Pretty amazing that materials science (lighter, carbon-fiber aircraft; hotter, more efficient/powerful turbines) has made this economic. Concorde never was.
NYC-LON seems like the one market where this enables something fundamentally new (well, Concorde did); single-day business trips between two major business centers which were otherwise a full day apart.
Transpacific flights would be nice, too, but cutting an already absurdly long flight in half doesn't make as big a difference. I personally would generally prefer an F cabin + great Ka-band Internet for 14h, vs. a coach/Concorde sized seat for 7h.
I wonder how long until there's a Business Jet variant of this, or a Government/Military/Scientific version -- the operating costs of commercial aircraft tend to be much less than purpose-built government aircraft, so there's probably a mission/role for it.
Very skeptical this little company can go all the way with this. Look at how hard it is to get a new automobile company up and running. Tesla almost went completely bankrupt more than once.
I do think there is a need and market for faster than sound air travel. We have the technology to even minimize the sonic booms for over land travel.
Still, it would take an enormous amount of capital to get a new company up and running. I would love to see an innovated tesla-like company in the aerospace industry though. It's badly needed, IMO.
Yes, we've taken a lot of inspiration from what Elon has accomplished at SpaceX and Tesla. Supersonics are technically challenging and capitally intensive. But the world should have faster travel—and it doesn't look like the big aerospace companies are about to make it happen. (I'm a founder at Boom)
I am not saying this is easy, but what they need to do is build one airplane, and get it to fly back and forth. That is nothing like the scalability and repeated reliability that building thousands of car is asking for.
I know several people (starting by my brother) who build their own plane (granted, it was a two-seater several several times louder than a grass-mower and seemingly slower, but you get the idea). One plane feels fairly doable as far as hard- to-predict financial issues go — if you have engineers who know super-sonic, and I can’t imagine having the idea without.
Your brother's plane is likely an ultralight or light-sport category, and regardless as a kit-built is nowhere near the certification required for commercial operation. A key requirement of kit-built or experimental aircraft is that you can't ask money to fly passengers on them. He's not even allowed to ask for gas money if you take a trip together.
Commercial requirements literally start at "one aircraft that gets the wings overstressed (if not actually snapped off) during destructive testing" and the requirements continue steeply onwards from there. You can figure on having it built by FAA-certified mechanics as well.
The FAA likes having a paper trail if the wings fall off (an extremely common problem with ultralight/sport aircraft built by non-certified personnel). Not OK when you're carrying passengers for hire.
It was, originally but with some improvements since, and it got the wing-stress that you mention involuntarily and while in flight (my mom & his wife were watching — fun times). He got out without a scratch and improved the next one further.
I can completely see the expected extra cost of having to make two prototypes — and, yes, my first reaction to the article was: “please, please, let them have a billion in VC money”. But the truth is, the success ratio of projects about “we want to make a plane that goes that fast” seems far higher than success ratios of any company.
The business side sounds a lot more doable, given how many people fly those destinations and would like to do it faster.
Sounds like the prototypical "build something that doesn't scale". I have no idea how capital intensive this is (other than...a lot) but I too think building a Boom-0 and flying it NYC-London as often as possible is the best first step. Just make sure to have the first couple of flights filled with investor types ;)
You really want some innovators that spread the word. Some lawyer telling their friends how he was able to close a deal because of that flight, some top executive peddling the "home to tuck in the kids" story at the next business meeting etc.
If they could make it quiet enough to go over land, transcontinental US flights would be great; LA/NY in 2.5 hours would likely have a pretty high demand.
[edit] As someone who flies LA/DC fairly regularly I do have to mention my favorite record of the SR-71 doing that flight in under 65 minutes.
I wonder if the "no booms over land" rule will always remain in force. When I was a child, the planes from Whiteman AFB broke that rule quite often. It was interesting to hear the boom over the phone when speaking with a school friend who lived say eight miles away, and then immediately hear the whole house shaking when the plane got to my end of the circuit. It would have been annoying at night, I suppose, but during the day it was not a hardship. These military planes made no particular effort to climb to high altitude before breaking the barrier, either. While the area I'm talking about is rural, it's much more heavily populated than are e.g. the Great Plains.
So, I think that high-altitude sparse-population daytime routes could be developed that would admit supersonic flight over much of North America.
