Boom Supersonic Hopes To Test-Fly Its Supersonic Plane In 2021 (engadget.com) 59
Colorado startup Boom Supersonic is planning to show off its XB-1 supersonic plane on October 7th, with flights planned for next year. Engadget reports: [Boom Supersonic founder Blake Scholl] describes himself as an Objectivist (a follower of the teachings of Ayn Rand) and previously worked for both Groupon and Amazon. He freely admits that, beyond his private pilots license, he does not have an aerospace background. During our talk, Scholl referenced SpaceX a number of times, and it's clear that Elon Musk's private spaceflight company is the model Boom is striving to emulate. "You know, when SpaceX got started, it was a joke that a startup could build a rocket," he said "and not that many years later, they're landing rockets vertically on pads." Scholl's ambition is to do for supersonic travel what SpaceX did, and is doing, for the space industry.
One of the things that Scholl and Boom are banking on is the advances in computer-aided design and materials science. The single-seat, 71-foot long XB-1 is designed to test if these advances will make building a supersonic plane far more efficient and cheap than it was in the '60s. XB-1 will use a variety of molded carbon fiber composites for its body that should hold up better against the heat and stresses caused by supersonic flight. The company says that the plane should be able to withstand temperatures exceeding 300 Fahrenheit (148C). [...] XB-1 will be piloted by Commander Bill 'Doc' Shoemaker, a 21-year US naval aviator who led combat missions in an F-18 on a number of occasions. He has also served as a flight test instructor at the US Navy test pilot school and previously worked for Zee.Aero, one of (Google co-founder) Larry Page's self-funded flying car startups. If XB-1 proves successful, then Boom will move to begin building its full-size supersonic plane, Overture. Overture is a craft designed to seat less than a hundred people at "business class" levels of comfort. And for "business class" prices, they'll be able to fly from, say, Tokyo to Seattle in four hours and thirty minutes.
Boom also promises its planes will use less fuel through a combination of efficient materials and better engines. Scholl said that the planes are powered with a "quiet, efficient turbofan system [...] a similar engine architecture to what you'd see on any large Airbus or Boeing wide-body aircraft today, just adapted for supersonic flight." And recently, Boom announced that it was teaming up with Rolls Royce to build an engine for Overture. Scholl says that Overture is going to be expensive, but that Boom's lack of a legacy is as much of a benefit as it is a burden. "We don't have to think about the 737 Max, we don't have to think about how to keep the factories running for our last-generation airplanes," he said, claiming that Boom has the "luxury of focus." Scholl expects Overture to cost just $6 billion to develop -- by comparison, a 2011 Seattle Times report claimed that Boeing's 787 Dreamliner cost $32 billion to design. But Scholl is planning to sell 2,000 Overture aircraft for "$200 million a pop," which he says is a "$200 [billion] to $400 billion market opportunity."
One of the things that Scholl and Boom are banking on is the advances in computer-aided design and materials science. The single-seat, 71-foot long XB-1 is designed to test if these advances will make building a supersonic plane far more efficient and cheap than it was in the '60s. XB-1 will use a variety of molded carbon fiber composites for its body that should hold up better against the heat and stresses caused by supersonic flight. The company says that the plane should be able to withstand temperatures exceeding 300 Fahrenheit (148C). [...] XB-1 will be piloted by Commander Bill 'Doc' Shoemaker, a 21-year US naval aviator who led combat missions in an F-18 on a number of occasions. He has also served as a flight test instructor at the US Navy test pilot school and previously worked for Zee.Aero, one of (Google co-founder) Larry Page's self-funded flying car startups. If XB-1 proves successful, then Boom will move to begin building its full-size supersonic plane, Overture. Overture is a craft designed to seat less than a hundred people at "business class" levels of comfort. And for "business class" prices, they'll be able to fly from, say, Tokyo to Seattle in four hours and thirty minutes.
Boom also promises its planes will use less fuel through a combination of efficient materials and better engines. Scholl said that the planes are powered with a "quiet, efficient turbofan system [...] a similar engine architecture to what you'd see on any large Airbus or Boeing wide-body aircraft today, just adapted for supersonic flight." And recently, Boom announced that it was teaming up with Rolls Royce to build an engine for Overture. Scholl says that Overture is going to be expensive, but that Boom's lack of a legacy is as much of a benefit as it is a burden. "We don't have to think about the 737 Max, we don't have to think about how to keep the factories running for our last-generation airplanes," he said, claiming that Boom has the "luxury of focus." Scholl expects Overture to cost just $6 billion to develop -- by comparison, a 2011 Seattle Times report claimed that Boeing's 787 Dreamliner cost $32 billion to design. But Scholl is planning to sell 2,000 Overture aircraft for "$200 million a pop," which he says is a "$200 [billion] to $400 billion market opportunity."
Will XB-1 soar very close to the Sun? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ironic Name (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Boooom!
