
Boom supersonic jet readies for rollout - prostoalex
https://www.airlineratings.com/news/boom-supersonic-jet-readies-rollout/
======
latchkey
Their parallax website is pretty entertaining...

[https://boomsupersonic.com/xb-1/build](https://boomsupersonic.com/xb-1/build)

~~~
jonplackett
Nice, anyone have some suggestions for quick ways to build parallax sites like
this? Like themes, frameworks etc

~~~
stareatgoats
Wappalyzer says they use GSAP
([https://greensock.com/](https://greensock.com/))

------
DomenicoMazza
If I recall correctly the Concorde used about 2 tonnes of fuel rolling on the
ground alone.. I wonder how this new aircraft fares for fuel consumption?

I believe the Concorde is a marvel. You could travel faster than the rotation
of the earth in it! However I don’t think we need more environmentally
unsustainable travel.

~~~
na85
I think the real problem is that the Concorde wasn't fast enough to justify
the cost.

Whether you can fly JFK-CDG in 8 hours or 4 hours, when you factor in how
irritating airports are, parking, security line ups, waiting for baggage, etc,
it still takes all day to make the trip.

Might as well save several thousand dollars and take a longer flight. I
believe they would have to cut the flight time down to about an hour to
justify Concorde pricing.

~~~
flyGuyOnTheSly
The concorde didn't fail because it was expensive.

It ran profitably for 27 years. [0]

It failed because it crashed and killed 109 people 3 years before they threw
in the towel. [1]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Operating_economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Operating_economics)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590)

~~~
phire
The main reason the airlines managed to run Concorde at a profit is because
they bought the planes for quite cheap. At one point the British government
even sold two planes to British airways for £1 each. [0]

The airlines might have profited, but the R&D and manufacturing programs were
a more or less write offs.

[1] [https://simpleflying.com/british-airways-1-pound-
concorde/](https://simpleflying.com/british-airways-1-pound-concorde/)

~~~
notahacker
It also ran on only two routes for most of that time, with all others shut
down because airlines lost money operating Concorde on them even without
having to pay off the capital costs.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
The Concorde was also blocked from flying a lot of profitable routes because
of sonic boom concerns, some justified, others less so. In particular, you
can't legally fly over any part of the US at Mach 1 or faster unless you're
military.

~~~
notahacker
Sure, but I don't see a startup called Boom changing the political landscape
around sonic boom concerns, particularly not in an era where there's also a
lot of environmental lobbying.

~~~
Already__Taken
if they revive the noise implications they might well manage to change it. IMO
those restrictions are also because it wasn't an American jet so it kept the
competition out.

~~~
notahacker
Agreed on both points, but they're fighting against the physics of sonic
booms, not just Concorde's noisy turbojet [a solved problem] so I wouldn't
bank on it, and lobbying against Boeing as well as an environmental lobby
that's far more influential now than in the seventies.

Several European states without commercial airframers introduced supersonic
overflight bans too and the Anti Concorde Project started in the UK so I don't
think the argument it was all protectionism stands up anyway.

------
nimbius
Real question: have we solved the radiation problem yet? The concord's
solution was to sample exposure with a cockpit Geiger counter and descend to
40kft if things got too hot.

~~~
ars
Some discussion on this topic:
[http://health.phys.iit.edu/extended_archive/0407/msg00074.ht...](http://health.phys.iit.edu/extended_archive/0407/msg00074.html)

~~~
Balgair
Where in the heck did you dig that up? What a jewel of a site!

------
epberry
These guys followed the "Design Wins" pattern from Crossing the Chasm where
the gtm is a series of technical evaluation meant to land one or two large
customers. Same thing happens in Silicon startups.

------
abeppu
Can anyone here comment on the kinds of things you can and can't learn
accurately from a scaled prototype? I'd guess that for something that flies,
changing the surface area/volume ratio makes a big difference.