The no commercial sonic booms legislation might go away if it were an American company asking for it. I have no doubt that the Concorde being foreign owned helped speed that legislation through Congress.
Of course being a little no-name company won't help matters much here, but I expect that actual production of this would involve a partnership (or probably buyout) with one of the big name companies that have a lot of congressmen on their payroll.
There has also been a lot of research into minimizing Sonic Booms since the 70s. Military jets typically don't care, but passenger jets could definitely benefit.
You may not have minded your entire house shaking, but most would probably quickly grow to resent such unnecessary disruption.
It's a good way to kick everyone in a large region out of their zone. If this was a constant occurrence, work may quickly cease, or become greatly diminished.
Sure, but these were 1980s-era fighter/trainer jets flying at probably 1000 ft., and it only shook the whole house when they flew pretty close. Other times one might only hear the boom when outside. I think a passenger craft of recent design of recent materials, flying at 40k ft. could do much better, even before routing to avoid populated areas. I don't think anyone, even those who live on ranches in the Dakotas, really has a right not to hear a noise during the daytime.
I don't think people have the right to pollute noise everywhere.
And I do wish humans where mindful about the noise pollution the dump where 'nobody lives'. The noise emitted by shipping vessels is having a harming effect on sea life.
I used to live under the Concorde flight path near Heathrow. Twice a day there'd be this crackling rumble and all the windows would shake; and this was flying subsonic.
Concorde was really, really loud --- a lot of that was due to being a really old plane with old engines (aircraft have gotten way quieter since the 1970s), but even back then it was considered loud:
Modern aircraft are so dull! Efficient, safe, cheap, reliable even, relatively comfortable, but so boring. Even the A380 is a boring, and that's an office block with wings. How can something so incredible be so deadly dull?
...yeah, yeah, I know, being dull is an accomplishment in itself, and the duller aircraft are the better they are, and the one thing that every passenger pilot in the world wants is a thoroughly uninteresting flight. But, dammit, they're still so dull.
A380 passes overhead here every day on final, it is uncanny how it just seems to hang there on account of it being so large that relative to its speed it takes a while to move it's own length. Sure it's still going quite fast but it doesn't seem that it does and this sets of some 'it's going to fall' alarm at the back of my mind. Weirdest feeling.
At least one real-world test was conducted about how people acclimate to sonic booms[1] with an eye towards seeing how people would take SST airliners. It didn't go very well. In general, it seems that enough people do think it a hardship to kick up a fuss that will keep SSTs from being a reality over the US for awhile.
You're right, it has been awhile since the mid-60s. If we were talking about flying F-104s and B-58s, that would be very relevant information. As I understand it, Boom are developing a new aircraft. They're probably aware of that test and indeed lots of other information about supersonic flight.
This whole "engineering vs physics" question reminds me of the misunderstandings people have of modern radio technology. Yes, in the 1920s they had to divide the spectrum into exclusive-use bands so that any particular use could transmit and receive clearly, but that was a limitation of engineering, not of physics. In the 2010s that is not a limitation we face, in general. Likewise, I expect that with modern materials and engineering software, progress can be made on the sonic boom issue.
I do generally agree with you, but I'm not really talking about engineering or physics, I'm talking about social acceptance.
If - via engineering, physics, magic or whatever - sonic booms can be minimized to the point of being indistinguishable from general background noise (or even only as intrusive as current subsonic airliners), I could be convinced that an SST project has a bright future. Until then, I don't think that they will - your first post mentioned that "the whole house shaking" didn't really seem to be hardship when it happened during the day; I'm merely commenting that there are some studies that indicate society as a whole isn't so accepting.
I used to live near an army training area. There were regular artillery exercises, and the bigger shells would literally shake the walls of the house. The smaller shells just made things fall off shelves.
I think any design that literally goes "boom" over land, even a little, isn't going to work. It's too much of an open legal target.
The design really does need to be damn near silent, or at least closer to a mild and unobjectionable "whomp", to have any hope of commercial success.
I think I've only heard one in my life. It was on surfside beach TX where I lived at the time. I was on a dock and heard a really low thunder sound. I can't say that it was "loud" like it would hurt your ears, but it really rattled everything around me (including my insides). And with that the neighbor's dogs came running over to me with their tails between their legs, and off in the distance I could here a jet really cuttin' through some wind.
