2019 article: "Boom envisions its Overture airliner traveling at Mach 2.2." 2021 article: "a plane that could fly at Mach 1.7"
2019 article: "Its planes could be ready for commercial service in the mid-2020s". 2021 article: "It is targeting the start of passenger service in 2029."
The 2019 article also says that Boom is constructing a 1/3rd scale version of Overture that could be making test flights later in 2019. This article from October 2020 says that the 1/3rd scale vehicle was "rolled out" in 2020 and could be ready for test flights in Q3 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2020/10/26/boom-supe...
That's to be expected - press releases focus on super-optimistic specs and timelines.
After reality kicks in and unforeseen issues arise (remember 2020? me neither), plans need to be adjusted.
The scale model was initially expected to fly in 2018 even [1].
I expect further delays to be realistic as well. They either going to deliver sometime in the next decade or go bankrupt/sold out within the next couple of years.
> That's to be expected - press releases focus on super-optimistic specs and timelines.
No, this isn’t normal at all. Some optimism is expected but promising commercial operation a couple years out when they weren’t even close to anything like it is simply lying.
We shouldn’t be giving companies a pass for this stuff
>That's to be expected - press releases focus on super-optimistic specs and timelines.
It is only in US and Silicon Valley that it is called Super Optimistic. Many parts of the world look at the difference in projected TimeLine from 2020 to 2029 ( A difference of 9X ) and we call that BS or flat out lying.
Yeah it's not surprising. I'm kinda disappointed since I'd be excited about faster flights to Europe and Asia, and I would pay for it
Since they're telling me it's 2029, what I really hear is 2030 or 2035, or never. So that means I'll probably be stuck on the same slow flights for more than a decade :-( It doesn't feel like this is a space where there is a lot of competition.
> press releases focus on super-optimistic specs and timelines.
I disagree. The job of IR communicators (employed within the company) is not to hype up a stock - its to give correct information regarding it.
Every nudge up has a subsequent nudge down, and every nudge down has a subsequent nudge up.
If that doesnt make sense, if a positive effect is seen upon a shares price, right after you are almost guaranteed to see a downwards correction explained by a bit of depression at the end of a mania. (stock markets are sometimes referred to as being manic depressive - iirc Warren Buffet said this amongst others).
Ingvar Kamprad (founder of IKEA) famously said that entering the stock market is like peeing yourself: "first it becomes warm, warm. then it becomes cold, cold"
And vice versa with dips -people seem to momentarily go "well it cant be THAT bad" and at the end of a dip the share price often goes up a little bit.
And no corporation wants to have a volatile stock. They want a stable stock that big investors can put money on.
That is why the IR communicators jobs are to stabilize the dtock by NOT hypeing anything up in the PRs as they know that if they do, they contribute to the stocks volatility.
And this is why we have profit warnings - the IR department saying before a report goes out that "hey - the report is gonna be better than forecasted" or REVERSE profit warnings for the opposite case. (im not an expert so those terms might be reversed)
In other words, profit warnings have the sole purpose of stabilizing the stock as do the whole IR depts operations. So a serious publicly noted company would not benefit from doing what you say - "press releases focus on super-optimistic specs and timelines".
To be fair most people were calling even that scale model test timeline hopelessly optimistic. That they didn't deliver on their impossible timetable is not a huge surprise.
That said, a lot of people also expected them to fold by now and were definitely not expecting a fairly major order from a large airline.
I'm firmly in the camp of when people ask how old we are, we get to --actualAge (as long as you birthday is after lock downs). It's like the old drinking adage, if you can't remember it, it didn't happen.
Doesn't management and C-suite executives lose the respect of technical people in the company when they do media appearences and sign off this sort of overtly-optimistic PR pieces?
> That's to be expected - press releases focus on super-optimistic specs and timelines.
No, they don't. I don't know how much Elon Musk has tricked people into thinking it is normal for companies to be perpetually late, but it is definitely not normal.
Delays happen. That is normal. I am more worried about the slip in speeds. "Traveling at Mach 2.2" becomes "could fly at Mach 1.7". That is a radical loss of performance. It is more than just 0.5. It is a switch from traveling at a speed to "could fly", a theoretical top speed for the same aircraft. I think they are facing solid engineering challenges and are having to reduce expectations.
FYI, most airliners already fly at or above 0.85 Mach. 1.7 is faster than 0.85 but operationally it will only be only an incremental decrease in total travel time.
The sweet spot for civil supersonics from an aircraft design standpoint is less than Mach 2. You can maintain good propulsion system performance without variable geometry inlets, boom strengths are lower, aeroheating loads are lower, fuel burn is lower, etc. Operating expenses will be significantly lower for such an aircraft. Maybe Boom is finally realizing the importance of all this as well.
Whether that's enough travel time reduction to make these aircraft worthwhile is definitely a valid question. The low-boom technology that NASA is pursuing is for sub-Mach 2 aircraft (I don't believe Boom is pursuing a low-boom design, but I haven't followed closely as I don't consider them a credible organization either).
It makes sense to always communicate the best case, not the most likely expected case. If you allow worse-than-best-case to become the plan/expectation, you'll fill the time and often exceed it.
As an engineer, this feels strange, because you might expect to be trying to be as close to correct as possible when you give a date. But that's not the goal. The goal is to create a narrative and sense of purpose that gets you there as quickly as possible.
Finishing something 6 months behind schedule in 18 months is still better than doing it "only" 1 month behind schedule in 19 months. Of course, you also need a risk analysis of the worst case, and to understand the financials and be able to survive a reasonable range of potential delays.
Gotta say you're completely ignoring the negative toll this takes on morale. I hate unrealistic timelines, and I've been on almost every side of the table (engineer, engineering manager, product manager, program manager, even CEO for a tiny startup). Internally, only the most junior engineers tend to believe the timelines for these ambitious R&D projects. And it leads to senior engineers just getting tired of endless politicking around hype instead of actually focusing on building the thing and being honest about when it will be ready. To be a little less professional - the timelines are usually fucking bullshit.
I've quit before because of this very reason. You're allowed to disagree with me obviously, but I don't want to work with you if you honestly believe this is a good policy.
> 2019 article: "Its planes could be ready for commercial service in the mid-2020s"
This one is the most egregious. It’s hard to imagine a good-faith scenario where the company actually thought they would ship a commercial airplane in a couple years when they didn’t even have their scale model working.
