They have yet to recover from that era which saw a ~10x decrease in enterprise value and record losses.
That said I would interpret this news as a "cut the $!@$! R&D bleeding in anything that won't be generating revenue in the next 4 quarters" vs a reflection on the feasibility or health of Boom's very early but very ambitious plans.
(1) https://www.barrons.com/market-data/stocks/rycey
(2) https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/rolls-...
My guess - Boom wanted RR to sign a new money-losing or zero-profit R&D deal. RR wasn't interested in the "maybe, eventually, there might be some actual profit for us" economics of that.
Indeed, supersonic business jets are ideal for the service contract based market. Supersonic engines need much more frequent maintenance than subsonic engines, business jet owners are much less price sensitive than mass-market airlines, and its not like you can just swap in a different supersonic engine, operators are completely locked in.
Far more likely, RR wanted Boom to use one of the supersonic engines it already has developed with minimal modification but Boom needs either heavy modification or a clean slate design to reduce fuel consumption (the second biggest issue for commercial supersonic aviation).
Their net-zero emission claim is also bogus. Their pricing model doesn’t make much sense either unless they’re willing to lose money for a decade or so. There is not much innovation in aerodynamics and shock wave shaping either. Their only innovation compared to Concorde is the use of composite materials which is just not enough to hit their targets.
According to Emirates and some other analysts, and contrary to popular narrative, the A380's biggest competitive handicap was the generation of engines, not the mere fact they had 4 instead of 2. The engines were nearly a full generation behind when the A380 debuted, and the gap only grew over time. Engines on a 4-engine plane are smaller, meaning less drag; have narrower power bands, running more optimally at all stages of flight; and have lower maintenance costs, even at twice the number, as they're both less stressed and subject to longer MTBF requirements--losing 1 of 4 engines is much less of a problem than 1 of 2. All considered a 4-engine configuration might still be nominally less fuel efficient, but the difference was negligible given these countering dynamics and in the opinion of some more than made up by other factors favoring the A380. The hub vs point-to-point model disfavored larger planes, but the air travel market was growing and in absolute terms so too was the potential A380 market. But the efficiency gap between engine generations was simply too large to overcome.
I would imagine that a plane using new advances in material sciences for the outer skin (maybe something like Quasi Crystals) might have significant advantages over an older design like the Concorde. Heat must be a big issue at those speeds.
As for materials, the main advantage of composites is the strength to weight ratio but they’re more challenging to work with compared to aluminum and titanium. Heat is one aspect but there are many more challenges. It’s been done though for example B787 and A350 are mostly composite. So Boom has a genuine advance here over Concorde. But supersonic flight is inherently fuel inefficient due to wave drag so the economy doesn’t make sense.
There’s been 50 years of commercial aviation development since the Concorde. Composite materials is only one thing on a list of differences between Concorde and boom.
https://boomsupersonic.com/flyby/post/its-about-time-for-a-b...
The article says they intend to carry passengers in 2029, which isn't incompatible with going into production in 2024 (of course, they will do neither).
For anyone worried about this kind of thing: what the commenter is insinuating is, in fact, just what we don't do. Here's tons of past explanation about this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
In particular, we flagged zero comments in this thread and unkilled a bunch of comments that users had flagged.
If this was doable and there was a market for it, what on earth would stop Boeing and Airbus from building one with 1000x more experience in designing and above all manufacturing airframes. (Airbus even has the inherited legacy of Concorde through Aerospatiale/Sud Aviation)
"Boom meanwhile added, “We are appreciative of Rolls-Royce’s work over the last few years but have mutually concluded their proposed engine design and legacy business model is not the best option for Overture’s future airline operators or passengers.”
ssssssnap!
1. They are a Theranos-style operation
2. They are a Madoff-style operation
I, a lone aerospace engineer working out of my garage in my spare time, have a better chance of achieving supersonic flight than Boom does.
Even their technology demonstrator is an obvious scam. It demonstrates nothing. It does not demonstrate the ability to design, build, or maintain a supersonic passenger airplane, and it doesn't demonstrate any new technologies or materials.
The bloatiest of bloated old-school defense contractors can throw together a supersonic prototype for less than $100 million, in fewer than 7 years.
I don't really think Boom are a Theranos style operation, because they aren't claiming to have an operational product when no such item exists. A Theranos style scam would be flying a known-unsafe airframe, or parading their demonstrator around claiming "it totally has engines and is ready to fly lol! we just haven't tested it yet." But so far, Boom have just honestly said "we're delayed" instead.