I've known test pilots who have flown supersonic routes over continental USA at high altitude and had zero complaints. The boom intensity depends on weather conditions. Other times they did get complaints because the boom sounded like gunshots and got reported to the police.
Cruising above 60000 ft the boom from a larger aircraft might be noticed but not be objectionably loud.
I doubt the cost would be low enough to support demand.
Transonic (approximately Mach 0.80 - 1.2) flight uses significantly more fuel than subsonic flight does. Business jets like the Gulfstream G550 burn more fuel at M0.9 than regional Boeing 717(MD-95) at M0.75 with 4 times more passengers.
The F-22 Raptor can supercruise at M1.6, with half the range compared to cruise at M0.85 similar to other fighters.
If Boom can optimize an aircraft for supersonic transport it would still be expensive to operate. For comparison, no US operator has all business class scheduled flights from LA-NY, and British Airways flies their all business class NY-London flights in an VIP A320 series jet that cruises at M0.7 which is slower than most airliners on the route.
The Boeing 747 has one of the lowest cost/passenger mile (CPM) of any aircraft, and cruises at Mach 0.85. Different aircraft have been optimized for different speeds, and while it is true that a supersonic aircraft will likely have a higher fuel cost than a comparable subsonic aircraft, the difference may not be as large as we currently think.
There has never been a supersonic passenger aircraft built with modern turbofan engines.
The 747 efficiency drops off sharply above M0.85 cruise. I remember reading that the VC-25 (747-200 based) 100% thrust cruise speed is around M0.96 with considerable range penalty. The 747-400 has newer engines but pretty close 100% cruise speed. This is above the approved Mmo for the 747 and not authorized operationally.
Test pilots have reported that a Gulfstream G550 airframe can handle supersonic flight, and the BR710 turbofan engines can handle it. The limit is the engine intake design.
With an optimized intake, its entirely possible the fuel consumption at M2.2 would be comparable to ~M0.98
>There has never been a supersonic passenger aircraft built with modern turbofan engines.
that is one of the major issues here. Modern turbofans on large passenger planes like 787, 380, etc... are that efficient in major part because of high by-pass ratio. Which is not really an option for 2Mach+ speed.
As somebody mentioned, more comfortable 0.85Mach flight would be preferable in many situations to uncomfortable and very expensive 2Mach. If i were starting something like this i'd go straight for suborbital SFO to Singapore in under couple hours. Technology-level wise not that different, money is no issue in that segment (Branson's $200K is not that far from super-premium-business class for your priceless CEO) and there is always large money-no-issue fallback customer - military.
That's why the ticket is $5K. Even if your fuel estimates are correct, they will burn 4-5 times more fuel, but they will charge 10 times per ticket compared to economy. I just checked, and you can get $532 roundtrip NYC<->LON.
But a given airplane can carry a lot less people in a business-grade seat than in an economy seat. Also, NYC <-> LON for $500 is the price of only very few seats in a plane.
Yeah, flying West to East, more speed wouldn't be a great help. I lose 2 hours getting there, 3 hours in time zones, an hour upon arrival. So red-eyes are the way to go. But if the reverse could be improved, that'd be a big help. I could fly West in the morning, get there the same time as I left, do a days business, and take the red-eye home. All in a day.
Seriously. People here are way underestimating the costs to develop and certify a major commercial airframe, especially across the multiple regulatory regimes inherent to international flight. You're probably talking about on the order of a billion dollars even if you're playing it cheap. If you want to start re-engineering components instead of buying off the shelf, that number will go uphill rapidly.
This is not a field that's amenable to "disruption". Cutting corners means that dozens of people plummet to their deaths, not to mention the abrupt end of your airline as their families sue you into oblivion. If you try to play this like Uber and flout the regulations, the FAA and EAA will ground and impound your gear so fast your head will spin, and rightly so. Even a test aircraft is a gigantic tank full of explosive fuel hurtling through the air on a couple flimsy wings. When things go wrong people die, and the FAA does not play games.
Airlines are an incredibly low-margin business in the best case, and supersonic airliners in particular are a very niche market and have immense operating expenses (to purchase and maintain the airplane and to slake its immense thirst for fuel). The Concorde's operators could never make it profitable.