The market rewards bold predictions. In 2016, Elon Musk said customers would be able from LA to NYC with no human intervention by the end of 2017. He's now the richest person on Earth.
Additionally - what is the project timeline impact for any major endeavor such as this with respect to supply and labor chain interruptions due to pandemic, Suez-tipation, other economic factors...
I recall reading that major construction, mfrg project timelines were automatically setback by a large number of months due to the Evergreen thing... (JIT construction required a precise delivery of components and even a few week hiccup in that caused a downstream of ++months)
OBV Boom isnt affected by such - but the labor version locally in the US (Colorado) could still have slowed...
The other non-tangible impact of something like this is the loss of intellectual momentum that a team may have had aggressively going after a timeline when suddenly all the eng team gets to go spend more time with family...
Well, in 2019 the pandemic hadn't given a big blow to the aviation industry so that slower start could be blamed on that. Not a good time asking for investment into a high-risk expensive niche product meant for a market that's in deep crisis.
Not the speed thing though :) But the faster you go the more energy it costs for the same distance so that would make sense.
It’s probably a function of human nature to be conservative there.
It seems that the FAA is trying to optimize for the fewest unknown unknowns, and until the 737 MAX it would be hard to argue that entirely new airframes, propulsion and control systems operating in flight regimes that have only been done one other time (intentionally anyway) in commercial aviation would achieve that objective better than incremental changes.
The associated bureaucracy bloat can be a feature because it’s harder to sustain a ruse over time.
That said, it really does impede development of arguably safer systems.
Great to see so much innovation in aerospace. Boom has said they're going to reduce noise, but they've also said they'll only fly supersonic over water with buffers between supersonic zones and populated areas. So the 'boom', as it were, is still a concern.
I'm super interested to see how quiet their planes are at subsonic. If you ever saw the Concorde flying subsonic, it was unbelievably loud. Nothing to do with being supersonic - their engines were just obnoxiously loud. Came into Cape Town a long time ago and made the whole town rumble on final.
..Boom says: "Today’s subsonic commercial aircraft are 80% more fuel efficient than those of the 1960s, and noise footprints have shrunk up to 90% in the last 50 years. This technological progress has fueled Boom’s efforts to design a supersonic airliner that makes economic sense for airlines and their customers. "
However, the innovation that enabled this is high bypass turbofan engines. Turns out if you move more air slower, it's way quieter and more fuel efficient because physics. Boom can't take advantage of this - at least directly, because they have to go supersonic. A high bypass turbofan engine is huge, by it's very nature. At supersonic speeds this presents a lot of drag. That's why I'm super curious how they plan to be quiet and fuel efficient while also being supersonic.
Concorde was actually quieter (subsonic) than a lot of other aircraft in use when it was first released. Over time however as other commercial aircraft became quieter, Concorde wasn't developed any further, so by the end of its life it was very noticeable.
The sonic boom really isn't an issue as long as you can fly that part of the route over the sea. Concorde often took longer routes to avoid flying over land, and it was still quicker than a more direct subsonic flight. Or you just fly supersonic over countries you don't care about - flights from London to Bahrain would fly supersonic from the Adriatic Sea crossing the Middle East over land to Bahrain.
The Bahrain route is interesting, as today it is 5.5 hours and Concorde was 4 hours, so not that much difference. I'd rather spend an extra hour and a half on a much more comfortable and bigger aircraft. They also tried routes to Singapore (stopping in Bahrain to refuel), the total flight time was 9 hours, compared to non-stop flights today which are 13 hours. I wonder if developments in reducing the time subsonic aircraft take to reach and descend from cruising altitude could narrow that gap even further.
It's not just a high bypass ratio that has helped. It's computational acoustics (we can predict the sound something makes based on its geometry and movement in a medium), nacelle design, materials. In supersonic flight, the most pressing issue is suppressing the sonic boom. There was a lot of work on this in the late 00's, with even Cessna rumored to be working on a quiet supersonic business jet. Various attempts - a bulging, ogival nose will increase the local density raising the local mach number leading to a weaker shock, and other thing. It was a lot of fine tuning and deep insight into transonic phenomena.
I can assure you that the planes the take off from the airport located 7 km, plain line of sight makes measurable noise, with infra basses I guess. Not unbearable but clearly a nuisance. So maybe there's progress, but it'd be better with just less planes...
Worth noting that human sound perception is logarithmic, not linear. A 90% reduction in sound is -20dB, which is significant. But in human perception terms, that’s only about a fifth of the range of the typical soundscape which ranges from the 20dB of a quiet room to the 120dB of an ambulance siren.
NASA is working with Lockheed on the X-59 QueSST to tackle the noise concerns. Construction is ongoing but over half complete according to wp . first flight planned for 2022. 2025 or so is when the icao expects to establish a new sonic boom standard. If things go well it could be much less of a blunt instrument than 'no overland flights ever' like what was required for the birds in the days of Concorde and Boeing's SST competitor, the 2707 or Lockheed L-2000
> However, the innovation that enabled this is high bypass turbofan engines. Turns out if you move more air slower, it's way quieter and more fuel efficient because physics. Boom can't take advantage of this - at least directly, because they have to go supersonic. A high bypass turbofan engine is huge, by it's very nature. At supersonic speeds this presents a lot of drag. That's why I'm super curious how they plan to be quiet and fuel efficient while also being supersonic.
I’m curious if either shielding the engines, or having a scramjet (like a turbofan but without the blades) could have a similar effect.
[Increasing Mach Number] can cause the drag coefficient to rise to more than ten times its low-speed value.
I only know this because of a number of fluid-dynamics courses that are only required for Mechanical and Aeronautical engineering majors. Barely anyone else is expected to know this information. Mach numbers represent fluid-flow discontinuities. If there is fluid flow in a varying inner-diameter tube and there is a Mach number change from <1 -> >1 at any point in the tube, as long as the Mach discontinuity is there, fluid flow characteristics before and after the discontinuity are decoupled from each other, they no longer influence each other if the Mach discontinuity is present.
It actually IS a step function. A shock wave by definition is an instantaneous change in fluid properties. At the molecular level, the change in properties is observed as occurring within a mean free path length (average distance a gas molecule travels before colliding). Imaging that shows the jump: https://phys.org/news/2015-08-schlieren-images-reveal-supers...
It should be noted that these problems aren't the only important reason why Concorde failed. Pre-orders were made in 1963-1967 and almost all were cancelled in 1973 due to the oil price shock, in addition to a 500% increase in sales price.