~~~
na85
In aerodynamics we have several "similarity" quantities such as the Reynolds
Number which is a dimensionless coefficient that characterizes (in a nutshell)
the ratio of inertial to viscous forces in a flow.

Much research has gone into the applicability of scale models to real world
conditions and the validity of a model is contingent on maintaining similarity
coefficients. So for example you want your model to be flying at the same
Reynolds Number as your full size aircraft will. If you can achieve those
conditions then you can expect good predictive results from your model.

In general you can learn a great deal about your aircraft from a model
including handling and stability characteristics but you're limited by the
tunnel and the test apparatus. Post stall behavior comes to mind as something
I would imagine to be very difficult to investigate with a scale model in a
tunnel.

~~~
fluffy87
Their half-size model would need to be flying twice as fast for the Reynolds
number to remain constant with varying length or diameter.

This changes the Mach number.

So no, in general, you can’t build and test a smaller model and transfer the
results to a larger model using similarity, because your similarity model is
incomplete.

You can either have similarity for the Reynolds number or the Mach number, but
not both.

------
graycat
Their engines are a version of the General Electric J85 that dates from the
1950s. It's been very widely used in both military and commercial aircraft.
One version was used in the Dassault DA-20 executive aircraft used at the
start of FedEx after FedEx cargo door, etc. modifications.

------
dotancohen
> Boom’s first major airline partner in the development of the > first
> privately built supersonic airliner and the second ever > after Concorde,
> retired in 2003, is Japan Airlines with an > option for 20 aircraft.

How could any reporter, especially one writing for a publication called
"airlineratings", not research the topic at hand? It is widely known in the
aviation community that the Soviet union flew the supersonic TU-144 even
before the Concorde flew.

~~~
kmlx
that faded away from memory mostly because of this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Paris_Air_Show_Tu-144_cra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Paris_Air_Show_Tu-144_crash)

"During the show, there was a "fierce competition between the Anglo-French
Concorde and the Russian Tu-144".[6] The Soviet pilot, Mikhail Kozlov, had
bragged that he would outperform the Concorde.[6] "Just wait until you see us
fly," he was quoted as saying. "Then you'll see something."[12] On the final
day of the show, the Concorde, which was not yet in production, performed its
demonstration flight first.[6] Its performance was later described as being
unexciting, and it has been theorized that Kozlov was determined to show how
much better his aircraft was.[12]

Once in flight, the aircraft made what appeared to be a landing approach, with
the landing gear out and the "moustache" canards extended, but then with all
four engines full power, climbed rapidly. Possibly stalling below 2,000 ft
(610 m), the aircraft pitched over and went into a steep dive.[6] Trying to
pull out of the subsequent dive with the engines again at full power, the
Tu-144 broke up in mid-air, possibly due to overstressing the airframe. The
left wing came away first, and then the aircraft disintegrated and
crashed,[6][8][10] destroying 15 houses,[13] and killing all six people on
board the Tu-144 and eight more on the ground.[8] Three children were among
those killed, and 60 people received severe injuries.[14]"

i mean bragging about how good it was and then crashing is a trademark of the
USSR.

~~~
dwd
I thought the Cobra maneuver was a Russian trademark, just not something you
should try in a Tu-144.

------
SkyMarshal
This would be a super cool project to work on. Their website has a fun tour of
all the engineering components of it:

[https://boomsupersonic.com/xb-1/build](https://boomsupersonic.com/xb-1/build)

~~~
mmmBacon
I too would love to be able to work on something like this.

------
poma88
Not commercial with very few exceptions. The toilet operations seem uncertain
for passengers for the aircraft size visible in the video..

------
sxcurry
But it doesn't - isn't this a prototype? The article talks about 2027 for the
actual aircraft.

------
gorgoiler
Is there an intuitive everyday explanation as to why the sound barrier is so
hard to break?

I know that the forces in an airframe change a lot as you go faster, and that
the controls invert for some reason, but I’ve never really had a good feel as
to why.

