Meet the XB-1: A Prototype For a Modern Supersonic Passenger Jet (arstechnica.com) 50
On Wednesday, Boom Supersonic unveiled the XB-1, a prototype aircraft for the company's planned commercial supersonic airplane. Ars Technica reports: The rollout marks the handoff from the design, development, and build phase to testing, said Blake Scholl, Boom founder and chief executive. After undergoing a series of ground tests, the 21-meter-long aircraft will begin a flight test campaign in the third quarter of 2021 at Mojave Air and Space Port, Scholl said. "We'll be supersonic by the end of next year," he added. This is about a year later than the company's original plans.
Founded in 2014, Boom is planning to build a new generation of supersonic passenger jets and sell them to airlines. Scholl said the company has already pre-sold $6 billion worth of its full-size aircraft, called Overture. These airplanes are expected to seat 65 to 88 passengers and will travel at subsonic speeds over land and supersonic speeds over water -- more than twice as fast as current commercial aircraft. Boom hopes to begin flying Overture for the first time in 2026 and hopes the craft will be available for commercial flights before the end of the decade. To make that happen, the XB-1 demonstrator represents the first step, Scholl said, to test key technologies for Overture, including shape and materials.
Perhaps the biggest difference between XB-1 and the full-scale aircraft, besides the size, is that XB-1 will use a smaller, off-the-shelf J85-15 turbojet engine. The company announced a partnership with Rolls Royce earlier this year to work on development of the Overture aircraft engine and expects to select a final design by the end of this year. The challenges in building this engine include designing the inlet to convert supersonic air flow to subsonic air flow before entering the engine and challenges with some of the internal components. However, Scholl said, "It's not much of a technology leap at all."
Founded in 2014, Boom is planning to build a new generation of supersonic passenger jets and sell them to airlines. Scholl said the company has already pre-sold $6 billion worth of its full-size aircraft, called Overture. These airplanes are expected to seat 65 to 88 passengers and will travel at subsonic speeds over land and supersonic speeds over water -- more than twice as fast as current commercial aircraft. Boom hopes to begin flying Overture for the first time in 2026 and hopes the craft will be available for commercial flights before the end of the decade. To make that happen, the XB-1 demonstrator represents the first step, Scholl said, to test key technologies for Overture, including shape and materials.
Perhaps the biggest difference between XB-1 and the full-scale aircraft, besides the size, is that XB-1 will use a smaller, off-the-shelf J85-15 turbojet engine. The company announced a partnership with Rolls Royce earlier this year to work on development of the Overture aircraft engine and expects to select a final design by the end of this year. The challenges in building this engine include designing the inlet to convert supersonic air flow to subsonic air flow before entering the engine and challenges with some of the internal components. However, Scholl said, "It's not much of a technology leap at all."
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I live on a boat in the ocean, you insensitive clod!
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Do you really think we want to hear sonic booms
Yes. It's the sound of progress.
I used to live under one of the flight paths of the XB-70 when it was in R&D. The sonic booms were pretty cool.
to small like the concorde and likey costs to much (Score:2)
to small like the Concorde and likely costs to much to run.
Also do the air lines really the funds to buy this anyways?
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This isn't for the airlines. This is for the 0.01% to get to their annual Bilderberg golf outing then back home in time to tuck the kids in.
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This, a supersonic airliner for the masses won't exist for the foreseeable future simply due to energy costs, supersonic flight is just too inefficient. The only way that might change is with electrofuels made with fusion power. This will be for private jets and possibly a really big private jet like the Concorde effectively was.
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Most of the kids of those kinds of people are raised by specialized servants, not by parents. Also, most flights by such people are going to be intracontinental, not intercontinental.
Which is why Learjets are subsonic, but carry a lot of fuel so they can do both effectively.
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The XB-1 is being billed with a 1,000 nm range, which honestly, is pathetic. Definitely not a contender for trans-oceanic flight. It's probably just good enough to be a high-speed commuter to Bermuda from FOK, MMU, JFK, et al.
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I couldn't believe that 1000nm number you put in there (which really is pathetic... having an aircraft that can only go supersonic over ocean, that doesn't have the range to cross any ocean, is just plain stupid) and dug deeper. The range number you're giving is for the test demonstrator, which is scaled down and has only crew seating (2). The real production version has a planned range of 4500nm which is far more useful, though you're not going to be flying non-stop over the pacific (and having to do fue
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Just take a Bombardier Global 8000 or Gulfstream G650ER. They're both cruising at around mach 0,85 and can travel about 7500 nmi.
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This is actually for Hollywood so that they have a convenient way to get the love-struck hero [youtube.com] across the Atlantic [youtube.com]...
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Far smaller. This prototype is the size of a fighter jet, the full scale airplane will be quite a bit smaller than the Concorde and carrying half the amount of passengers.
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Concorde could carry twice the number of passengers and travel a lot farther than this can. It also had its maiden flight over 50 years ago. Such is the progress made in supersonic commercial travel in the last half century; something that will cost just as much to run with far less return and won't even get off the ground for another year. It isn't even pretty, just a stretch F-21 with an extra intake and a paint job.
