This is something I've thought about a lot, as I would love to see some innovation in air travel. That said, this plan seems more optimistic to me than mining asteroids. At least with asteroid mining there are no regulations.
There are several companies who are / have worked on a supersonic business jet. Some of those ideas use the new research which has occurred since the Concorde to diminish the sonic boom to a point where the plane could travel supersonic over land. No non-experimental plane has successfully implemented it though, so it's very much up in the air. Others advertise the idea that you can only use them supersonic over the ocean, which limits their ultimate speed.
The one constant is delivering a new commercial airplane in the US is extremely time intensive, and extremely expensive. I don't want to be negative, but I would be shocked if something like this could come to market for less than a billion dollars and in less than a decade. I think it will be a struggle to get that kind of money while their only competitive advantage over the (failed) Concorde is a slight speed boost. Obviously the Concorde failed for a reason, and it wasn't the people needed to go 10% faster. My guess is the issue was most people are more concerned about how much they pay then a few hours more in a plane. Or at least, they're not willing to pay 2 or 3x to get there an hour or two faster.
That said, as the most recent Gulfstream has shown, there is a booming market for expensive business jets, so that market makes more sense to me. Beyond that, I would love to be proven wrong. The Concorde was one of the most impressive technological achievements in human history, I would love to see its legacy live on.
@zackbloom The Boom aircraft is 2.6X faster for the *same* price as business class today. That's the same speedup as the jetliners offered vs. piston-propeller aircraft back in the 1960s. It's enough speed to do a round trip across the Atlantic or Pacific in a day. Think New York to London in 3.4 hours instead of 7, but $5,000 round trip .
Building a new aircraft is challenging and capitally intensive, as you point out. Concorde was too big (100 seats) and too expensive (up to $20k/seat). Really hard to fill seats at those prices—which is why Concorde wasn't an economic success. Boom aircraft is 40 seats and same prices as business class, so it's completely different economically.
Our aircraft is designed to be much quieter than Concorde. We'll keep chipping away at sonic boom noise until it's allowed over land. In a world where SF-Tokyo is faster than SF-New York, there will be a lot of interest in updating the regulations.
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@bscholl@zackbloom I pray for the day MEL to LAX isn't so hellishly long.... oh and I can afford business class. ;)
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@bscholl@zackbloom the boom aircraft currently goes 0 mph, because it doesn't exist
Hi - I'm Blake, Founder/CEO at Boom. After watching no tangible progress in supersonics since Concorde was shut down, I started Boom because I want supersonic flight in our lifetime. Not just as a private jet, but something most anyone can afford to fly.
I'll be around for the next hour and will answer as many questions as I can. [EDIT: Done now]
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Clearly they should fire the entire marketing team for calling anything you want people to get into "Boom". Love to see who buys a ticket to fly on a plane called boom so I can scare them all the way up till take off with all kinds of explosion gifs.
How real is this/how far from reality is this from happening? Don't see anything on the site that discusses the actual challenges of manufacturing and certifying a new kind of plane, and launching a new airline?
curious to learn more
@ay_o This is very real—we're working now on a 1/3 scale prototype, which will fly faster than Concorde, and which will make its first flight late next year. We already have the engine, production test samples of wing materials, etc. This is happening in our hangar just south of Denver at Centennial airport, 10,000sqft of design/manufacturing space with direct access to a test runway.
The production plane is the next step after prototype. Manufacturing and certifying a new passenger aircraft is quite challenging but not impossible. We'll have more to say about timeline once the prototype flies. As fans of speed, we're doing everything we can to get this to market as quickly as possible—but we will not compromise on safety.
We'll partner with existing and new airlines to operate supersonic service—not planning to launch our own airline.
Go figure this would be started by internet folks.
Key in on the details.
Concorde only survived because of subsidies.
Fuel is freaking expensive. The fuel costs go up very high.
Sonic booms can shatter windows and that's why supersonic planes are only allowed to do their sonic booms over the ocean.
This is a 10-20% improvement in speed and no airline in their right mind would purchase it.
Commercial Jets go 0.7-0.8 Mach.
A supersonic jet is Mach 1. (the speed of sound - keeping in mind this changes with temperature.
The founders of this company are not AEs or mechanical engineers.
Edit: I stand corrected. One of the founders IS in fact an AE.
@datarade Wow, lots to comment on here.
First off, we're talking a 2.6X improvement in speed, not 20%. Boom airplane cruises at Mach 2.2.
I'm really proud of the team—today we are 11 engineers, 9 who have made meaningful contributions to FAA-certified aircraft, 4 who have worked on supersonics before. Our engine guy owned front half of the engine in the Joint Strike Fighter. Our aerodynamics lead previously led supersonic aero at Gulfstream. Systems lead worked on SpaceShipTwo flight dynamics up to Mach 3.
@bscholl
I appreciate you taking the time to answer this question.
I don't necessarily care about the credentials of the teammates as much as I do the founders. The CTOs credentials of AE really do answer that question. In the days of Hyperloop, such skepticism is necessary.
Any engineer's engineer will always want to work on cool technology. What I'm inquiring about is the market viability of the technology from a unit economics perspective.
While I'm willing to bet the airlines might partner with you on whim, somehow I'm doubtful that they'd actually buy a plane. Or wait.... do the airlines want to buy this plane?
If this was financially viable for carriers then how come Boeing, Lockheed, Airbus, etc... didn't latch on?
Love the ambition and courage to execute on building Boom. Congrats to @bscholl and @jkrall for taking the covers off on this. They're good people that I got to work with at my brief stint @groupon. Excited to see how the team pulls this off.
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