
Boom Supersonic raises $33M to build the fastest airplane for passenger flight - jseliger
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/22/boom-supersonic-raises-33m-to-build-the-fastest-airplane-for-passenger-flight/
======
ajarmst
People always seem to grossly underestimate the cost to crew-rate, and then
passenger-rate vehicles. Especially with new technology, which usually
involves killing people along the way. It is much, much, more expensive to
develop a system to the point where you can put a fare-paying passenger on it
than it is to take it to where you can reliably put a sensor package in it or
even a test pilot that you expect to survive.

The cost of an uncrewed scale model isn't even noise in the cost of a full-
size passenger-rated project, and its success isn't particular predictive of
the actual project.

The sonic boom problem isn't trivial. You need to be able to land the vehicle
near cities, because that's where the customers are. That means you have to
spend a good chunk of time (maybe a long chunk of time if you have to orbit
waiting to land) flying low and slow---a vehicle designed to use fuel
efficiently when high and supersonic is almost by definition going to be less
efficient than traditional vehicles when forced to fly in that regime. Which
means it has to carry a lot of fuel, which means weight, which means ... etc.

As other commenters have noted: shaving an hour or two off of time spent at
the terminal will generally be much more effective in speeding up travel.
There is another city a three-hour drive from where I live, and it is faster
for me to drive there than fly. And replacing the aircraft with a missile
wouldn't change that.

~~~
6stringmerc
Such a well written summary I think it should pretty much be a footnote to any
of the super sonic / hyper sonic / quad-copter-automated-flying-thingy forward
looking statements. I think projects like Boom are perfectly fine for rich
billionaires to throw money at in their spare time, because they still run
into physics and logistics.

In doing research for a project, I came across some Annual Reports for the
company Sabre. Some might recognize the name, as they were an in-house tech /
logistics / travel operations company for American Airlines that got spun off
into its own entity years back. Point being, they have a vested interest in
air travel, and over and over, the CEO was concerned and frustrated by the
lack of modernization in flight systems and overall system improvements. A
very consistent theme, and I can't disagree with him.

Looking at it another way, the scale of persons affected by system upgrades
and improvements drastically overshadows those who would, uh, gain from
supersonic travel. Just makes sense.

~~~
anovikov
manned quad-copter is fine. i am sure it can be man-rated with tolerable
expenses and will quite soon become a useful way of within-city
transportation. supersonic passenger plane is in completely different
league...

~~~
ajarmst
Crew-rated is radically different from passenger-rated in basic safety
requirements. The problem with quad copters is that they're unstable in flight
after the loss of only one engine, and lack sufficient mass in the propellors
to effectively autorotate. That makes nearly any propulsion or control system
failure in a crewed quad copter a probable hull-loss and crew-loss event. Even
test pilots have problems with flying under those conditions. The problem
isn't lifting a human to a useful height and velocity---the Romans solved that
with catapults. The problem is being able to reasonably assure them that you
can return them to earth safely, reliably, and sufficiently inexpensively.

~~~
6stringmerc
My logic was more from an insurance perspective related to a point you brought
up - re: transportation improvements will likely be related to population
dense environments.

Looking at the quad copters I have some doubts regarding navigation and/or
performance during a catastrophic failure where others might be put at risk.
That's not an unreasonable concern for life and property.

As you noted, again, there are high thresholds regarding crew and passenger
parameters. I think those also extend to functional operations. For commercial
aviation, there is a good 50+ years of accident records and ways that
companies have paid out for tragedies and whatnot. Adding in a new component -
the quad copter model - is most definitely outside of the norm and I think
will be viewed as high risk at first, even if there are great financial
rewards to be reaped down the line pending success.

------
johnm1019
This suggests engines are 50% more efficient today than in 1960, with 80%
reductions in fuel per passenger seat. [1]

If advanced physical simulations could produce a wing 20% more efficient than
the concorde, with engines 20% more efficient, and the weight of control,
actuation systems, and cabin interiors were all reduced by 20% the gains in
operating cost and range would be substantially more than 20%. Gains in
aircraft are typically non-linear because they all affect each other.

It's exciting to think about what might be possible with 50 years of materials
science, _computers_, simulation, electronics, and propulsion technology.