Perhaps something related to swimming?

~~~
kolinko
Hm, imagine your ship made really big waves when swimming. Below the speed of
waves you don’t really need to worry about them because you don’t really
experience them - they just run ahead of you.

If your speed is close to the speed of waves, the waves that you produce get
stuck on top of one another, so you have this huge wave ahead of you.

If you want to break through that barrier, you need a really strong ship to
plow through that huge wave, but once you’re through it, it gets smoother -
you don’t encounter your own waves any more.

But now the problem is: the moment you slow down, or make a turn, all the
waves you produced will hit you from the back.

We don’t get that with water due to various reasons, but we get that with air
and sound.

------
random3
Funny how, by the middle of the video, they all start wearing masks.

------
coopernewby
I am amazed at the, apparently almost exclusive, use of formed composites for
the entire skin of the aircraft. This was an aircraft skin design no no for a
long time because of the susceptibility of graphite filled epoxy composites to
failure under shock and/or point loading even though the specific
strength/rigidity was better than any metal. I wonder what the composition of
the composites used now are comprised of. Anyone know?

------
dmix
From my understanding a big problem with Concorde was the sonic boom which
happened near takeoff and bothered urban residents.

I've always wondered why they can't fly at normal airline speeds until over a
rural area or an ocean before accelerating to sound barrier speeds.

~~~
masklinn
> I've always wondered why they can't fly at normal airline speeds until over
> a rural area or an ocean before accelerating to sound barrier speeds.

Because geometry and engines which are efficient at very high speed are
extremely inefficient at low speeds, so you want to avoid subsonic flight as
much as possible.

Variable geometry (mostly variable-sweep wings) bridge that issue, but they're
weak points, and significantly increase the weight and complexity of the
machine, to the extent that Boeing's competitor SST (the 2707) abandoned
variable-geometry mid-project as way too heavy and still not efficient enough,
reverting to a more classic fixed delta.

~~~
dmix
Thanks, that makes sense.

~~~
mshook
To put that in perspective: the hourly fuel consumption of Concorde at Mach 2
or at Mach 0.9 are pretty similar... So you want to fly supersonic if you want
to go far...

------
everybodyknows
>scaled prototype

~~~
ItsDeathball
It's still a supersonic jet, just not the one you want. What is essentially a
privately-built supersonic fighter jet is still impressive, but how much more
investment will they need for the full size passenger version?

~~~
Alupis
I trust Boom has smart people working on these things, but... model aviation
doesn't scale up[1].

It's interesting they're going with a scaled-down model instead of a full-
scale testbed. The article seems to incidate they're wanting to go from the
scaled-down model as a PoC, then onto an actual airline that JAL want's to
fly. I'd think they'd need a full-sized PoC first...

> “They want to enjoy a first-mover advantage in supersonic and have invested
> 10 million dollars.”

That's chump change for an airline. Doesn't really signal strong support or
anything - more of a curiosity I think. A Boeing 737-800 costs around $100
million, for comparison.

[1] [https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/3300/why-
havent...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/3300/why-havent-
quadcopters-been-scaled-up-yet)

~~~
starpilot
_Quadcopters_ don't scale up. Flyable scale models have used extensively in
other aviation research:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgDRkNseNxU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgDRkNseNxU)

~~~
jahewson
Certainly but it’s not quite that simple
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number)

------
efnx
I can already tell what the headline will be when this company incurs its
first crash...

~~~
dmos62
Haha, that was my first thought when I heard of this startup too. Wouldn't be
surprised to see a rebranding in its later years.

------
kohtatsu
Isn't one of the main drawbacks of supersonic flight the noise?

~~~
phkahler
In particular the sonic boom. There are ways to reduce that and they are
trying to.

~~~
Alupis
It's interesting... you'd think the military would have gone down this path
already, and perhaps came up short?

The ability to fly supersonic NOE (Nap-of-the-Earth) into enemy territory
without leaving a trail of very loud sonic booms seems like it would be
something of interest. B1-B Lancer's exist to do exactly this, but are quite
noisy.

Which either means I'm wrong and the military doesn't care about being quiet,
or Boom will eventually reach the same conclusion... or Boom has something
truly revolutionary that nobody else has achieved.