Concorde had a bit of bad timing. It was released during the worst crisis of aviation (until 9/11), and there was already a second version planned with increased fuel efficiency, but that came never to be with all orders being cancelled. And those cancellations also meant that all economies of scale advantages were gone.
>Concorde had a bit of bad timing. It was released during the worst crisis of aviation
It doesn't feel like Boom has the timing on its side either. Feels like we're still in a massive aviation crisis and I'm not sure how long it's gonna take before things look good for the industry.
The companies working on supersonic jets are in process of lobbying hard to get FAA approval for exemptions from noise regulations. [1]
> - Concorde didn't have the range for Pacific
Not their target market, they want to be a successful niche.
> - Costs didn't work for Atlantic routes
They claim improvements in fuel efficiency and their unique selling point (apart from the speed advantage) is the use of "green" fuels (whatever that implies). Also, see previous point: they don't want to be mainstream anyway.
> - And airlines want lots of identical planes, not one special one for one route
Not a problem they want to solve. Niche and all.
While the economics are indeed questionable, these products cannot be compared to flagship products like Concorde. The jets are significantly smaller (50 PAX vs. 92-128 PAX), benefit from 50 years of progress in aviation technology, manufacturing, and operations and they have a very specific use case in mind.
Concorde was the result of a technological dick-waving contest between Western Europe and the US w.r.t. civil aviation technology. Its purpose was as much of a political nature as it was an attempt at testing/demonstrating the practicality of supersonic passenger jets.
It ultimately failed, but that doesn't mean contemporary attempts have to due to the differences in scope, technology and potentially regulatory environment.
I remain sceptical, but I wouldn't want to write it off as a failure from the get-go.
> The companies working on supersonic jets are in process of lobbying hard to get FAA approval for exemptions from noise regulations. [1]
Note that Boom _isn't_ focusing on noise currently, unlike the other companies (which are much more focused on bizjets), knowing this will limit the routes they can fly on even with any regulatory changes.
They're content to start with just the oceanic routes (and notably they're aiming for longer range than Concorde, and able to fly at least some trans-Pacific routes non-stop); presumably future iterations when it's known whether there will be regulatory changes (and what they'll be) could aim for lower noise and overland flight.
Even if they get an excemption, affected people will probably come with pitchforks and torches to the headquarter. These supersonic booms are really loud.
> They claim improvements in fuel efficiency and their unique selling point (apart from the speed advantage) is the use of "green" fuels (whatever that implies). Also, see previous point: they don't want to be mainstream anyway.
That seems a logistical issue to me. Airport fueling services have Jet A/A1. So airlines buying Boom will have to arrange contracts to supply these "green" fuels at service destinations?
Tesla has at least partly solved some of those, no?
- Charging network: don’t they have their own network? I’m sure it’s not widespread enough to meet everyone’s needs, but it’s not nothing and helped get the ball rolling.
- Battery tech: has been gradually improving, range is now in the hundreds of miles which is enough for many uses.
- Too expensive / everybody wants an SUV: starting with luxury and sports models and gradually following up with mass-market models addresses both of these.
So I think the analogous questions for Boom are good and valid questions. Tesla had decent answers and Boom should too.
Those were issues of infrastructure which weren't built out, but could be built out.
Are you planning on refueling the boom mid-air at supersonic speeds?
Tesla also took an approach that analysts who clearly weren't "car guys" weren't expecting: mainly creating something with massive HP and TQ. Previous electric cars had yawn-inducing performance. Someone buying a 5-series probably at least partially bought it for the performance, when they got behind the wheel of a model S it was like getting behind the wheel of a modified M5.
Boom isn't bringing anything new to the table to solve the issues people have listed. Tesla had a plan to solve those issues from the get-go.
It should be obvious that the market will eventually support supersonic flights. The question is just when. OP is probably asking these questions to determine if the time is now, or in the future.
Boom's premise is that they can reduce the sonic booms to acceptable levels while making incremental progress on fuel and maintenance costs.
Airlines are likely expecting that business trips flying coach are going to radically diminish. Offering a super-premium fast flight for the remaining business travelers who must travel but have a reduced tolerance for it is a smart move.
But isn’t Boom selling a vision for affordable supersonic flights?
What you’re suggesting about “super-premium” flights doesn’t map to what’s being publicly said about Boom or the fundamental principles of commercial flying.
As a matter of fact, the Concorde ultimately failed for those very same niche-economy reasons.
What’s your source for saying that business trips flying coach will diminish?
Counterpoint: fast, accessible in flight Wifi is a reality now. It means that flights aren’t anywhere near the kind of “dead” time they used to be.
I’m sure some CEOs will pay whatever it costs to boost their own egos but IMO that would push them towards private jets, not a supersonic flight with United. I find the actual arguments for faster flights less persuasive than they were in the 70s.
According to Boom, they are aiming for fares to be the same price or cheaper than today's business class travel.
Plus I imagine many of the ultrarich that you are talking about would prefer to fly private even if it is slower than flying commercial. Flying private also cuts into the time saving benefit of supersonic flight. You save time pre-flight as you can basically drive up to the plane, get in, and be immediately ready for takeoff rather than needing to arrive an hour or two early. And private flights operate on your personal schedule which is obviously much more convenient than organizing your schedule around someone else's timing.
I think this is key. There are now a lot more rich people who would pay for the speed, and just as importantly a chance to avoid the hoi polloi, than 4 decades ago.
The Concorde actually had a pretty profitable final couple months when they cut prices down from ultra premium because it massively increased their utilization. Boom also seems to have plans for Pacific routes according to their website, so I assume they're planning their range accordingly.
Good point, higher utilization is one of Southwest's key competitive advantages since they're able to squeeze 1 extra trip for their aircraft than competitors.
Significantly cutting travel time should also enable higher utilization. E.g. cutting LA-Sydney route in half (15hrs to 7hrs) theoretically enables fitting in a roundtrip in the timespan of a one-way.
The Concorde basically used afterburners. It used fuel at incredible rates. Boom is using more modern engine technology that can achieve the high cruise speeds using less fuel. This also increases effective range.
So it solves 2,3, and 4. Can do Pacific. Cheaper to operate. Can be used on all overseas routes.
Concorde engines were actually some of the most efficient ones while cruising above Mach 1.7 (because afterburners were only used to take off and to go transonic until M1.7).
So it was efficient but only when flying fast.