Re: (Score:2)
Well, maybe it is all just bullshit when you consider:
"[Boom Supersonic founder Blake Scholl] describes himself as an Objectivist (a follower of the teachings of Ayn Rand)"
Yep, all bullshit, just trying to fleece the masses
Re:148C sounds low (Score:4, Informative)
The quoted 4.5 hours Tokyo to Seattle is an average speed around 920 knots. Conveniently all over water, so that is mostly cruise and the average is not diluted much by subsonic flight. That's comparable to Concorde with an average cruise at around 1100 knots. Concorde only had to tolerate ~127 Celsius. Composites for use at Mach 1-2 are fairly common in military fighter aircraft.
Blackbird flew a lot faster.
Re:148C sounds low (Score:4, Interesting)
Composites for use at Mach 1-2 are fairly common in military fighter aircraft.
Yep. The Electric Lightning for example was limited to a top speed of a bit over Mach 2 by the fibreglass shock cone in the engine inlet (it was also a radome, so it had to be fiberglass), and that was back in the late 1950s.
The Boom Supersonic web site is interesting. (Score:3)
No chance in hell it will sell that well (Score:2)
Supersonic aircraft is of a very limited utility - it can only carry a small amount of passengers (meaning they will have to pay for very expensive tickets) and only makes sense for long range flights. There is only a handful of high revenue long range routes - London - New York, London - Dubai, London - Singapure, London - Hong Kong, London - Doha, San Francisco - New York, Los Angeles - New York.
The London Heathrow airport is slot restricted nowadays, replacing a large aircraft with a small one might cut
Re:No chance in hell it will sell that well (Score:5, Interesting)
On top of that, while I'm sure there will be a market on business routes like NYC to London, it will have the same noise abatement issues on overland routes as the Concord. Earlier on I thought they were going to use the spike designs that Nasa had been developing to reduce the sonic boom, but their current design looks almost exactly like a scaled down Concord.
On top of this, they are not flying as fast as concord, which starts making a difference when you look at longer route options such as LA to Sydney. On this route by their own figures, flight time will go from 14.5hours to 8.5hours. I suspect a lot of customers would rather opt for six hours extra in a lie flat seat than crammed into a pseudo-economy seat for 8 hours.
This is looking very much like it is getting pushed into the same market niche that Concord got pushed into (transatlantic) and that is probably not going to be enough to make it viable. I'm also very suspicious when a company has a business model the wouldn't work out if Boeing/Airbus did it, but will apparently work for the new startup who has never built a plane before because they have 'new tech' that means they can do it for cheaper. If they had this magical new tech then they wouldn't need to make a plane - they could just sell their tech to Boeing/Airbus and go retire.
I would love to see supersonic come back, but it just isn't viable until we have a new energy source.
Re: (Score:2)
They claim to have reduced the noise of the sonic boom considerably, but will still only go supersonic over sea.
They have identified a market for smaller aircraft and I hope they succeed and keep developing the technology.
Boeing/Airbus aren't all that interested in throwing money at development. Both have been burned by developing aircraft that didn't sell well because by the time they were available the market had changed from hub/spoke to more direct flights. They will wait to see if this thing works or m
Re: (Score:2)
Boeing/Airbus aren't all that interested in throwing money at development. Both have been burned by developing aircraft that didn't sell well because by the time they were available the market had changed from hub/spoke to more direct flights. They will wait to see if this thing works or maybe step in if they run out of money close to having a working aircraft.
My point is not so much that Boeing/Airbus don't want to do this sort of thing (definitely agree with you on that), my point is that Boom are trying to argue they can develop it for much cheap than existing airframe designers due to the use of new tech and not having to support legacy design (this doesn't really make sense, the folks working on the 787 would not have had to manage the 737 production line as well). I just don't think that stacks up. For example the A220 cost $7b to develop. They say they can
Re: (Score:2)
The A220 does have a plastic wing. The development of that airplane bankrupted Bombardier forcing them to sell both their airlinet and their rail business. I won't be surprised if the company would close in a year or two.
Re: (Score:2)
The A220 does have a plastic wing. The development of that airplane bankrupted Bombardier forcing them to sell both their airlinet and their rail business. I won't be surprised if the company would close in a year or two.
The problem was that the engine they bought from Pratt & Whitney had a major design flaw that dragged out their time to market by a significant amount. They still would have likely recovered if Boeing hadn't gone crying to the US government about unfair subsidies and had Bombardier banned from being sold in the US.
The rail division was just dysfunctional. They couldn't manage to do anything on time, on budget and even then the cars had problems. They pissed off Toronto and New York and that would ha
Re: (Score:2)
That "significant" amount was three months. Most delays had nothing to do with the engine.
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect a lot of customers would rather opt for six hours extra in a lie flat seat than crammed into a pseudo-economy seat for 8 hours.
FTS:
Overture is a craft designed to seat less than a hundred people at "business class" levels of comfort. And for "business class" prices, they'll be able to fly from, say, Tokyo to Seattle in four hours and thirty minutes.
So the question would be "For about the same price and comfort, would you rather spend 4.5 hours or 10 hours on your trip?"
