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Aerospace Startup Will Build A Supersonic Mach 2.2 Aircraft (fortune.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the big-boom-theory dept.

A new commercial aircraft will fly more than twice the speed of sound, traveling from New York to London in 3.4 hours. An anonymous reader quotes Fortune: Colorado-based startup Boom Supersonic is one step closer to making such travel a reality after securing $33 million in investments to construct and fly its first supersonic jet, the XB-1 demonstration and testing craft, according to TechCrunch... With the new funding, Boom will be able to put that concept -- and the technology needed to power it -- to the test. "This funds our first airplane, all the way through flight tests," Boom founder and CEO Blake Scholl told TechCrunch. "Now we have all the pieces we need â" technology, suppliers and capital â" to go out and make some history and set some speed records."
They'll be testing a prototype that's one-third smaller than the commercial version within the next year.

19 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. boom supersonic by bugs2squash · · Score: 3, Funny

    from the marketing geniuses that brought you "side effect pharmaceuticals", "cirrhosis malt liquor" and "divorce playing cards".

    --
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  2. Nope by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Modern commercial aircraft development, testing and certification programs take upward of $5Billion these days, just what do these people think they are going to achieve with $30million? That won't cover the cost of the engines...

    1. Re:Nope by maroberts · · Score: 3, Informative

      Whilst accepting its not going to be pocket change, if it was $5 billion, the manufacturers of private jets would be unable to do any new aircraft.

      Assuming its not a scam, they are claiming that $30mill will get their Proof Of Concept (XB-1) through, when I presume they'll seek a further round of funding to scale up. The problem is that scaling up is a big problem in commercial aircraft terms. Triple the size makes everything more than 3 times harder, because if it weren't we would be seeing 747 size Concorde lookalikes flying around right now.

      Looking at their website however, it looks like the XB-1 is only a two seater, so I suspect their claims to get v1.0 out the door for $30 million plus whatever they already have may just about be possible.

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    2. Re:Nope by maroberts · · Score: 4, Informative

      But they're not building the airliner for $30 million. It appears they're building a 2 seat, 3 engine plane to test out some of the technologies for $30million+ a bit more.
      The nearest comparison is perhaps building the winner of the X-Prize Spaceship One which probably cost less than $30million, although it's hard to tell how much Paul Allen sponsored it for,

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    3. Re: Nope by fubarrr · · Score: 3, Funny

      You can buy a scraped tu22 and change bomb bay to a passenger suite with blackjack and hookers

    4. Re: Nope by Rei · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Is it really that expensive? I know some people who had run a small startup automaker that raised 30-something million. They were about 3 months out from first commercial deliveries (having made a couple dozen prototypes to various degrees, ranging from empty shells to full builds), with about $10m still left in the bank - when the board decided to bring on a guy from Detroit (Paul Wilbur, the guy responsible for the Chevy SSR, and a bunch of other train-wrecks-in-car-form), who then proceeded to run the company into the ground.

      Are aircraft that much more expensive than cars, that you can't even build a demonstrator for that kind of money? To be fair, the automaker's vehicle was technically classified as a motorcycle, so their regulations weren't as onerous as for most cars (but they still did full crash and crush tests anyway, voluntarily). But, I mean, they just churned out prototypes one after the next.

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  3. Pricing... by TFlan91 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The 3 or 4 hours of travel time I'm saving doesn't really justify the proposed ticket pricing...

    "The company hopes the Boom jet will take three hours and 15 minutes to fly from New York to London for a price of $2,500 per passenger in either direction, based on its initial prototype. Transatlantic flights currently take more than twice that time."

    I fly from Boston to Munich, Frankfurt, Paris or London about twice every 3 months. Ticket prices for a round trip, in the winter, range from 600 - 800$, and in the summer the prices range from 800 - 1200$ (I fly lufthansa over the ocean, then wizz air to final destination, cheap af and lufthansa offers very good service for the price).

    If you are going to charge 2500$ for a one way ticket, and the only benefit is I save 3 or 4 hours in travel time, I won't even think twice about it, fuck that.

    3 hours of my time is not worth proposed ticket price (~3x for one way, ~6x for round trip).

    Unless they reduce the pricing structure, the only people flying this will be bigwigs with too much money to spend. The pricing structure itself sets the company up for a death spiral. Poor investors, didn't do their homework: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    1. Re:Pricing... by maroberts · · Score: 5, Informative

      I remind you that Concorde was substantially more expensive than $2500 and it was kept busy. There are a lot of bigwigs who are willing to pay that sort of money especially if their company is paying for it.