Wiki says:
The overall thermal efficiency of the engine in supersonic cruising flight (supercruise) was about 43%, which at the time was the highest figure recorded for any normal thermodynamic machine.
Note that the Concorde B (which never happened due to the eventual low sales of Concorde A) would've had no afterburners, and been quieter for climb-out and significantly lower fuel burn; it certainly was getting within reach during the time period of its development.
Despite these problems, Concorde managed to fly for a long time... on the routes that they managed to fly.
The reasons that they stopped flying were different. It cost a lot, and was a lot more cramped than first class or private... the competition. Meanwhile, the time you spend in airports diluted the time you save by flying faster. If these could fly from LCA to a similarly small US port, speed makes a lot more sense.
That said, this will probably fail. Most air travel stuff fails. I'm hoping it won't. Progress is fun.
I don't think the size of the airport made much difference: at LHR and JFK BA had a special lounge and other arrangements. You had to arrive 30 minutes before if taking luggage, otherwise just early enough to get through fast-track security.
Part of that was also political. It's petty and I wish it weren't true, but a domestic-made plane making noise will be better accepted than a foreign-made plane making noise.
Whilst this is true historically, the regulations exist and I don't see rewriting them to tolerate sonic booms as a vote winner, not even for those committed to arguing against the trend towards stricter restrictions on greenhouse gases etc. A lot more people will live near the flightpaths than use them
Do you have any sources to back that up? U.S. Congress funded development of the SST (Supersonic Transport) back in the 60'ies but stopped funding in 1971 due to concerns and displeasure of exactly the sonic booms (and ozone layer issues). So five years before the Concorde entered service a domestic plane was not seen as being worth.
Heppenheimer's The Space Shuttle Decision has a chapter where this is discussed in detail.
Boom's aircraft don't make as loud a sonic boom as Concorde. Both NASA and Boom will conduct tests of this design in the mid 2020s to measure the sound at ground level in various conditions.
- much lower noise than Concorde (mentioned elsewhere in this discussion). Ironically, they reduce the "boom".
- Pacific crossings. 4,900 miles range ( https://onemileatatime.com/boom-supersonic/ ) Tokyo - Seattle is about the furthest within that, at 4,777 miles. California to Hawaii is easily in range, USA to Australia is far out of range, but Brisbane to Hawaii is in range.
- Article talks about 15 planes not one.
Have they solved those yet? They're not flying yet, so no. But that's what they're aiming at.
> Tokyo - Seattle is about the furthest within that
There's about the shortest viable route I can imagine. I could see refueling stops being a thing, though. SFO-SIN is a pretty long flight, so an hour to refuel in Tokyo wouldn't be so bad.
> - And airlines want lots of identical planes, not one special one for one route
On both of those, the passengers are kings. If enough people decide they want to pay a lot to cross the ocean quickly, those things will not be a problem.
If the plane goes supersonic at 10 miles of altitude, will it still make much sound on the surface? It's not just distance, it's the pressure of the air at the altitude, too.
Haven't engines improved a lot since 1967?
No idea about cost, but currently oil is cheap and abundant, compared to 1970s, and the U.S. has a large domestic supply.
Regarding identical planes, I suppose first Boom's supersonic planes are going to be mostly identical. But even standard airliners get small changes with every dozen planes built.
But even if you get a higher dose per unit of time, you spend less time in the air so your overall dose is lower. Your link mentions that.
I guess the main exception would be for personnel that did a lot of flights. That could be reduced by requiring longer ground breaks than with subsonic aircraft.
The amount of radiation you receive during a regular flight is quite small, and more than you would receive on a supersonic flight: https://youtu.be/TRL7o2kPqw0?t=307
Right, that's something I was wondering when Boom was announced a few years back [1]. Will radiation be even worse for the crew if the plane body is made of carbon-fiber vs thicker metal like the Concorde was?
Common misconception. The Concorde was absolutely quite profitable throughout, and massively so after they adjusted the prices down at the very end when it was already being shut down due to safety reasons.
The Concorde was the safest plane ever. It flew for 27 years with just 1 accident. And that accident wasn't Concorde's fault. Another plane dropped metal on the runway, and Concorde ran over the metal and got damaged right before takeoff.
They create a PR boost for United. They can tell the business travelers that "Super Diamond Elite" business travelers will get first access to these flights (Dates TBD). Making those people more likely to go with United over Delta.
How many transcontinental flights fly USA domestic routes? If this can cut my flying time from Seattle to Beijing, I would be a happy camper, hopefully they can go boom over BC, Alaska, and the Russia Fareast.
When iPod came out there were numerous successful portable music players already on the market. The iPod skeptics were not skeptical that there was a market for a portable music player--they were skeptical that the iPod's particular combination of features and limitations would do well.
With supersonic passenger service no one has demonstrated that there is actually a viable market for it. The two prior attempts were both heavily subsidized by government (Russia for the Tu-144, France and the UK for the Concorde).
It is quite different to ask "why do you think this product will do well against a bunch of established, viable competitors?" and to ask "why do you think this product can succeed in a market that everyone who has tried before has failed in?".
You could add:
- Concorde didn't work flying east because with the time zone thing, you might be flying real fast, you still arrive super late. Meaning you could as well pay less and fly the red eye...
I fly SF->NYC redeye regularly. The practical side of takeoff and landing is that I get 4 hours of sleep max. I also start to sleep around 2AM NYC time. If I could reduce flight time to 2.5 hours, I would rather land in NYC at 2AM and get to bed there so I can start my day much better rested.
I've flown London to Washington DC for meetings and then immediately returned to the airport to fly back, and I'd have loved to have had the ability to fly supersonic for trips like that.
So while "just" flying East might be less attractive, very brief return flights will be attractive even if one of the legs doesn't seem very beneficial.
There are plenty of scenarios cutting hours off will improve. Whether there are enough of them to make Boom profitable is another matter.
Can’t you do coast-to-coast? I thought the requirement is no sonic boom over land, but you can fly out over the ocean and then turn around at Mach N. Eg SF<>NYC would be an obvious route that is worth adding some miles at the start, if you can go 3-4x quicker.
A sonic boom is a continuous noise, not just at the transition. You perceive it as a single noise at the ground, but so does every other person along the entire flight path.
Boom's aircraft uses a modern design that reduces the loudness of the sonic boom.
