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Boom Aerospace Company Wants To Bring Back Supersonic Civilian Travel (bloomberg.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the two-for-the-price-of-one dept.

pacopico writes: A startup out of Denver called Boom Technology has just come out of stealth mode [by] talking-up their supersonic jet. It would carry 40 passengers and travel at Mach 2.2. The company claims that it's about 30 percent more fuel-efficient than the Concorde. Based on this, it could get its prices down to the equivalent of a business class seat on long-haul flights. At Mach 2.2, a trip from New York to London would take 3.4 hours. Boom is meant to start test flights next year out of John Denver's old hangar.

5 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. All they need is... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...billions and billions and billions of dollars in venture capital.

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  2. This sounds great by jonwil · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If they can get the cost of a 3.4 hour transatlantic flight down to the cost of a business class ticket on a regular airplane on the same route, whoever flies these things will get a good amount of demand (one of the big problems for Concorde is that not enough people were willing to pay the premium vs a normal air ticket, if this new mob has solved it so its as affordable as a regular business class seat that problem goes away)

    1. Re:This sounds great by jandrese · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Think about this. You're talking about burning 5x as much fuel per person, but still charging them the same price? Oh, and the aircraft is being built from scratch so you have to put amortized R&D costs for a limited production aircraft in there as well? It's not like Airlines operate with huge profit margins today, so where is that extra fuel money going to come from? The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that it is a scam. They could just be hopelessly incompetent, but I'm leaning more towards scam.

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  3. 30%? by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A 30% efficiency gain over a plane designed in the 1960s isn't terribly impressive... There was already a model B Concorde designed and ready to be built back then which improved efficiency and range... Coupled with new lighter materials, more advanced flight control systems, newer engine designs etc it shouldn't be all that difficult to get 30% or more.

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  4. Re:Almost as good as Concorde engineering by headkase · · Score: 4, Insightful

    which is why a $100 Android phone is impressive even if it doesn't quite have the horsepower of a 1980s Cray supercomputer.

    Actually, a typical smart-phone today kicks the ass of a late 1980's Cray Y-MP super-computer. Shh though, you see, those computers used to be used for certain cutting-edge physics verification calculations. Best if people did think about using a cheap smart-phone for that today.

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