~~~
dillondoyle
Or maybe the military has technology we don't know about yet?

~~~
Alupis
I'm not so sure. Airplanes are hard to keep secret when they're flying around,
and existing planes have their capabilities pretty well figured out by now.
It's not every day a new airframe is built.

I'd expect the $100MM USD F-35 to have all the latest tech, being the newest
fighter available.

~~~
jazzyjackson
I expect the $100MM USD F-35 to cost half as much as they report, Area 51
style ;)

------
fluffy87
Why are they using three engines instead of just one? Looks like a maintenance
nightmare.

------
jeswin
> The timeline for the planned entry into airline service has now also slipped
> from the previously envisaged 2023-24 to between 2025 and 2027.

A jet which has not even been flown once might enter airline service in 5-7
years? The whole article is a PR insert.

~~~
_-___________-_
> A jet which has not even been flown once might enter airline service in 5-7
> years?

Considering that flight testing will begin soon, it doesn't seem that
unrealistic. Have you got some actual evidence to the contrary?

> The whole article is a PR insert.

Yes, clearly, but that doesn't seem related to your first point.

~~~
barbegal
Flight testing of a one third scale prototype will likely begin next year.
Given they haven't even started manufacturing the full scale prototype it
seems unlikely that they can get into service in 7 years. To give a recent
example the A400M took 7 years from the start of the prototype build in 2007
to entering service in 2014.

~~~
jeswin
And besides, we're talking about a supersonic aircraft with no prior platform
to build this out of. Given the safety profile that will need to be proven,
the schedule can't be taken seriously. It's harder than making a rocket.

------
avmich
>the development of the first privately built supersonic airliner and the
second ever after Concorde

Sad that in a rather specialized article author isn't familiar with such basic
facts.

~~~
orbital-decay
"Privately built", so it's technically accurate, even if there's still an
elephant in the room. Similar to that amusing SpaceX marketing speak with the
Falcon Heavy being "the most powerful orbital rocket since Saturn V", which
was also technically true because both Energia flights were payload-assisted.
(they changed that line since then)

~~~
ceejayoz
That's not the issue. It's the third supersonic airliner, not the second; the
Soviet Union had the Tu-144.

~~~
orbital-decay
Which is what I meant - it was designed and built by the state, not a private
company, so the careful wording is probably correct.

Although come to think of it, Sud Aviation/Aerospatiale was also a state-owned
company, and the BAC wasn't private either, so the nitpicking can go on
forever.

~~~
jbay808
I'm sorry to be so nit-picky but it always pains me to see a long exchange
each side doesn't understand the other. Here's a minor reading comprehension
issue where I think you and the GP are failing to communicate:

> first privately built supersonic airliner and the second ever after Concorde

In this sentence, do you think "second ever" refers to "second ever privately
built supersonic airliner"? Or "second ever supersonic airliner"?

If the Concorde was the first privately built supersonic airliner, what
airplane is "first" intended to refer to in Boom's marketing?

------
new_realist
The biggest time sink when traveling between continents is the jet lag. A
faster jet doesn’t fix that, it only costs more and pollutes more.

~~~
jjeaff
The new 787 has made her lag a lot better with better air quality, timed,
dimming cabin lights and a few other comfort trucks, it definitely takes the
edge off.

~~~
the_duke
One of the biggest factors is cabin altitude.

Both the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 XWB have a lower (than previous
airliners) cabin altitude of 1,800 m.

Note that some private jets do quite a bit better again: the Gulfstream G650
has ~1480 meters.

~~~
mshook
Concorde cabine altitude was set to 1,700 metres or 5,500ft...

~~~
the_duke
According to Wikipedia it was also 1,800m. [1]

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Cabin_pressurisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Cabin_pressurisation)

~~~
mshook
Well different sources:

[https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-pressurization-
sys...](https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-pressurization-system)

Airliner cabins are usually pressurised to 6-8,000 ft (1,800-2,400 m)
elevation while the aircraft flies much higher. Concorde’s pressurisation was
set to an altitude at the lower end of this range, 6000 feet.

