Boom's XB-1 Supersonic Demonstrator Makes First Flight (aviationweek.com) 23
Boom Supersonic's first aircraft, the XB-1, completed its first flight today and met "all of its test objectives." From a report: This initial test only saw the aircraft 7,120 feet above sea level and fly at a top speed of 238 knots (274 mph) -- far from Mach 1, the speed of sound. The first flight of XB-1 took place at the Mojave Air & Space Port in California, in the same airspace where the X-1 broke the sound barrier, the X-15 conducted test flights for altitude and speed records, and the SR-71 Blackbird was also tested. According to Boom, the XB-1 will be testing, among other things:
Augmented reality vision system: Two nose-mounted cameras, digitally augmented with attitude and flight path indications, feed a high-resolution pilot display enabling excellent runway visibility. This system allows for improved aerodynamic efficiency without the weight and complexity of a movable nose.
Digitally-optimized aerodynamics: Engineers used computational fluid dynamics simulations to explore thousands of designs for XB-1. The result is an optimized design that combines safe and stable operation at takeoff and landing with efficiency at supersonic speeds.
Carbon fiber composites: XB-1 is almost entirely made from carbon fiber composite materials, enabling it to realize a sophisticated aerodynamic design in a strong, lightweight structure.
Supersonic intakes: XB-1's engine intakes slow supersonic air to subsonic speeds, efficiently converting kinetic energy into pressure energy and allowing conventional jet engines to power XB-1 from takeoff through supersonic flight. Another thing being tested by XB-1 is the construction of a safety culture.
With XB-1 now a flying test vehicle, there are many flights ahead before we get to Overture One's first flight, much less dramatically expanding access to supersonic flight. This work will require much engineering and a resilient safety culture. But the first flight of the first step was carried out by Boom Supersonic today, March 22, 2024.
Augmented reality vision system: Two nose-mounted cameras, digitally augmented with attitude and flight path indications, feed a high-resolution pilot display enabling excellent runway visibility. This system allows for improved aerodynamic efficiency without the weight and complexity of a movable nose.
Digitally-optimized aerodynamics: Engineers used computational fluid dynamics simulations to explore thousands of designs for XB-1. The result is an optimized design that combines safe and stable operation at takeoff and landing with efficiency at supersonic speeds.
Carbon fiber composites: XB-1 is almost entirely made from carbon fiber composite materials, enabling it to realize a sophisticated aerodynamic design in a strong, lightweight structure.
Supersonic intakes: XB-1's engine intakes slow supersonic air to subsonic speeds, efficiently converting kinetic energy into pressure energy and allowing conventional jet engines to power XB-1 from takeoff through supersonic flight. Another thing being tested by XB-1 is the construction of a safety culture.
With XB-1 now a flying test vehicle, there are many flights ahead before we get to Overture One's first flight, much less dramatically expanding access to supersonic flight. This work will require much engineering and a resilient safety culture. But the first flight of the first step was carried out by Boom Supersonic today, March 22, 2024.
Cool (Score:2)
Here comes the Boom!
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Ironically, that's exactly what they are trying to avoid, or at least minimize
Supersonic intakes (Score:4, Informative)
Supersonic intakes: XB-1's engine intakes slow supersonic air to subsonic speeds, efficiently converting kinetic energy into pressure energy and allowing conventional jet engines to power XB-1 from takeoff through supersonic flight
OK, I understand that everything needs to be be tested and these intakes likely have other interesting qualities. But converting supersonic air to subsonic is something essentially all jets do. The rare exceptions, still only existing as research prototypes, are scramjets.
Re:Supersonic intakes (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all jets, just supersonic ones, which tends to be military so these sort of things tend to be restricted as a result.
The difficulty for subsonic flight is different to that of supersonic - with commercial subsonic, you want a smooth flow of air into your fan and compressor stages, where its actually accelerated in order to compress it, and it needs a wide open intake to accomplish that for high efficiency . With supersonic, the engine still has to do its thing, but it cant do it with supersonic airflow, so it needs to slow it down in such a way that the airflow isn’t turbulent by the time it reaches the fan and compressors.
So the issue here is to do what is done on military aircraft, without being able to lean on a lot of the practical and up to date knowledge that those military aircraft use, because you also dont want China to have that knowledge.
Will be interesting to see how the US government handles this as an export.
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Sure, theres a lot of info about it, but...
How much of that info is both:
1. Cutting edge technology, and
2. Detailed enough to actually help assist in reproducing the design
Next time you fly, take a look at the engine on the commercial jet aircraft you are about to board. Look hard at the intake, Its just a round hole, right? Wrong - lots of cutting edge design and engineering goes into each generation of jet engine aircraft around the intakes, as its one of the key areas where you can gain or lose perform
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Re:Supersonic intakes (Score:4, Informative)
Concorde was NOT an efficient aircraft, though at that time,
It's not quite that simple.