I hope everyone is given flight suits as just the image of a plane full of people making a 180 degree turn at 600mph to accelerate to 740mph is somewhat comical. I know not entirely what you are suggesting but its immediately the thought that came to mind.
While you are canabalizing some of your own 1st class passengers, the first airline to get a supersonic route going will also take first class passengers from other airlines.
Do they? The FAQ suggests that they are not aiming to do supersonic flight over land:
> Won’t the sonic boom be loud?
> Overture flights will focus on 500+ primarily transoceanic routes that benefit from supersonic speeds—such as New York to London or San Francisco to Tokyo. Overture won't generate a sonic boom over land cruising at subsonic speeds.
Given the fuel needed per passenger per mile, I don't think it 's reasonable to call supersonic planes sustainable, even if they use biofuels or synthetic fuels. As long as not all aviation fuel is net zero carbon emission, we shouldn't build/use planes that are unnecessarily inefficient. Also, biofuels and synthetic fuels have their own environmental impact (land use).
Supersonic planes are incredibly cool, but I can't help the feeling that it's an unnecessary and harmful luxury at this point. Although, that goes for a lot of other things used by the ultra-wealthy. Maybe ban yachts first?
Companies will build planes for whatever the market demands. We need regulatory agencies to impose carbon taxes on fuel usage so that inefficient planes are prices accordingly.
Boom is designing the plane around e-fuels, essentially ethanol, which will be created from direct air capture of CO2, water, and renewable electricity, making the fuels carbon neutral. But you can't drop-in replace A-1 with ethanol, potentially the entire platform needs to change.
Depending on the type of renewable energy used in the production of the fuels, there might be some land use issues, but this is about as close as possible to the least impactful transportation option ever designed. Speed is always going to decrease fuel economy, but we're not going to tackle climate change by taking things away from people. Tech improvements like these are exactly what we need to move forward.
What are the expected numbers for the Boom plane? The Concorde was a little over 1/3 as efficient per passenger-mile compared to a contemporary 747. I seem to recall that the planned successor to the Concorde was considerably more fuel efficient.
I imagine it would still be more thirsty than a typical subsonic airliner, but I am curious to know how it actually pencils out.
So far we've made zero progress actually cutting emissions. So why not plan for a world where everyone just keeps emitting? That's what every other company and industry is doing...
Companies and industries won't have to pay to build a wall around Miami to protect it from water... or the repair to New York when everything gets flooded. That's why a government needs to step in, companies have no incentives to step in (why would they?).
The number one contributor to increasing carbon emissions is population growth, but the same people who pretend to be outraged about carbon emissions are also the same people who were adamant that we needed a full lockdown for COVID so that not a single unnecessary person would die. You can't have it both ways. You can't say carbon emissions are destroying the earth and then do everything in your power to undermine earth's natural defenses against overpopulation.
Although it’s not mentioned, I hope people are watching Stuff Made Here. If not, definitely check that channel out. Cool projects, epic engineering, usually tied together with code.
This is not what the world needs, these planes will be extremely polluting and inefficient and carry very few people. I doubt if the US properly taxed carbon that these planes would even be considered. This is the worst idea the aviation industry has come up with in quite some time, I thought we learned better than to replicate the bad antique ideas from the past.
This seems like something that could only come out of tone deaf and climate denying America. The rest of the industry is trying to improve their climate targets and innovate, this is going straight in the opposite direction. I would sign a petition to ban these planes in a heartbeat.
We shape the future through investments, an investment in one thing takes potential away from another. Over a hundred years of fossil fuel investments have starved investments into for example batteries and the electrical grid, not to mention the whole thing was subsidized by the hidden cost of climate change. We as societies have failed hard to provide subsidizes and funding for these technologies, and a carbon tax at least at last reflects the real cost of fossil fuels, and creates innovation that is going to at least be useful in the future.
What are the commercials terms for deals like this?
I'd image United pays some portion upfront in exchange for a discount and being amung the first to have the plane. Boom gets some cash flow without dilution and validation from an airline.
If United is paying a portion upfront, is there risk factored in if Boom can't deliver?
I don't know any specifics, but I'd guess that united's up-front payment is near $0, and the main benefit for boom is not the immediate cash flow but the ability to take united's order to a bank and use it to secure a loan.
They won't even be able to take it to a bank, but it'll enhance their credibility with VCs. United get a bit of PR, and if Boom does work out they're at the front of the queue and have probably influenced the design a bit by the time it comes to deciding whether to actually pay.
Agreed. These types of agreements, this early, tend to be Letters of Intent that aren’t legally binding OR a contract stating that “if Boom produces planes to agreed upon spec by 2029, United will purchase 15...” plus a bunch of out clauses.
Yes the terms are usually like that. The upfront payment is probably fairly small and not material to United. If Boom fails to deliver then United will become one more unsecured creditor in the bankruptcy case.
Readit News
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/01/supersonic-passenger...
Some side-by-side comparisons:
2019 article: "Boom envisions its Overture airliner traveling at Mach 2.2." 2021 article: "a plane that could fly at Mach 1.7"
2019 article: "Its planes could be ready for commercial service in the mid-2020s". 2021 article: "It is targeting the start of passenger service in 2029."
The 2019 article also says that Boom is constructing a 1/3rd scale version of Overture that could be making test flights later in 2019. This article from October 2020 says that the 1/3rd scale vehicle was "rolled out" in 2020 and could be ready for test flights in Q3 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2020/10/26/boom-supe...
After reality kicks in and unforeseen issues arise (remember 2020? me neither), plans need to be adjusted.
The scale model was initially expected to fly in 2018 even [1].
I expect further delays to be realistic as well. They either going to deliver sometime in the next decade or go bankrupt/sold out within the next couple of years.
[1] https://blog.wandr.me/2017/11/false-hope-boom-supersonic-tra...
https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2020/09/15/the-us-...
They say the key to the record time was an 'all virtual' prototype design and test process. I found that pretty fascinating.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth-generation_fighter
No, this isn’t normal at all. Some optimism is expected but promising commercial operation a couple years out when they weren’t even close to anything like it is simply lying.
We shouldn’t be giving companies a pass for this stuff
It is only in US and Silicon Valley that it is called Super Optimistic. Many parts of the world look at the difference in projected TimeLine from 2020 to 2029 ( A difference of 9X ) and we call that BS or flat out lying.
Since they're telling me it's 2029, what I really hear is 2030 or 2035, or never. So that means I'll probably be stuck on the same slow flights for more than a decade :-( It doesn't feel like this is a space where there is a lot of competition.