Never say never, but this just seems like fantasy. Supersonic airliners are a problem domain that has been pored over by engineers for decades, six engineers are not going to pull a rabbit out of a hat and solve all the technical problems, then get it certified, then start an airline. Each of those is a problem that requires a national-scale corporation to handle.
Hell, they'll have half a billion just in the computing & control systems. Having worked to design, build, and certify the avionics systems on three major commercial aiframes, one of which is now flying (787), I am hopeful but beyond skeptical. When a company backed by the government of the world's largest economy (Comac) can't make decent progress on a subsonic airframe built with 20+ year old and well understood technologies, and when leading airframers like Boeing had a helluva tough learning curve building a composite subsonic airframer (787), I'm beyond doubtful that this startup is going to build a supersonic composite airplane before it goes bankrupt. Google '787 wing box' and '787 delamination' if you want to know the kind of pain Boeing went through when trying to build a composite airframe.
If you want to get and idea of the magnitude of the regulatory hurdles in a domain that most here will understand, google DO-178C. The mountains of documentation that you have to produce for the software will push any integrated avionics development effort well into the hundreds of millions, unless they plan on using bog standard off-the-shelf parts, and even then they'll have to deal with the flight control system, which will have to be custom by necessity. For some google food, search on 'wcet analysis', 'structural coverage analysis, 'MCDC analysis', 'requirements traceability', 'stack analysis', etc. There are huge hurdles to leap through to get certified, and that's just for the software.
I hate being a wet blanket :(.
OTOH, if they can get capital in the 5-10+ billion range, poach all the best folks from Boeing, Honeywell, Rockwell Collins, GE, UTC, Gulfstream, etc. etc. etc. (which will involve setting up offices in Seattle, Phoenix, Cedar Rapids, Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, Savannah, the UK, France, etc. -- the aviation scene is a bit older, people have families, and are not so keen to move), then they might actually pull it off. Which would be awesome. And I'd totally be in (if they set up an office in my area, that is).
How many people did SpaceX start with? Certainly not the thousands of workers it has today. Everything you said about requiring a "national scale corp" was said about launching rockets to orbit as well. Looking at Boom's roster they have some seriously experienced industry vets working for them or advising them. This isn't just fresh grads. They've been through FAA/EASA cert trials of new aircraft, testing and understand it a fair bit more than you do I suspect. I'd give them a bit more credit and assume they know that they're in for the long haul with this airliner.
I wouldn't put a passenger jet in the same category as rockets when it comes "things that could blow up". The safety factor of an airplane is substantially higher than a rocket. The Concorde was even one of the safest jets before it had its first hull loss in 2000 due to a metal strip on the runway that punctured its fuel tank. Boom's jet is more likely to fail due to external factors such as human error or negligence.
SpaceX has also had a lot of [issues commensurate with the nature of their industry]. That's fine with a rocket, [and also fine with a new airplane, as long as the issues are proportionate with what is common in their industry].
cost of developing the falcon 9 is estimated at about $300M (wikipedia quoting spacex). that's a surprisingly small mountain of money. a supersonic passenger jet should be probably in the same ballpark, right?
Most importantly, the Falcon-9 is not a human-rated system, or at least not yet. And everyone acknowledges there's risks to spaceflight - even a "human-rated" system is expected to fail about 1-in-270 missions (launch or re-entry). That's not acceptable for commercial aviation - your time between catastrophic failures should be measured in years or decades.
It also probably helps significantly that they could fly unmanned missions right away to make money while working out the bugs. You can't fly an uncertified aircraft for commercial purposes.
That's also the figure for just the Falcon-9 rocket. The Dragon cost another $800M. The engines were also developed in-house and may not be factored into that cost either (can't tell). So the total system is costing north of $1.1B.
The Boom model looks to be about the same size as a regional airliner, or a small narrowbody. For some recent points of comparison: the Bombardier CRJ1000 (developed 2007-2012) has a flyaway cost of $46M [1] and an estimated development cost of $300M [1]. A small narrowbody like the Bombardier Cseries costs $72-82M each and cost $5.4B to develop [3]. The Embraer E-jet E2 series (a second iteration on the E-jet airframe) is estimated to cost $1.7B [4].