People look back on Concorde and think it was an exercise in wasting fuel for shits and giggles, but what most people don't realise is that the Concorde design started before even the Boeing 707 took flight and took its first flight in the 1960s, it's a very very old plane.
At the time the Concorde was being designed, jet engines were horribly inefficient. The choices were to increase the bypass ratio or increase the pressure ratio. Boeing went one way, Concorde went the other. During design, the contemporary engines had a pressure ratio of about 14, compared to 70 for the Concorde (something still not matched today).
The 747 was the very first plane with high bypass turbofans, and that first flew at about the same time as the Concorde. The Concorde wasn't particularly inefficient to its near contemporaries, but the world moved on very fast and its actual contemporaries like the 747 were much cheaper.
There were several problems which sunk it. Firstly, pressure ratios also improved by other means. The 747 first flew with an OPR of about 24, a huge improvement over 14, boosting efficiency. They also never solved the low speed fuel burn of the Concorde, which was horrendous. It took 2% it's entire fuel load just taxiing. It needed reheat to take off, and while it didn't need afterburners to reach cruising speed it was even less efficient not using them, so it used after burners.
It used a truly horrendous amount of fuel getting to cruising speed at which point it was actually more efficient than some of the aircraft which were flying at the time.
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Had they built it bigger with tankage that would allow at least getting LA/Hawaii safely, then wit
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Hawaii to Japan IS possible with plenty of safety margin. That opens up Asia to Boom.
Hopefully, they will later on add a longer range one that enables hawaii to Australia or even LA to Australia. That later range then allows
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Oh. wow. I just looked up boom's range. Memory issues.
Hawaii to Japan IS possible with plenty of safety margin. That opens up Asia to Boom.
Hopefully, they will later on add a longer range one that enables hawaii to Australia or even LA to Australia. That later range then allows
There are lies, damned lies and marketing promises.
Lets wait until they actually have a product.
Singapore Airlines tried to run a Concorde from SIN-LHR, it lasted a few flights but ended up with too many fuel stops, it was estimated that they'd need a minimum of 6 to get from London to Sydney and that it wouldn't be that much faster than a 747 (which required 1 fuel stop). A fuel stop can easily add 1 hour or more to a flight, that's why a modern twinjet is faster than a 707-120 despite it being abou
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You forget that Boeing (and Lockheed) both got quite a way down the path of designing supersonic passenger aircraft to rival Concorde, only stopping when government money dried up.
Of course, the American alternative needed to be better, so it started iff as a swing wing mach 3 design which vastly increased costs and complexity - ultimately, the final Boeing design looked surprisingly similar as Concorde and had pretty much identical operating specs.
Concorde was designed for a purpose, and so was the 747 - a
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It used a truly horrendous amount of fuel getting to cruising speed at which point it was actually more efficient than some of the aircraft which were flying at the time.
Isn't this an issue with supersonic aircraft in general? They have to be designed differently to subsonic aircraft, so we end up with complex solutions like swing wings or just compromising on the subsonic design.
I think on of the Soviet interceptors had something similar (MiG 25 IIRC), it was phenomenally fast at altitude but had a stupidly low endurance at low altitudes, so pilots were told to get up to altitude or the plane would run out of fuel.
hot stuff (Score:2)
Re: hot stuff (Score:2)
Going supersonic at altitude doesnâ(TM)t raise the skin temperature of an aircraft to temperatures that would stress a carbon composite.
Now if they were pushing to higher mach numbers that would be a different issue.
Money Better Spent on Hypersonic Missile (Score:1)
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The U.S. has no practical hypersonic missile--and yet we are throwing away money for redoing experiments to usher rich people around to their business meetings?
No small scale tactical hypersonic missiles .I believe at Mach 23, the Minuteman III qualifies as hypersonic and are practical strategic missiles.
But with that said how much of a problem is this? Neither Iskander nor Kinzhal have proven immune to the Patriot air defense and the merely supersonic ATACMS has proven to be a very effective weapon, as hav
No doubt this will fly, but there are questions (Score:3)
The second is what about the engines? For some odd reason, multiple engine companies that had announced that they were going to support boom suddenly backed off. No announced reasons. And the others who SHOULD have stepped up shirked it and said no. So now, they are funding building engines with multiple companies. How much longer will it take? How solid will they be? This is going to give Airlines pause.
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So, still behind older supersonic planes... (Score:2)
Shades of the Titan here (Score:2)
first flight ... took place at the Mojave Air & Space Port in California, in the same airspace where the X-1 broke the sound barrier, the X-15 conducted test flights for altitude and speed records, and the SR-71 Blackbird was also tested.
Their claim to share anything with the historic flights listed in their PR blumf is pure PR-BS and I highly doubt that the USAF gave Boom permission to overfly any their test range airspace at Edwards AFB's - the place where all of their listed historic flight tests actually took place. Exaggeration is to be expected, but drawing a false connection to a respected flight-test institution is a little too Titan-like for me