I disagree. The job of IR communicators (employed within the company) is not to hype up a stock - its to give correct information regarding it.
Every nudge up has a subsequent nudge down, and every nudge down has a subsequent nudge up.
If that doesnt make sense, if a positive effect is seen upon a shares price, right after you are almost guaranteed to see a downwards correction explained by a bit of depression at the end of a mania. (stock markets are sometimes referred to as being manic depressive - iirc Warren Buffet said this amongst others).
Ingvar Kamprad (founder of IKEA) famously said that entering the stock market is like peeing yourself: "first it becomes warm, warm. then it becomes cold, cold"
And vice versa with dips -people seem to momentarily go "well it cant be THAT bad" and at the end of a dip the share price often goes up a little bit.
And no corporation wants to have a volatile stock. They want a stable stock that big investors can put money on.
That is why the IR communicators jobs are to stabilize the dtock by NOT hypeing anything up in the PRs as they know that if they do, they contribute to the stocks volatility.
And this is why we have profit warnings - the IR department saying before a report goes out that "hey - the report is gonna be better than forecasted" or REVERSE profit warnings for the opposite case. (im not an expert so those terms might be reversed)
In other words, profit warnings have the sole purpose of stabilizing the stock as do the whole IR depts operations. So a serious publicly noted company would not benefit from doing what you say - "press releases focus on super-optimistic specs and timelines".
just my 2 cents, whatever that means.
That said, a lot of people also expected them to fold by now and were definitely not expecting a fairly major order from a large airline.
I'm firmly in the camp of when people ask how old we are, we get to --actualAge (as long as you birthday is after lock downs). It's like the old drinking adage, if you can't remember it, it didn't happen.
we've just coming out from a years of travel restrictions, makes sense to reduce rd spending to extend the runway
No, they don't. I don't know how much Elon Musk has tricked people into thinking it is normal for companies to be perpetually late, but it is definitely not normal.
FYI, most airliners already fly at or above 0.85 Mach. 1.7 is faster than 0.85 but operationally it will only be only an incremental decrease in total travel time.
Whether that's enough travel time reduction to make these aircraft worthwhile is definitely a valid question. The low-boom technology that NASA is pursuing is for sub-Mach 2 aircraft (I don't believe Boom is pursuing a low-boom design, but I haven't followed closely as I don't consider them a credible organization either).
As an engineer, this feels strange, because you might expect to be trying to be as close to correct as possible when you give a date. But that's not the goal. The goal is to create a narrative and sense of purpose that gets you there as quickly as possible.
Finishing something 6 months behind schedule in 18 months is still better than doing it "only" 1 month behind schedule in 19 months. Of course, you also need a risk analysis of the worst case, and to understand the financials and be able to survive a reasonable range of potential delays.
I've quit before because of this very reason. You're allowed to disagree with me obviously, but I don't want to work with you if you honestly believe this is a good policy.
This one is the most egregious. It’s hard to imagine a good-faith scenario where the company actually thought they would ship a commercial airplane in a couple years when they didn’t even have their scale model working.
This means around 2025.
I recall reading that major construction, mfrg project timelines were automatically setback by a large number of months due to the Evergreen thing... (JIT construction required a precise delivery of components and even a few week hiccup in that caused a downstream of ++months)
OBV Boom isnt affected by such - but the labor version locally in the US (Colorado) could still have slowed...
The other non-tangible impact of something like this is the loss of intellectual momentum that a team may have had aggressively going after a timeline when suddenly all the eng team gets to go spend more time with family...
Just some factors to be considered.
Not the speed thing though :) But the faster you go the more energy it costs for the same distance so that would make sense.
also making big moves is complicated, attention spans are short, and peoples judgement of time is crap.
The FAA requirements are soooooo painful, and often illogical and sometimes even mutually contradictory.
It seems that the FAA is trying to optimize for the fewest unknown unknowns, and until the 737 MAX it would be hard to argue that entirely new airframes, propulsion and control systems operating in flight regimes that have only been done one other time (intentionally anyway) in commercial aviation would achieve that objective better than incremental changes.
The associated bureaucracy bloat can be a feature because it’s harder to sustain a ruse over time.
That said, it really does impede development of arguably safer systems.
I'm super interested to see how quiet their planes are at subsonic. If you ever saw the Concorde flying subsonic, it was unbelievably loud. Nothing to do with being supersonic - their engines were just obnoxiously loud. Came into Cape Town a long time ago and made the whole town rumble on final.
In this blog post: https://blog.boomsupersonic.com/booms-principles-of-sustaina...
..Boom says: "Today’s subsonic commercial aircraft are 80% more fuel efficient than those of the 1960s, and noise footprints have shrunk up to 90% in the last 50 years. This technological progress has fueled Boom’s efforts to design a supersonic airliner that makes economic sense for airlines and their customers. "
However, the innovation that enabled this is high bypass turbofan engines. Turns out if you move more air slower, it's way quieter and more fuel efficient because physics. Boom can't take advantage of this - at least directly, because they have to go supersonic. A high bypass turbofan engine is huge, by it's very nature. At supersonic speeds this presents a lot of drag. That's why I'm super curious how they plan to be quiet and fuel efficient while also being supersonic.
The sonic boom really isn't an issue as long as you can fly that part of the route over the sea. Concorde often took longer routes to avoid flying over land, and it was still quicker than a more direct subsonic flight. Or you just fly supersonic over countries you don't care about - flights from London to Bahrain would fly supersonic from the Adriatic Sea crossing the Middle East over land to Bahrain.
The Bahrain route is interesting, as today it is 5.5 hours and Concorde was 4 hours, so not that much difference. I'd rather spend an extra hour and a half on a much more comfortable and bigger aircraft. They also tried routes to Singapore (stopping in Bahrain to refuel), the total flight time was 9 hours, compared to non-stop flights today which are 13 hours. I wonder if developments in reducing the time subsonic aircraft take to reach and descend from cruising altitude could narrow that gap even further.
I’m curious if either shielding the engines, or having a scramjet (like a turbofan but without the blades) could have a similar effect.
I would imagine drag increases linearly or exponentially with speed - not as a step function once you cross the sound barrier.
Or are you saying because it's going to be flying twice as fast?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag-divergence_Mach_number#:~....
[Increasing Mach Number] can cause the drag coefficient to rise to more than ten times its low-speed value.