[1]
[http://www.atag.org/component/downloads/downloads/59.html](http://www.atag.org/component/downloads/downloads/59.html)
[pdf]

------
leroy_masochist
The budget and timeline strike me as wildly unrealistic, and the management
quotes sound absurdly sanguine.

With that said, if they can pull off a 1/3 scale prototype with current
funding as they claim they can, one nice ancillary benefit would be the kick
to the ass of the Lockheed Martins of the world, for whom $33mm is a rounding
error when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars on next-generation aviation
platforms.

------
nl
"How could anyone be stupid enough to fund Facebook. They'll never make money"
\- HN.

"VC's never fund anything but social media apps and advertising companies" \--
HN.

"Yes of course SpaceX is going to make Musk money" \-- HN.

"Funding a supersonic plane is a stupid idea" \-- HN.

(And yes, also "$41M funding for color.com is stupid" \--HN.)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _" VC's never fund anything but social media apps and advertising companies"
> \-- HN._

Well, they also occasionally fund stupid shit like uBeam.

> _" Yes of course SpaceX is going to make Musk money" \-- HN._

Isn't it? Except that money is wisely reinvested into the Mars transportation
project.

> _" Funding a supersonic plane is a stupid idea" \-- HN._

Supersonic _passenger_ plane is not a smart idea for various technical and
economical reasons. I don't think that's just "HN opinion".

~~~
nl
_Supersonic passenger plane is not a smart idea for various technical and
economical reasons. I don 't think that's just "HN opinion"._

AFAIK, the technical and economic reasons boil down to: "Too expensive to
build, too expensive to fly, people object to the sonic booms".

I don't know if there is a way around the sonic boom problem, but for the
first two there's an "easy" fix: make it cheaper. I don't have a clue how to
do that, but and I have no particular opinion on Boom, but if someone came up
with a way around that "small" problem then everything else falls into place.

~~~
TeMPOraL
As far as I can tell, the argument boils down to all that you wrote, _relative
to what you gain_. AFAIK a supersonic passenger plane doesn't shorten your
total trip enough, compared to regular passenger planes, to create a new
quality class of travel.

E.g. taking 5 hours to go to a place (2h flight + airport overhead on both
sides) by a plane vs. 12+ hours by bus makes many destinations suddenly
accessible to people to visit for a weekend. Except maybe on intercontinental,
I don't see a supersonic passenger plane enabling another quality class of
travel.

~~~
Retric
A 16 hour flight dropping to 6 hours is a very noticeable difference, the
question is if the economics work out. From an energy perspective ultra high
altitude flight at Mach 2+ is surprisingly efferent. Though getting up there
and up to speed is pointless for D.C. to NYC or other commuter flights.

~~~
notahacker
Trouble is when it's 16 hours in a relatively comfortable seat that turns into
a bed overnight with a choice of departure times (even including business jets
in the price brackets we're currently talking about) versus 6 hours of
relative discomfort with only one flight a day, it's less clear-cut a
decision. Sure, there'll be some demand for it, but you need full aircraft on
a very large number of routes for it to be a viable commercial aircraft
programme.

~~~
Retric
Your assuming seats cost significantly more. That's not nessisarily true as
the fuel costs are offset by need 1/2 the aircraft and far less crew time etc.
So, if someone is looking at say a twenty percent premium and thinking about
trying to sleep in coach that's an easy choice.

~~~
notahacker
I think it's absurd to assume that supersonic flight will only be a 20%
premium over coach class in a conventional aircraft with 3-4x the carrying
capacity doing less work against physics and subjecting its more components to
less physical stress.

If the price point comparison is (more plausibly) between business class in
one of several A380/777 flights, chartering a flight and leaving exactly when
and where you want if there's a group or coach class in a Boom, I think the
choice is rather less straightforward. I'm not saying there's no demand -
obviously Concorde filled seats - but I am saying it might not be sufficient
to make a viable commercial aircraft programme even without restrictions on
where they can fly.

~~~
Retric
From a physics standpoint ultra high altitude supersonic flight is not that
much more expensive. The problems are mostly around economies of scale, but as
soon as you get something that's competitive you will expect the price to fall
quite a bit. A 400 passenger super sonic jet might use 2x the fuel per flight,
but when it can make twice as many flights per day that's huge from capital
standpoint.

That said, the concord was much closer to a prototype than what economical
supersonic aircraft will look like. But, nobody is trying to build thousands
of 400 passenger supersonic aircraft which makes your comparison more
realistic.