Similar to Concorde (Score:5, Interesting)
These airplanes are expected to seat 65 to 88 passengers and will travel at subsonic speeds over land and supersonic speeds over water
That was the problem with Concorde: it could only fly supersonic over water due to the boom which severely limited which routes it could fly. If you look at many of the routes between Europe and North America, especially central and west North America, there is a surprisingly large amount of land that you fly over because you follow the great circle route north and Canada is really big [youtube.com].
A far more promising approach is the one NASA was looking at [nasa.gov] several years ago where you try to cancel out or at least dampen the sonic boom and could then fly supersonic over land too.
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The boom was mostly political though. It wasn't actually significantly louder on the ground than a regular jumbo jet, but regulations popped up preventing supersonic flight over land anyway.
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That's just not true. I was growing up before the regulations against sonic booms were issued and heard a couple, probably military planes. You can usually hear the boom even when the plane is flying at cruising altitude - you can't typically hear a subsonic jet flying that high. Also, there were numerous cases reported of broken windows and the like from particularly loud booms, though I
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I'm not sure it can be compared against military planes, which might be flying closer to the ground and whose pilots - let's face it - tend to love buzzing people on the ground as much as possible. As for the loudness on the ground, I suppose that's pretty subjective. In subsonic flight, the Concorde was definitely louder, I have to grant that. So it was louder during takeoff and landing. For general loudness though, I was thinking of a comparison of total sound energy delivered over time to a fixed point o
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Part of the R&D that has gone into this is to reduce the effects of the sonic boom. One of the things that has been learned in the modern era is the audio "shape" and loudness of the boom is dependent on the shape of an aircraft, and how it cuts through the air. Aircraft can be designed to dramatically reduce the "boom" from what was produced by the Concorde, XB-70, and similar supersonic aircraft.
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The boom was mostly political though. It wasn't actually significantly louder on the ground than a regular jumbo jet, but regulations popped up preventing supersonic flight over land anyway.
Since a regular jumbo jet at altitude is completely inaudible this is an absurd notion. Sonic booms go "boom", an abrupt overpressure spike, which is very definitely audible in all supersonic planes yet flown. The Concorde sonic boom was quite substantial; 2 lb/sq ft, and extensive testing was done. Tthe US Air Force conducted a lot of supersonic overflights over Oklahoma City [wikipedia.org] and were found to be a major nuisance by a substantial part of the population (25%) while 3% found it intolerable.
Listen to it! (Score:2)
The boom was mostly political though.
That's simply not true it sounded like an explosion [youtube.com].
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This is going the same route. The design constraints you have on a supersonic plane force a nar
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... the cost was high so the ticket costs were high.
The operators of the Concorde conducted a survey of passengers on their views regarding the ticket price. What they found was the majority of Concorde passengers did not know what the ticket price was. That is, they were people who were either not paying for their flight, or if they were, they were so wealthy that they had assistants doing the booking and did not care what the cost was.
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My original point though is the buyers of planes are either plane owners who lease to airlines or the airlines themselves. They will buy a plane if it's profitable. I expect the 787 is a much profitable plane than a supersonic plane will ever be just given the unit economics, so it can only fill very niche roles, roles that are increasingly hard to find given the flexibility of direct flights via new planes. I could be wrong, but I just don't see this being a successful business.
Your po
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Pretty hard to believe.... (Score:2)
They claim US$6 billion in pre-sales for an aircraft that won't be available to deploy commercially for a decade.
Sure.
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Never underestimate the length rich people are willing to go to to get their toys. It might just be true.
Grew Up With Sonic Booms (Score:2)
How is this even viable in 2020? (Score:4, Insightful)
But even after that we're still left with the demand side of the equation. Concorde was primarily flying business execs who wanted to get to Paris or London for a meeting and make it back home the same day. Very few people used it for vacation as it couldn't carry much of anything for luggage when compared to the 747 or other intercontinental jets.
Except that those execs learned something this year. Execs learned that a videoconferencing call is more productive and a hell of a lot less expensive. When the Concorde was at its peak demand, a good videconference across the ocean was mostly a pipe dream. Now execs can do it without leaving their home. The only people losing out are their French (and British) mistresses, but they'll survive. What won't survive is the pipe dream of supersonic flight for anyone who isn't a military pilot.
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It's also too little too late...
Concorde worked, and there was demand for it at the time due to the lack of video conferencing etc as you mention, but development never continued. We could have had incremental improvement to the design over the last 50 years, instead the design remained static and technology progressed in a different direction.
Even modern military fighter jets such as the F-35 actually have a lower top speed than concorde.
The challenges in building this engine include designing the inlet to convert supersonic air flow to subsonic air flow before entering the engine and challenges with some of the internal components.
Not really a challenge, concorde had the inlet ramps for this purpose
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It's also too little too late... Concorde worked, and there was demand for it at the time due to the lack of video conferencing etc as you mention, but development never continued. We could have had incremental improvement to the design over the last 50 years.
How?
You have a very odd mental model about how commercial aircraft in general can be improved, and an even odder one about supersonic aircraft.