It's surely not a Madoff style operation as they employ staff who are earnestly working towards their goal, however fanciful it may be.
3. They're a startup in a manufacturing-oriented, highly regulated industry and dramatically underestimated capital needed.
So, you take that and couple it with 21st century VC-appeal and you have a fantastic money-losing-machine whether it works or not. Hell, it probably does work with enough R&D, but that was never the problem in the first place.
The Tu-144 went the opposite direction. Introduce with military engines which require full time afterburner. Later it was redesigned and re-engined with a non-military engine not needing afterburner all the time.
So two airframes, but with four distinct airplanes produced as a result.
None of these were particularly economical, to your point.
Vaclav Smil was right in pointing out that passenger jets have gotten much more fuel efficient since 1967 but they travel no faster. The fuel savings were passed onto passengers and that made flight more appealing. Economics ultimately rule over what lasts long term.
Super sonic flight is a marvel of engineering but an economic nightmare. It is this lens by which a lot of technologies should be judged long term.
There is on the other hand no apparent market for commercial supersonic passenger flight given the economics. That doesn't mean that some people wouldn't pay the freight but that there hasn't been enough apparent market to build an airplane program around that.
If they were that, they'd be lying about having their own engine in development that is an order of magnitude better than the competitions but won't show it to anybody.
I just can't believe people keep falling for it.
I'm willing to bet most of the $100m+ they've raised went right into executive compensation and that their engineers have been making do with peanuts since the beginning.
And I eagerly await the dueling Netflix/HBO documentaries to come.
The Concord showed this by shouldering the burden of research, development, prototyping, and then production. Turns out SS's don't have the load factor & associated economics to make it a viable mode. That revelation was before environmental and political challenges made those economics worse.
Unless unobtanium can me mined, tooled, and manufactured cheaply into airframe parts and power such as scram-jet or super cruising turbofans can push a plane at Mach 2 with 200+ seats behind the pilot, methinks its just a pretty artist's conception on a Pop Mechanics or Science magazine cover.
If CEO have some experience in the field then it might succeed (workday, salesforce, okta, etc.) If not, then it is probably a scam.
Of course, there are exceptions but these exceptions prove the rule.
Agreed. I know nothing about automotive engineering or car design, but the hype around Tesla always puzzled me. If this start up can all of a sudden make an economical electric car, then surely the existing automotive manufacturers could do it quicker and cheaper. Toyota, Mercedes, Ford, etc... already have existing designs from decades past that they could at least use as a base. They have experts in material science, car design, and actual resources/contracts to actually build one. If it made sense.
Sometimes the incumbents are just too entrenched in what they are doing to make what out an outsider sees as an obvious move.
- Anyone of IBM, Microsoft or Yahoo could build a better (quicker and cheaper) search engine than what a bunch of new grads from Stanford can (Google)
- Anyone of the car manufacturer can build a better (quicker and cheaper) electric car than a software millionaire (Tesla)
I don't agree with the statement, I think there are numerous reason people embark on ambitious project that incumbents "could" do, but are not doing;
- An unexpected insights,
- A new research breakthrough from some other field
- Collecting a bunch of the most bright people coming up at the same time in the field (Mueller for SpaceX comes to mind for instance) etc.
But most of the time it's just that it's not really in their business to do a 100 million dollar - 1 billion bet on something that risky, they are in the business of returning like 7 - 10% a year to their shareholder, not producing 5x returns (like the VC/startup business).
That doesn't mean Boom is that, however.
How could you possibly think that?
Thinking out loud here - lets say you have a few senior engineers that know that GE or Boeing or RR or something is currently working on a smaller supersonic engine. You know you cannot yourselves design such an engine but if it is released maybe it would make sense to get a head start designing a product to take advantage of it?
Supersonic jet engines are a rarified field. There are Russian "companies"... good luck getting that certified for Western commercial aviation.
This was always a fools errand.
Which is it?
Boom is wasting their time building an airframe but what they really need to win is an engine. They should have built the engine first.
The grifters work on the final product, the movers work on the first step, having a plan to make that profitable, so they can build toward the final product. SpaceX is probably the example that comes to mind, even if they did borrow engines.
Boeing and other airframe mfgs would throw you a huge contract immediately if they thought you could actually build the engines and deliver them.