I'd probably take the 4.5 hour flight.
But you also have to think about "Business Class levels of comfort." When I've flown International business class, because it takes 10-12 hours, they give me a seat where I can lie down and take a nap. Domestic? Not so much. On the other hand, I've never missed the ability to lie down and take a nap flying Domestic business class from, say,
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is impossible to build supersonic aircraft that can carry more people. Supersonic fuselages must be long and thin aerodynamic wise. There is a limit of long and thin because additional length means more strenghtening which means more weight (and larger tubes are stiffer for the same wall thickness). There is also a hard limit of 80 meters for passenger aircraft.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Boeing 2707 was never supposed to be built, just to poison the marked for the Concorde. The aerodynamic limitations are very real.
Re: (Score:2)
Looks to me like the reasons for not following through with the 2707 were economic. The Soviets built and flew the Tu-144. The US built the B-1B and the USAF is still flying it.
Re: (Score:2)
The Tu-144 was about the same size as the Concorde for the aforementioned aerodynamic reasons and the B-1B is not an airliner and tiny in comparison. 2707 was supposed to be longer than any airliner ever built. Longer, in fact, than the hard limit of 80 meters, requiring new airport standards. Probably would require stilt like landing gear just to avoid tail strikes on takeoff and landing, but since it was never supposed to be built, these problems were moot.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really.
It is what the Western engineers used to call the Tu-144 before 1991 when they could see how different it actually is.
Besides, the -ski suffix is Polish, not Russian.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a feeling that this proposed aircraft, if it actually draws any orders, won't be used for traditional commercial service to current high volume hubs. I'm guessing they will go for a private Jet model, something that carries 6-8 people, initially.
Maybe they can break into the commercial service world, but as you point out, the problems with that will be that it will be hard to make money on low volumes in the current industry mindset. Which is exactly what killed the Concorde in the long run (well
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
options are not orders
You forgot the quotes. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You forgot the quotes. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Objectivism is a very attractive idea. The problem is with the interpretation.
Re: (Score:2)
therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone
Anyone who questions their duty to support the looters (Rand's terminology) or the NEETs (modern day) is, by definition a huge asshole. And a Nazi. All we can do is learn to embrace our assholeness.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with Ayn Rand is that she presents only one side of the argument. The problem with Marxists is that they present only one side of the argument.
Ayn Rand gets attention because she seems to be the only one that has presented a cogent work of art supporting her side. Marxist have an entire political party pushing their narrative.
My family is socialist. We spend money to support each other. One person may work harder than others, and one person may need more resources than others. But, we're a
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Just waiting for Moller (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
I wonder how turbofans adapted for supersonic flight work? For now I'll keep my money on Moller's Skycar, due out any time now.
In a supersonic aircraft the jet engine does not operate at supersonic speeds. The intake converts the incoming airstream's velocity into pressure, and the jet engine operates in the same way as a subsonic one (but with higher intake pressure and temperature). Interestingly, because the pressure recovery is created by a shock wave (rather than the air following an intake shape) the process is extremely efficient.
The engine itself essentially just compensates for energy loss in the intake, though it may also
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder how turbofans adapted for supersonic flight work? For now I'll keep my money on Moller's Skycar, due out any time now.
The main issue is that super-sonic air doesn't like to work with a jet's compression vanes. You have to "slow down" the air a bit so you can compress it with turbine blades. As you slow down the air, this messes with the pressure ratio which are the primary performance measure of a jet engine and it takes energy out of the system by adding lots of drag. You also have to have some kind of variable means of doing this, or your engine performance will suffer at low speeds too, meaning some kind of mechanical
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
One reason for partnering with Rolls Royce is they still have the engineering data and archives for the Olympus Engines Concorde used. Why reinvent the wheel if you can just dust it off?
Concorde's most outstanding feature were the sequence of entry doors on the Engine intakes to slow the airflow to speeds the engines could accept. I've heard it described as the most brilliant aspect of the whole design.
Radiative forcing may be a problem (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
That's where Ayn Rand comes in:
Go for what appeals to you at first glance, fuck everyone else, and you are morally justified no matter what the consequences.
It's like magic!
OMG (Score:1)
"Objectivist (a follower of the teachings of Ayn Rand..."
I guess this will finish a bit like the rocket that the flat-earther moron built.
Re: (Score:1)
That name (Score:2)
Couldn't they have come up with a different name/model number that doesn't sound like an Air Force series designation? eXperimental Bomber 1. It might make foreign countries a bit less queasy when they request permission for an overflight.
On the other hand, I look forward to their eventual model XB-70 [wikipedia.org].
Its all about economics (Score:2)
We've had supersonic aircraft since the 40s (X1) and aircraft that could supercruise since the 50s (B58). The question is why they think this will be economically viable.
I believe supersonic flight is inherently less efficient than subsonic flight. That makes modestly supersonic ( mach 1.5) not really interesting because most passengers would prefer to spend longer in much larger / more comfortable seats). As speeds go up, things get more technically challenging.
I really want this to be real, I just do