Only 14 Concordes were ever operated. The entire development cost was eaten by the British and French governments, the planes never paid back a shilling (or franc). The ticket prices were astronomical from operating costs alone. The did do safety upgrade and maintenance type improvements, but even that made operating the aircraft unaffordable in the end.
No airliner h
"mistresses" (Score:2)
...The only people losing out are their French (and British) mistresses, but they'll survive.
The French "mistresses" will survive because they have a good domestic market. Brexit will cause a problem for the British, though.
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You make a good criticism of the Concorde. However, the Concorde came into service in 1969 and went out of service in 2003. Maybe there have been technical advances in the last 50 years which make supersonic flight more commercially viable? Maybe the rapid growth of air traffic since 2003 creates a larger market?
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Most of the technical advances went the other way - very efficient engines for slower flying airplanes (modern subsonic passenger jets fly slower than the ones 50 years ago). Modern engines are unusable for supersonic flight. This is why this prototype uses 1960s engines.
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Maybe the rapid growth of air traffic since 2003 creates a larger market?
Air traffic was on the way up from 2003 - 2019, but it cratered once Covid19 reached full pandemic status and many countries started closing their borders. As I mentioned a lot of people, companies, and industries started then to invest heavily in videoconferencing which has served to keep air travel demand low. Decreased demand will lead to decreased available supply and no incentive for prices to come down either (we've all noticed the air travel industry over the past decade or so constantly finding n
Airplanes? (Score:1)
Sign me up for ANOTHER credit-history check for an airline credit card with unusable benefits
That was sarcasm. No, really, we had to clarify that.
Can we take a poll who would prefer one or both of the following "technical advances" FIRST:
Suspicious abbreviation (Score:3)
As far as I know history of American avitation and system of coding of experimental models, XB stands for eXperimental Bomber (F- Fighter, A-assault plane).
And they are trying to sell us supersonic bomber as passenger aircraft?
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It isn't that easy.... (Score:3)
The challenges in building this engine include designing the inlet to convert supersonic air flow to subsonic air flow before entering the engine and challenges with some of the internal components. However, Scholl said, "It's not much of a technology leap at all."
Overconfidence is in the job description of any startup CEO these days.
Half the total wind tunnel time on Concorde development was devoted to the engine inlets. They were one of the most difficult things to design on the entire aircraft.
The article also does not mention cooling - another significant Concorde challenge. The exterior skin temperature of Concorde was well above anything comfortable to passengers (the skin temperature limit was 127 Celsius, and it was regularly reached in service at the hottest points) and the aircraft had to be cooled by transferring heat (using a refrigeration cycle) into the fuel that was being burned. That's much different from the typical aircraft that can simply cool itself with a heat exchanger to the cold outside air.
I wish them the best of luck, but intakes are not easy.
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We have had decades of experimentation and now have extremely accurate computer modelling tools that didn't exist in the 1960s.
Really the main reason why nobody has made new supersonic passenger aircraft is not the difficulty involved in making one, it's the lack of a clear market for them. As much as I'd like to cut flight times down to a 3rd I'm not willing to pay 20x as much as a slower flight. For a fraction of that I can get a bed and sleep through most of the journey anyway.
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What made Concorde so expensive? (Score:3)
One of the thing that actually doomed the concorde was that EADS / Airbus who had gobbled up whichever company was making the spare parts became fed up making those expensive parts (especially for a small series of 10 planes in service), and decided to no longer support the plane. Consequently no spare parts meant the plane was doomed to grounding once the supply of parts was exhausted.
and Jonathan M. Gitlin wrote:
British Airways actually operated Concorde profitably. It was Air France that couldn't make a go of it, and AF pressured Airbus to end maintenance support for the plane.
Gave me a different perspective why some airplanes work and others don't. Obviously aircraft must be technically workable but needs a good funding source whether it be passengers or taxpayers.
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I recall reading somewhere that they also had a fundamental issue with their brake pads given their much higher landing speed, which had to cool and be inspected before they were allowed to take off again - a process that took around 6 hours. This significantly limited the number of flights it could make, and whatever margin the airline was able to make by getting people to their destination faster was quickly eroded by the amount of downtime and airport fees they would incur in between flights. Unfortunate
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British Airways actually operated Concorde profitably
Concorde was sold to BA for something like 16 million pounds. Writing off about a billion pounds in development costs.
Business model viability (Score:2)
While the technical faults were the final nail in the Concorde coffin, it's easy to forget that the economic problems and flight path restrictions were already forcing it out - they even had to pivot their target base a few times just to try and find a market. The capability to develop supersonic passenger planes has been there now for over 50 years, but the fact no one else has bothered (and that all other initiatives were cancelled) seems to suggest that as long as these issues exist it will be hard to co
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Haha: the name (Score:2)
The name of the company explains exactly why it will fail, and essentially for the same reasons Concorde failed: booms. Only being able to fly supersonic over water greatly limits market potential.
In addition, there will no doubt be findings, if there aren't already, that the booms over water adversely affect sea life such as whales.