Klimov RD-33's (the Mig-29 engine) are not super-cruise engines and aren't capable of demonstrating the intent of the Boom design. And frankly I think even a retrofit like that is beyond Boom's means.
Jets breathe atmospheric air for combustion because they operate in an atmosphere where oxygen is readily available for combustion. They have an air intake nozzle.
Rockets carry their own oxidizer because they must. They only have an exhaust nozzle.
Going faster is one of the big advancements, but probably not the biggest.
Going 2x faster is obviously a good thing, everything else being equal. Costs can potentially go down as you can run 2x the flights per day. People enjoy flights more. The difference between a 2.5 hour and 5 hours flight is a lot. A 6 hour and 12 hour flight, a lot.
Making flights cheaper is something people consistently prefer. The main flight costs are fuel, pilots, staff, and airport capacity. Electric flights are interesting for short hauls but are a long way away from long haul use (much further away than supersonic). Automating away pilots is something that technically is easier than driverless cars, but hasn't seemed to be a priority yet. Progress there would be helpful. Removing staff on planes is a legal requirement and seems harder to do for larger flights for human reasons. Airport capacity is probably best helped by increasing turn time.
Honestly, the easiest way to improve the flight experience is to (effectively) get rid of all security on flights. Once planes can't be made into missiles (door locks were a good post 9-11 change), they are no higher risk than many other enclosed spaces that have no security. This would help speed of travel AND cost, and really means "just do less". But it's a political issue.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/15/eco-airship...
Maybe they could fly fully autonomous when used as freighters.
Yeah idk about that part, I doubt we need more of anything that enables more pollution
https://airwaysmag.com/boom-supersonic-refined-overture-desi...
But to get there we first need normal conservative electric planes to make electric planes more normal. Battery have to be getting better for this to happen but I think we will get there, some people overestimate how large battery improvements we need by basically thinking they need to match chat fuel.
If you look at how far the currently in development electric plans can go you can see lots of improvements that can be made to increase that range considerably.
You can also build your air-frame out of batteries. The batteries themselves need to become structural members in the air-frame. Some manufactures are doing that already for cars but for plans it will be even more important.
Things like using a PRANDTL Wing and prop blade would make a large difference for example.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCwtcDNB15E
It of course makes sense for startups like Heart Aerospace not to try these things but I think eventually people will. Electric planes will be so operational efficient that there will be huge demand to increase the range.
On the other hand, scrappy SaaS startup could parse your logs and send alerts for cheaper, yes.
Government come in and sometimes push forward the technology industry already has, mostly by just given those industries more investment money.
But industry still invests gigantic amount of money to push technology forward and those innovations are constantly and consistently changing the game.
Government invests something in X and then for the next 100 years people in forum can say 'see this only happened because of X'. But that ignores a lot of the work before and after to actually make it game changing.
And what we also need to consider is that very often that huge government investment fails and goes nowhere. And at the same time large private investment can also fail.
To conclude from this no private investment can ever be game-changing doesn't really follow.
Starlink is a recent example that is pretty game-changing. Government didn't invest in it directly. Sure in the last 100s government invest in rocketry and electronics and antennas but so did private industry at a much larger overall rate (outside of rocketry).
So I think, at the end of the day, government will always have its fingers in almost every pie and will always talk about their success and never talk about their failures. If Boom isn't successful, well you can't innovate without the government. If Boom is successful, well Boom profited from government investment in supersonic military technology so they couldn't have done it without government.
So these kinds of arguments all circle in on themselves. At the end of the day, if you invest lots of money in something game-changing most of the time its gone go to shit, no matter who does it.
This is how it has always worked.
Of course weirder stuff is happening:
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/israel-ba...
Banning 4 engine aircraft from Israel means no more 747 freighters or new leisure supersonics.
> Operation of aircraft with four engines will be allowed in exceptional cases and only with a special permit.
I'd imagine that Air Force One will not have any trouble obtaining the special permit.
> Operation of aircraft with four engines will be allowed in exceptional cases and only with a special permit.
Concorde didn't fail for technical reasons but AA have put down a deposit for 60. This is limited to < Mach 1 over land so it's going to be most useful on the routes that Concorde could have serviced.
Is it just the noise aspect opening more potential routes? But then I would have thought we would be more concerned about noise now than in the 60s making the improvements a wash.
https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight (Read the last sentence).
This partnership have been running for quite a while and no results in the end
Also it is interesting to see only negative comments about RR? i wonder why? :) [2]