~~~
notahacker
Sure, a 400 passenger supersonic jet that only used twice as much fuel per
flight but operated twice as many flights per day with comparable annual
capital and maintenance costs could sell tickets at similar prices to coach
class in a subsonic jet (assuming no barriers to operation on the same range
of routes)

But I'd imagine there's a reason that jet doesn't exist even in the realms of
the most hyperbole-filled press releases of supersonic jet ventures...

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mrfusion
I think it's amazing that adding some kind of valet system at the airport
would speed up my travel more than this kind of marvel of engineering.

~~~
jmknoll
Exactly. Travel speed once you're in the air is basically the last problem
with air travel. Travel time to the airport, looking around for a parking
space, an outdated checkin process, endless security theater. These all seem
like easier fixes than making planes move faster.

Even with no other improvements, I would probably take reliable in-flight wifi
over a 25% improvement in flight times.

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nodesocket
Haven't they seen "why the Concorde failed" on YouTube? Who's putting up $33M
for this? Sam say it ain't so.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a_wuykzfFzE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a_wuykzfFzE)

~~~
thatguy18121
Could be a couple of rich people looking at Musk and experiencing "rocket
envy".

~~~
BrailleHunting
There are enough rich people in the world whom have inherited wealth but don't
understand the mechanics of its acquisition, amplification and retainment.

------
Beltiras
The comments are remarkably negative for a can-do crowd of entrepreneurial
people. Success is built on a string of multiple failures. I'm rooting for
this team to succeed.

~~~
arjie
It's useful to remember that it's a bunch of people that don't know the
industry. They're just googling and reading Wikipedia. That doesn't mean the
project will be successful. It's just that there's zero information content to
most comments that are on non-software topics.

There are some things I know a little about that I haven't commented on here
about, and I've seen where people are quite clearly googling and getting not
the right answer but the answer that is most likely to show up on Google.

Just something useful to keep in mind.

~~~
propter_hoc
Glad to see this viewpoint.

I work in energy and the hivemind on HN on this topic is quite subject to
these fallacies. ("Solar energy can't be profitable" and "thorium is the
answer" spring to mind.)

------
aphextron
I wish companies like this would come out and say what they are: an acqui-hire
project. A single brand new passenger jet costs more than $33 million, and
that's with decades of development costs being amortized. Development costs
for Boeing's new 787, a conventional aircraft, came to over $30 _billion_. I
will be amazed if they actually even get a working prototype aircraft flying
with this amount of money.

~~~
onion2k
_I will be amazed if they actually even get a working prototype aircraft
flying with this amount of money._

That's not the point of this funding round. When you work on _insanely_
ambitious projects you have to do things incrementally.

This is their 3rd round - the first was $120k, the second was $2.1m. Each
round enables them to do enough of the tasks that demonstrate to investors
that they're capable of doing the _next_ set of tasks. I have no clue how you
design a plane but I would guess the first round was entirely spent on
modelling the financials and market research to see if there's even a business
opportunity. The next round would be something like the _really_ broad brush
ideas for how you'd make a plane like this. This round will be spent digging
in to the technology itself, figuring out what capabilities you need to have
in an electric plane, and finding which parts you can buy off the shelf. If
Boom are successful at that then there'll be future rounds that are spent on
_actual_ design and manufacturing.

By the time anything real takes off from a runway they'll probably need to
have raised _billions_.

 _No one_ thinks you can design and build a plane for $120k+$2.1m+$33m.

~~~
LoSboccacc
I don't see them addressing the first and main challenge to supersonic flight:
regulation

~~~
onion2k
This is pure speculation on my part, but isn't most supersonic flight
regulation essentially anti-competitive behaviour by the US government because
Concorde wasn't an American-made aircraft? Even if that isn't true I think the
main problem was the ludicrous sound levels from the engines, which an
electric plane wouldn't suffer from (as much). If Boom demonstrate that they
can make a working plane I imagine a lot of the red tape would just disappear.

~~~
ealexhudson
The engines don't create the ludicrous sound; the force of an object moving
through the air faster than the speed of sound creates the sonic boom. While
some designs can mitigate this it doesn't seem that Boom has an answer here
except for keeping the aircraft small.