I only know this because of a number of fluid-dynamics courses that are only required for Mechanical and Aeronautical engineering majors. Barely anyone else is expected to know this information. Mach numbers represent fluid-flow discontinuities. If there is fluid flow in a varying inner-diameter tube and there is a Mach number change from <1 -> >1 at any point in the tube, as long as the Mach discontinuity is there, fluid flow characteristics before and after the discontinuity are decoupled from each other, they no longer influence each other if the Mach discontinuity is present.
- Noise means you can't do US domestic
- Concorde didn't have the range for Pacific
- Costs didn't work for Atlantic routes
- And airlines want lots of identical planes, not one special one for one route
Which ones has Boom solved?
https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1400425028022308874
Concorde had a bit of bad timing. It was released during the worst crisis of aviation (until 9/11), and there was already a second version planned with increased fuel efficiency, but that came never to be with all orders being cancelled. And those cancellations also meant that all economies of scale advantages were gone.
It doesn't feel like Boom has the timing on its side either. Feels like we're still in a massive aviation crisis and I'm not sure how long it's gonna take before things look good for the industry.
Plenty of time for this deal to go south.
The companies working on supersonic jets are in process of lobbying hard to get FAA approval for exemptions from noise regulations. [1]
> - Concorde didn't have the range for Pacific
Not their target market, they want to be a successful niche.
> - Costs didn't work for Atlantic routes
They claim improvements in fuel efficiency and their unique selling point (apart from the speed advantage) is the use of "green" fuels (whatever that implies). Also, see previous point: they don't want to be mainstream anyway.
> - And airlines want lots of identical planes, not one special one for one route
Not a problem they want to solve. Niche and all.
While the economics are indeed questionable, these products cannot be compared to flagship products like Concorde. The jets are significantly smaller (50 PAX vs. 92-128 PAX), benefit from 50 years of progress in aviation technology, manufacturing, and operations and they have a very specific use case in mind.
Concorde was the result of a technological dick-waving contest between Western Europe and the US w.r.t. civil aviation technology. Its purpose was as much of a political nature as it was an attempt at testing/demonstrating the practicality of supersonic passenger jets.
It ultimately failed, but that doesn't mean contemporary attempts have to due to the differences in scope, technology and potentially regulatory environment.
I remain sceptical, but I wouldn't want to write it off as a failure from the get-go.
[1] https://www.aerospacetestinginternational.com/news/flight-te...
Note that Boom _isn't_ focusing on noise currently, unlike the other companies (which are much more focused on bizjets), knowing this will limit the routes they can fly on even with any regulatory changes.
They're content to start with just the oceanic routes (and notably they're aiming for longer range than Concorde, and able to fly at least some trans-Pacific routes non-stop); presumably future iterations when it's known whether there will be regulatory changes (and what they'll be) could aim for lower noise and overland flight.
That seems a logistical issue to me. Airport fueling services have Jet A/A1. So airlines buying Boom will have to arrange contracts to supply these "green" fuels at service destinations?
- No charging network, can't drive away from home
- Battery tech not there, no realistic range
- Too expensive, no one will pay that much for a car they can't drive anywhere
- Everyone wants an SUV or an affordable sedan, not some niche vehicle. Who's going go buy it?
Which ones has Tesla solved?
Moving an industry takes time. Will Boom do it? Who knows. But this line of thinking is kind of short sighted and defeatist, don't you think?
- Charging network: don’t they have their own network? I’m sure it’s not widespread enough to meet everyone’s needs, but it’s not nothing and helped get the ball rolling.
- Battery tech: has been gradually improving, range is now in the hundreds of miles which is enough for many uses.
- Too expensive / everybody wants an SUV: starting with luxury and sports models and gradually following up with mass-market models addresses both of these.
So I think the analogous questions for Boom are good and valid questions. Tesla had decent answers and Boom should too.
Are you planning on refueling the boom mid-air at supersonic speeds?
Tesla also took an approach that analysts who clearly weren't "car guys" weren't expecting: mainly creating something with massive HP and TQ. Previous electric cars had yawn-inducing performance. Someone buying a 5-series probably at least partially bought it for the performance, when they got behind the wheel of a model S it was like getting behind the wheel of a modified M5.
Boom isn't bringing anything new to the table to solve the issues people have listed. Tesla had a plan to solve those issues from the get-go.
So I would say they have made at least solid progress on three of them.
It might be interesting to see Benedict’s comments on Tesla circa 2005 to see how they compare to Boom today.
Dead Comment
Boom is selling a tiny handful of planes.
So they have to solve these problems, largely when they launch.
Airlines are not going to run at a loss for a decade while things tune up.
Airlines are likely expecting that business trips flying coach are going to radically diminish. Offering a super-premium fast flight for the remaining business travelers who must travel but have a reduced tolerance for it is a smart move.
What you’re suggesting about “super-premium” flights doesn’t map to what’s being publicly said about Boom or the fundamental principles of commercial flying. As a matter of fact, the Concorde ultimately failed for those very same niche-economy reasons.
What’s your source for saying that business trips flying coach will diminish?
With CEO salaries and more generally inequalities having exploded in the last couple decades I think the business model might have become viable.
I’m sure some CEOs will pay whatever it costs to boost their own egos but IMO that would push them towards private jets, not a supersonic flight with United. I find the actual arguments for faster flights less persuasive than they were in the 70s.
Plus I imagine many of the ultrarich that you are talking about would prefer to fly private even if it is slower than flying commercial. Flying private also cuts into the time saving benefit of supersonic flight. You save time pre-flight as you can basically drive up to the plane, get in, and be immediately ready for takeoff rather than needing to arrive an hour or two early. And private flights operate on your personal schedule which is obviously much more convenient than organizing your schedule around someone else's timing.
Significantly cutting travel time should also enable higher utilization. E.g. cutting LA-Sydney route in half (15hrs to 7hrs) theoretically enables fitting in a roundtrip in the timespan of a one-way.
So it solves 2,3, and 4. Can do Pacific. Cheaper to operate. Can be used on all overseas routes.
Wiki says: The overall thermal efficiency of the engine in supersonic cruising flight (supercruise) was about 43%, which at the time was the highest figure recorded for any normal thermodynamic machine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce/Snecma_Olympus_593
There aren't a lot of supercruise aircraft out there. The F22, for instance, can supercruise effectively, but the F35 cannot.
