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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

#81

Post by masklinn »

hef19898 wrote: post #79
constantcrying wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Technically two other companies also did:

- Kuznetsov Design Bureau, now JSC Kuznetsov, designed the NK-144 which powered the Tu-144S

- Kolesov Design Bureau, now NPO Saturn, designed the RD-36-51 which replaced the NK-144 in the Tu-144D

Both are now under the UEC state-owned group.

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

#82

Post by constantcrying »

masklinn wrote: post #80
constantcrying wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 inf…

Kratos will at least build some. I have no idea whether Boom plans to then take over production themselves (I can not imagine that actually happening).

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

Sure, but Boom never promised what exactly their partners will be doing. Unless they are pushing some serious requirements on Kratos, beyond "the renewable fuel should also work", Kratos doesn't need to really care.

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

#83

Post by kitd »

masklinn wrote: post #73
kitd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exi…

Thank you for replying. And while there is no doubt a lot of PR in the article, PR != "made-up nonsense".

I like HN because the standard of discussion > eg reddit. Simply throwing out what are essentially accusations of lies is not good discussion.

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

#84

Post by ksec »

lajosbacs wrote: post #63
julienfr112 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN was very sceptical about blockchain/web3, and recent events show that HN was quite rightly so ...

Counterexample where HN was wrong: the famous Dropbox comment.

Yes. There are far more wrong on HN than right. In fact the Web3 / Crypto example might have been the outliner.

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

#85

Post by hef19898 »

masklinn wrote: post #81
hef19898 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Technically two other companies also did: - Kuznetsov Design Bureau, now JSC Kuznetsov, designed the NK-144 which powered the Tu-144S - Kolesov Design Bureau, now NPO Saturn, designed the RD-36-51 which replaced the NK-144 in the Tu-144D Both are now under the UEC state-owned group.

The aerospace industry of the USSR is something, isn't it? Fun fact, they used the metric system for everything, including flight controls. Was, aparently, quite a problem for all countries that continued to use Soviet aircraft after they joined NATO.

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

#86

Post by cromulent »

nszceta wrote: post #7
cromulent wrote: post #3

Still interested in the business model. Supersonic flight is over land is illegal in the US. https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight

There is a procedure that allows supersonic operation under certain conditions granted on an individual basis. In addition, any new aircraft would need to meet current airworthiness and noise certification requirements.

Yes the link I posted mentions that.

> Currently, U.S. law prohibits flight in excess of Mach 1 over land unless specifically authorized by the FAA for purposes stated in the regulations. The two supersonic rulemaking activities would not rescind the prohibition of flight in excess of Mach 1 over land.

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

#87

Post by rocket_surgeron »

whinvik wrote: post #51
rgmerk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that there isn’t progress on the most critical part of a viable aircraft - the engine. Some of us who weren’t born yesterday have seen this rodeo before, and when a startup aircraft manufacturer switches engines it tends to indicate their concept isn’t viable. The fact that Boom are proposing to build their own engine, rather than partnering with an established engine manufacturer, tends to suggest that…

Ok I will bite. Commercial engine manufacturers are also an oligopoly so they also have very little incentive to innovate like aircraft manufacturers. The only way to incentivize them is to bring a big pot of gold. I remember Boom tried but one of the engine manufacturers initially signed on then withdrew.

>Commercial engine manufacturers are also an oligopoly so they also have very little incentive to innovate like aircraft manufacturers.

Commercial airlines and military customers are so competitive that they will use single digit percentage gains in efficiency or performance to switch suppliers.

So turbofan manufacturers spend more on R&D that almost every other non-biotech sector.

Pratt & Whitney Canada, a subsidiary of US-based Pratt & Whitney (3rd largest turbofan manufacturer) routinely tops the list of the largest R&D spenders in Canada. No. 5 last year: https://researchinfosource.com/top-100-corporate-rd-spenders...

Rolls-Royce (the second-largest turbofan manufacturer, not the car maker) was No. 4 in the UK in 2019 (page 29): https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04...

General Electric doesn't break down their R&D spending by sector but they're always in the to 50 or so US spenders on research and development and they have to compete with the massive pharmaceutical and software (which is, understandably, mainly R&D) industries in the US to get on the list.

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

#88

Post by mmustapic »

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.

Exactly, unless they propose a radically new technology, subsonic will always be much much cheaper and efficient.

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

#89

Post by tanseydavid »

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…

>> ...an overwhelmingly bad idea from a business sense, but that creates positive PR in the short term.

When you look at it this way, it seems ironic and creepy that the acronym "SAF" is merely one ascii character away from "SBF".

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

#90

Post by Digory »

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…

At this stage, they're still selling ideas for funding. So the question is what claims lead to optimal cost of funding?

There are all kinds of people throwing private and government money at sustainable energy, with the expectation that it will only moderately succeed. Witness this weeks' "ignition" announcement, brought to you by nuclear weapons(!)

Even Death, destroyer of Worlds, needs a sustainable energy angle to justify their funding to Congress.

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