~~~
onion2k
New York Port Authority banned Concorde because it was too noisy on take off.

------
JofArnold
The ex-aerospace engineer in me is super excited. But the realist in me fears
this a decadent polluting toy for elites in a post-combustion world. Versus VR
and other remote technologies which will solve many of the issues it also
attempts to address it just seems like a moonshot from a bygone era.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
> NYC to London […] at a cost of $2,500

> cabin comforts

If they can actually deliver on those two, then they can succeed where
Concorde failed (couldn't compete against first/business class given the
tickets cost far too much and offered economy-esque seating).

That's a big “if”, though.

------
1ba9115454
There's not market for this.

Passenger don't care about saving time transatlantic because the people who
can afford it can now sleep in a bed in business or first.

Airlines don't want it because super sonic capable engines take way more fuel
than current day engines and therefore the costs would be high.

If there was a demand for supersonic planes Boeing or Airbus would be building
them already.

~~~
markonen
You're nuts. First and business class comforts are about making the best of a
bad situation. At equivalent seat prices, nearly everyone would pick the more
than twice as fast option.

Boom's business model relies on this, obviously, but so do their passenger-
seat-mile economics. Boom claims that the per seat fuel consumption (and
ultimately the ticket prices) would be same as for business class seats
currently. This is possible because making a currently-seven-hour flight in
three hours enables them to replace a full flat bed with a recliner seat,
saving 2/3 of the floor area per passenger.

~~~
1ba9115454
That's not what happened.

People stopped using Concorde and started using the new comforts of business
class on larger albeit slower planes.

The per seat fuel consumption is perhaps optimistic on their part.

~~~
markonen
The last Concorde airframe rolled off the factory floor in 1979. It never
competed with lie-flat business class seats, and it's not possible to paint
the failure as passengers having voted for slower but more comfortable
options. The ban on overland supersonic flights simply made Concorde a non-
starter.

The comfort onboard Concorde was fine. I miss it each and every time I fly
transatlantic. But with British Airways and Air France allotted just seven
aircraft each, obviously it could never be a mainstream product, no matter how
compelling it was from a passenger perspective.

------
anovikov
I wonder why are the investors pouring money into this. It is so obvious it
can't work. Are they simply fooled, like those guys who invested into
scientifically impossible power-over-ultrasound startup?

I know venture investment is risky, but is there any limit on how stupid VC
partners can be? Can banks who lended them money, sue them?

~~~
ungerik
There is a fine line between physically impossible and SpaceX'ish impossible.
Don't confuse them.

------
mgirdley
How have they or do they plan to overcome the limitations and inefficiencies
that happen near and past the speed of sound?

------
tim333
Cool. Looking forward to the prototype.

------
BrailleHunting
Good frickin' luck. If Concorde couldn't survive even without accidents... it
might not be a viable business. Aerion has immense resources, talent and
connections and is still slowly chugging along on allegedly building the AS2,
an expensive, supersonic business jet.

Might want to consider the feasibility of the real economics of jet fuel per
passenger/cargo before raising a bunch of money to ignite. And also
disappointing investors and losing their confidence when they ask for $5
billion more to continue development and are turned down.

~~~
cstross
Concorde ran into (a) the oil price shock of the 1970s (the price of fuel
quadrupled overnight around the time manufacturing commenced), and (b) the
airport security theatre of the immediate post-9/11 era (a 3 hour LHR-JFK
flight is a whole lot less attractive if you add 2 hours of queuing at
security checkpoints and another hour at immigration, when you can rent a seat
on a bizjet for the same money and bypass both). But what killed Concorde was
(c) the airframe hitting the 30 year point; it has been alleged that Airbus
demanded outrageous amounts of money to keep updating its type certification
for flight after that time. (Caveat: trying to find a citation for this online
is ... vexing.)