The Concorde only needed afterburners to get to speed and altitude. They did not use afterburners for supersonic flight at altitude.
According to someone on the talk page, the Concord's engines acted as ramjets at high altitude.
The Concorde was capable of supercruise.
Still, we have had a few years of engine technology improvements since then.
The reasons that they stopped flying were different. It cost a lot, and was a lot more cramped than first class or private... the competition. Meanwhile, the time you spend in airports diluted the time you save by flying faster. If these could fly from LCA to a similarly small US port, speed makes a lot more sense.
That said, this will probably fail. Most air travel stuff fails. I'm hoping it won't. Progress is fun.
https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-cabin--passenger-e...
Deleted Comment
Part of that was also political. It's petty and I wish it weren't true, but a domestic-made plane making noise will be better accepted than a foreign-made plane making noise.
Heppenheimer's The Space Shuttle Decision has a chapter where this is discussed in detail.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/features/how-nasa-wil...
- much lower noise than Concorde (mentioned elsewhere in this discussion). Ironically, they reduce the "boom".
- Pacific crossings. 4,900 miles range ( https://onemileatatime.com/boom-supersonic/ ) Tokyo - Seattle is about the furthest within that, at 4,777 miles. California to Hawaii is easily in range, USA to Australia is far out of range, but Brisbane to Hawaii is in range.
- Article talks about 15 planes not one.
Have they solved those yet? They're not flying yet, so no. But that's what they're aiming at.
There's about the shortest viable route I can imagine. I could see refueling stops being a thing, though. SFO-SIN is a pretty long flight, so an hour to refuel in Tokyo wouldn't be so bad.
- Noise means you can't do US domestic
They don't seem to be targeting this.
- Concorde didn't have the range for Pacific
They do seem to be attempting Pacific range.
- Costs didn't work for Atlantic routes
They are trying to bring down costs considerably.
- And airlines want lots of identical planes, not one special one for one route
This will certainly be a drawback, although if they could take e.g. 50% of premium transoceanic it won't be so specialized.
> - And airlines want lots of identical planes, not one special one for one route
On both of those, the passengers are kings. If enough people decide they want to pay a lot to cross the ocean quickly, those things will not be a problem.
Flight of the New Concordes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZLykryZLFk
Supersonic Planes are Coming Back (And This Time, They Might Work) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p0fRlCHYyg
Supersonic Flight - What Does The Future Hold? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3K04wgf_ZQ
Haven't engines improved a lot since 1967?
No idea about cost, but currently oil is cheap and abundant, compared to 1970s, and the U.S. has a large domestic supply.
Regarding identical planes, I suppose first Boom's supersonic planes are going to be mostly identical. But even standard airliners get small changes with every dozen planes built.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Radiation_concerns
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12791122
Common misconception. The Concorde was absolutely quite profitable throughout, and massively so after they adjusted the prices down at the very end when it was already being shut down due to safety reasons.
The Concorde was the safest plane ever. It flew for 27 years with just 1 accident. And that accident wasn't Concorde's fault. Another plane dropped metal on the runway, and Concorde ran over the metal and got damaged right before takeoff.
When iPod came out there were numerous successful portable music players already on the market. The iPod skeptics were not skeptical that there was a market for a portable music player--they were skeptical that the iPod's particular combination of features and limitations would do well.
With supersonic passenger service no one has demonstrated that there is actually a viable market for it. The two prior attempts were both heavily subsidized by government (Russia for the Tu-144, France and the UK for the Concorde).
It is quite different to ask "why do you think this product will do well against a bunch of established, viable competitors?" and to ask "why do you think this product can succeed in a market that everyone who has tried before has failed in?".
So while "just" flying East might be less attractive, very brief return flights will be attractive even if one of the legs doesn't seem very beneficial.
There are plenty of scenarios cutting hours off will improve. Whether there are enough of them to make Boom profitable is another matter.
Deleted Comment
Boom's aircraft uses a modern design that reduces the loudness of the sonic boom.
Also, far higher climate impacts, which is what concerns me the most. Lets just be happy with crossing an entire ocean in 6 hours.
> Won’t the sonic boom be loud?
> Overture flights will focus on 500+ primarily transoceanic routes that benefit from supersonic speeds—such as New York to London or San Francisco to Tokyo. Overture won't generate a sonic boom over land cruising at subsonic speeds.
Supersonic planes are incredibly cool, but I can't help the feeling that it's an unnecessary and harmful luxury at this point. Although, that goes for a lot of other things used by the ultra-wealthy. Maybe ban yachts first?
Grounding old planes will also result in a greater cost of air travel. With increasing nationalism around the globe, that may not be a good thing.
Depending on the type of renewable energy used in the production of the fuels, there might be some land use issues, but this is about as close as possible to the least impactful transportation option ever designed. Speed is always going to decrease fuel economy, but we're not going to tackle climate change by taking things away from people. Tech improvements like these are exactly what we need to move forward.
What are the expected numbers for the Boom plane? The Concorde was a little over 1/3 as efficient per passenger-mile compared to a contemporary 747. I seem to recall that the planned successor to the Concorde was considerably more fuel efficient.
I imagine it would still be more thirsty than a typical subsonic airliner, but I am curious to know how it actually pencils out.
Are you speaking in terms of gross emissions overall? Because a wide variety of things have individually cut emissions substantially.
Maybe ban population growth that consumes planet’s resources like mold?
> Supersonic Planes are Coming Back (And This Time, They Might Work)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p0fRlCHYyg
I also suspect we also all watch Technology Connections, Techmoan, LGR, Map Men, HAI, and Periscope Films...
https://youtube.com/c/StuffMadeHere
Dead Comment
This seems like something that could only come out of tone deaf and climate denying America. The rest of the industry is trying to improve their climate targets and innovate, this is going straight in the opposite direction. I would sign a petition to ban these planes in a heartbeat.
We shape the future through investments, an investment in one thing takes potential away from another. Over a hundred years of fossil fuel investments have starved investments into for example batteries and the electrical grid, not to mention the whole thing was subsidized by the hidden cost of climate change. We as societies have failed hard to provide subsidizes and funding for these technologies, and a carbon tax at least at last reflects the real cost of fossil fuels, and creates innovation that is going to at least be useful in the future.
I'd image United pays some portion upfront in exchange for a discount and being amung the first to have the plane. Boom gets some cash flow without dilution and validation from an airline.
If United is paying a portion upfront, is there risk factored in if Boom can't deliver?