasonable You are missing the point entirely. Boom builds planes, they don't operate them and they do not build the engines (Kratos does). Their capacity to make the plane use "clean" jet fuel is almost zero. The people who manufacture the engines and operate the planes are the ones who need to put in the effort and pay the costs, it is not Boom who has to care. This is a pure…

> they do not build the engines (Kratos does).

According to the PR, Kratos (or more specifically FTT) does not build the engines, it (supposedly) will design them.

> The people who manufacture the engines and operate the planes are the ones who need to put in the effort and pay the costs, it is not Boom who has to care.

I mean, the manufacturer usually cares in the sense that the manufacturing and operating costs inform the purchase.

Though obviously the plane would need to exist first for operators to even evaluate it.

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