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    2. Re:Pricing... by pz · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have an uncle who flew the Concorde from NYC to London frequently. It was entirely worth the extra money to his company to have him there and back in one day. When he would make trips like this, it was to talk to investment banks and the like, and the stock price would take a non-trivial tick upward as a result. The six-hour-plus savings in his time was entirely worth the cost. Moreover, not having to sleep on a plane and have a shitty night's sleep rendering him less effective the next day was even better.

      Now, there aren't many people who are like that, but the number is also not zero. Given the large collection of companies in the northeast with insane valuations (e.g., Big Pharma), I'd wager that there is still a market for supersonic travel to London at what amounts to business-class prices.

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    3. Re: Pricing... by imgod2u · · Score: 3, Interesting

      But how much time do you save nowadays though. 20 years ago when the Concord ran, you got to the airport 45 min ahead of time with plenty of time to spare.

      Today, international travel takes about 3 hours at the airport alone. Let alone the flight. So if we're taking 9 vs 6 hours spent, is it really that big of a difference?

      Also, the economics of flying means that fuel efficiency is the primary factor in profitability. So if this thing eats up twice of 3x the fuel as a 787 but earns twice as much per flight, airlines won't be running it.

    4. Re:Pricing... by HuguesT · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Concorde did not recoup its development costs due to the small number of operational aircrafts (only 20 were ever produced, 14 of which saw commercial use). However they were operationally profitable, meaning their usage generated profit over and above all the operational costs.

    5. Re:Pricing... by WheezyJoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This always gets said, and again, it's false. BA did make money, which is why they flew it for as long as they did. It just didn't enough money to pay for spare parts as the planes aged (they cannibalized grounded Concordes until that became unsustainable) and, ultimately, replacement aircraft. Limited to only a few routes, Airbus wouldn't tool up to support a dozen or so planes when there's much more money to be made in fleets of subsonic aircraft. In short, the Concorde died of old age and lack of supporting infrastructure. But make no mistake, for 60's and 70's technology, the Concorde was really really great. Well loved by both passengers and pilots.

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    6. Re: Pricing... by YuppieScum · · Score: 4, Informative

      When Concorde flew, it had dedicated check-ins, security, immigration and lounges at either end of the journey, as befitting a premium and exclusive service.

      With this in place, even today you'd spend much less time in the airport than the rest of us flying cattle-class...

      --
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  4. Re:"WILL fly more than twice the speed of sound" by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Editor, thy name is click-bait credulity.

    Exactly. They would LIKE to design and POSSIBLY build such a plane. MAYBE. What is more likly is that they will enjoy a trendy office in Denver or Colorado Springs with a foosball table, catered lunches, microbrews, and a cat, and when the money runs out, move on to some other - dare I say - investor scam.

    The idea that $33 million will get them anywhere near a flyable prototype is mind-blowing.

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  5. Change the name to "Crash Supersonic"? by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "... marketing geniuses..."

    Apparently a lot of technically-knowledgeable people don't have social ability. Boom Supersonic!!! "Boom" is what you hear when there is a crash.

    There are many more like that. For example, Malwarebytes is software named after the problem it is supposed to cure. Doesn't anyone at BOOM have a mother?

    Son: Mom, what do you think of the name BOOM for our company?

    Mom: No, son, that's not a good name.

    Son: Why not?

    Mom: You're only 3 years old. You'll understand when you are 4.

    1. Re:Change the name to "Crash Supersonic"? by aktw · · Score: 3, Informative

      Boom is also what you hear when it goes supersonic. Malwarebytes is a play on the phrase "Malware Bites." The fact that I had to spell that shit out for you is funny, though.

  6. Re:PERSECUTION by GerryGilmore · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hail Satan!

  7. Re:Boom - I do not think that this name will fly.. by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Informative

    1) The high cost of fuel for the trip. Concorde used Re-heat all the time it was supersonic. This may have changed.

    Concorde used reheat for takeoff and when passing mach 1, at all other times it wasn't used including cruising at mach 2...
    It wasn't needed, but punching through the sound barrier at mach 1 was quicker with reheat and actually used less fuel that way.

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  8. Won't beat Concorde performance in main config by ndverdo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    50 year plus old turbojet engines, small and less sophisticated wing (missing vortex lift), only a fraction of the resources of Concorde design/development - won't cut it.

    carbon/composites instead of RR58 aluminium alloy, CFD modeling and current FWB controls will surprisingly or not fail to produce meaningfully better performance

    kudos to the Concorde designers who still have to be topped almost 50 years after its first flight