[https://museedelta.wixsite.com/musee-delta/single-
post/2020/...](https://museedelta.wixsite.com/musee-delta/single-
post/2020/05/02/Technical-flight-report-Concorde-Thursday-April-3-1986)

The two independent and fully automatic air conditioning units provide a cabin
altitude of 5,500 ft (1,600m) at flight level 590.

[https://books.google.fr/books?id=aekGAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA506&lpg=P...](https://books.google.fr/books?id=aekGAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA506&lpg=PA506&dq=concorde+cabin+pressure+%226000%22&source=bl&ots=a-64-w7OGu&sig=ACfU3U2ulKUAIO0-lhxpbStDb4EVLSFwFw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjn_crogMvqAhVDQBoKHcUjCKoQ6AEwDXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=concorde%20cabin%20pressure%20%226000%22&f=false)

Concorde's pressurisation was set to an altitude at the lower end of this
range, 6,000 feet (1,800 m).

Bottom line is 1700 or 1800m, Concorde did that 50 years ago...

------
new_realist
Will Zoom kill Boom?

------
galacticaactual
As a (pre-Covid) extreme frequent flyer, supersonic and other rapid point to
point initiatives are thoroughly unenticing.

Part of the reason I loved long flights was the ability to put away the laptop
and zone out to a book or movie with some wine before landing, dealing with
immigration, hotels, Ubers, and days of frenetic, high stress meetings
afterward.

The prospect of trying to optimize how fast we can jump from one business trip
to another is uninspiring.

~~~
pedalpete
You're not doing Sydney->Los Angeles, Santiago->Tokyo type long-haul, are you.
When you're continent jumping (excluding Eastern US to Europe) 7hrs at
supersonic is long enough to get a movie and relax a bit. When you're getting
16 hour flights on a regular basis, you get used to it, but when you've seen
all the movies, you realize how much time you've wasted on a plane.

~~~
galacticaactual
I used to commute from Sydney to Europe every two weeks. So. Yes. I was doing
the long hauls.

------
sarim
What is this?! Aircraft for ants?!!!

~~~
rootusrootus
The one in the picture is a reduced scale prototype. Then they hope to build a
full scale plane. And then roll that out five years from now.

Given how many years we've been hearing about this, I wouldn't hold my breath.
I personally give it less than a 50/50 shot at even getting the prototype into
the air.

------
paulcole
What a great time to get into the small confined shared space industry!

~~~
xiphias2
,,The timeline for the planned entry into airline service has now also slipped
from the previously envisaged 2023-24 to between 2025 and 2027.''

I think COVID-19 won't be a problem in 2025 anymore.

------
dreamcompiler
This is cool, but despite what the company implies, it's never going to be
anything but a toy for rich people. In no conceivable scenario are flights on
this jet ever going to sell for less than $10k per seat.

That might make Boom a viable business, but most of us will never get a ride
on one.

------
makerofspoons
Please don't let COVID-19 kill this thing. They're going to need a lot of
money to build the full-size plane and it's going to be hard to get it if
airlines are cancelling orders and not placing any new ones for planes:
[https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/wordpress/2020/05/19/a...](https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/wordpress/2020/05/19/airbus-
and-boeing-report-april-2020-commercial-aircraft-orders-and-deliveries/)

~~~
jazzyjackson
OTOH if flying becomes more rare, then the only demand left will be from
people with deep pockets. Maybe the only way there is a market for supersonic
jets is if all the other long haul routes go bankrupt.

~~~
JKCalhoun
And the people with really deep pockets already _have_ a jet. ;-)

~~~
jazzyjackson
Even then, the Cessna might not have the juice to get to Tokyo nonstop.

~~~
na85
A Gulfstream does

