81–90 of 196 posts
Cool science. But the article fails to take even a cursory stab at contextualising the plan against the economic, environmental and political backdrop - doesn’t even mention that there’s already been one failed supersonic commercial flight programme. This is as pie-in-the-sky as it gets.
I saw the "sounding rocket" and thought: Oh, hypersonic missiles money.
The actual time to skim off IMO is all the airport procedures.
Boy, that's an evergreen headline.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re hinting at another huge part of the issue. There are no economies of scale to be had here. If there are only a handful of plausible economically-profitable routes, all of the expenditures on R&D, testing, certification, and production facilities can only be amortized across a handful of aircraft. Once you’ve built a dozen or two of them and a handful of extra engines and spare parts… what then? There’s no poin…
Scheduled service is not viable but there is a bountiful supply of billionaires willing to one up each other with lavish expenditures. Having the fastest class of private jet is worth something to them. This is what's going to be the market for Boom if they don't fold.
Cool science. But the article fails to take even a cursory stab at contextualising the plan against the economic, environmental and political backdrop - doesn’t even mention that there’s already been one failed supersonic commercial flight programme. This is as pie-in-the-sky as it gets.
I think a lot of the Concorde failure is tied to its status as a British-French project. Trans-Pacific flights are much longer and there's a lot of money in PEK -> LAX than in JFK -> LHR. Qantas wanted to offer London to Sydney, but they couldn't fly supersonic over land. Mainland China or Japan to Australia is a feasible route for high-margin, low-capacity supersonic flights. If you could make the flight from Beijin…
The only reason Concorde did as well as it did, economically speaking, is the respective governments footed the bill for development.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of the Concorde failure is tied to its status as a British-French project. Trans-Pacific flights are much longer and there's a lot of money in PEK -> LAX than in JFK -> LHR. Qantas wanted to offer London to Sydney, but they couldn't fly supersonic over land. Mainland China or Japan to Australia is a feasible route for high-margin, low-capacity supersonic flights. If you could make the flight from Beijin…
I was pretty sure the whole Concorde thing failed because people don't like it when you sonic boom an entire city dozens of times a day. And that all attempts to reduce the sonic booms necessarily resulted in flight times that aren't significantly faster than traditional subsonic flights, rendering the entire thing moot. It was impractical due to physics, not some weird racism. You simply can't push a supersonic shoc…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are some examples of employees so important you would pay $100k to get them somewhere immediately?
You are not thinking high enough the food chain. I mean heck you have tenured SV engineers cracking $1mm with RSUs. It’s not rare in finance for folks to be hitting $3-5mm with bonus. So that’s what $19k comp a day. If that individual is making $5mm they are more than likely making a multiple of that for the organization.
Another example that comes to my mind is a highly skilled expert in repairing some important machinery, e.g. ship engines or factory lines.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of the Concorde failure is tied to its status as a British-French project. Trans-Pacific flights are much longer and there's a lot of money in PEK -> LAX than in JFK -> LHR. Qantas wanted to offer London to Sydney, but they couldn't fly supersonic over land. Mainland China or Japan to Australia is a feasible route for high-margin, low-capacity supersonic flights. If you could make the flight from Beijin…
I was pretty sure the whole Concorde thing failed because people don't like it when you sonic boom an entire city dozens of times a day. And that all attempts to reduce the sonic booms necessarily resulted in flight times that aren't significantly faster than traditional subsonic flights, rendering the entire thing moot. It was impractical due to physics, not some weird racism. You simply can't push a supersonic shoc…
Far louder though — it would wake all the pheasants up just as they’d gone to roost.