It's much easier to develop iterations on a single airframe than to certify a new airframe from scratch. And those are all conventional construction, no carbon fiber or anything like that. And while you can develop components in-house - those need to be certified too. So much like any Not-Invented-Here syndrome - you really need to ask the question of whether you want to be a company who makes airplanes, or a company who makes airplane parts.
You can certainly do it some cheaper, but probably not a factor of 10. Overall I think Embraer tends to be one of the more budget-minded manufacturers.
On the other hand, when you have have a video call instantly and practically for free this looks like a very self-indulgent expense. Not exactly the eco-friendly option either.
> single-day business trips between two major business centers which were otherwise a full day apart.
Was the LON-NYC flight time the problem, though? I think that to go door-to-door right now you spend 50% of the time in the air and the other 50% on the ground.
With this company, you'll be spending 3.5 hours in the air and 8 hours getting to and from airports and through security.
It depends on the airport that you are travelling from. London City has famously fast security, currently you can check-in upto 15 minutes before the scheduled time of departure for a flight to New York. [1]
I would think that the people that can afford this have Uber helicopter service to/from the airport and all the line skipping extras paid for already. Not sure it is really 8 hours to and from airports/security.
Right. Selling at this price point they can easily focus on expensive extras. Special terminal with super fast security, then really quick transfers in both ends. If you could do a small airport experience in both ends (1h from hotel room to liftoff) they can charge what they want.
At one point in New York, it was pretty routine for first class passengers on Pan Am to take a helicopter from JFK to the Pan Am building, which had a helipad on the roof. The service may even have been included as part of the fare. (This service was discontinued after an accident though, at least for a time, I believe there was still service to a helipad next to the East River.)
"Pretty amazing that materials science has made this economic."
That, I think, still is an open question. Someone must think there is a decent chance it will be, but if this were a no-brainer, there would be multiple players in this market. Also, oil price fluctuations, the bane of any airline company, will hit those running these planes harder.
I was curious about fuel costs and found that the fuel cost per seat per mile for Delta and Southwest was around $.04 per mile in 2Q 2014. At that rate, even if this new aircraft uses 4x as much fuel per person it would amount to around 20% of the ticket price.
The issue with it is that supersonic flight (due to noise) is only allowed over non-populated areas so a business jet variant is less useful unless you spend most of your time flying over the ocean (and not coast-to-coast for instance).
Yeah, it's also super inefficient/cramped/etc. compared to a G650/BBJ/etc, so it would only really make sense as a "second" business jet in a corp/personal/royal fleet, or, more likely, part of a fleet somewhere like NetJets. It's the "entire aircraft, on demand" part on a mostly finite set of routes, not the "fly anywhere you want", with this.
> The issue with it is that supersonic flight (due to noise)
Actually it's with the technology currently in use with supersonic flight that there is this large amount of noise. It's technically possible to reach supersonic without the boom and NASA is currently working on it with some contractors. I hope it pans out well; I would love to be able to fly between BWI and SFO in 2 hours.
> Transpacific flights would be nice, too, but cutting an already absurdly long flight in half doesn't make as big a difference.
As someone who travels to the south pacific every year (mostly in economy seating), I strongly disagree. 15h flights are no picnic, in any class. I'll stand if it would get me there in 6-7h - that is a dream.
> I personally would generally prefer an F cabin + great Ka-band Internet for 14h, vs. a coach/Concorde sized seat for 7h.
Agreed. I spent 5 of the most uncomfortable hours of my life on an airplane from JFK to San Diego, being 6'1 and not particularly slim. Thereafter, I upgraded my seats on that flight to Economy Plus. I guess I could stand a 2 hour flight like that, but not too much more. Getting me there faster, but in a more cramped space won't make me feel better.
Concorde was almost coach level cramped. There is no way this will be as comfortable as top end subsonic lie flat business or first class. For 3h vs 6h that doesn't matter. For 7h vs 13h I assert it does.
In a number of ways, modern upper class air travel is significantly more comfortable than it was throughout most of the Concorde era. First class and then business class were a lot more like today's domestic first/business class even for long haul international flights. Of course, things like entertainment options are a lot better today as well. (Though there's no 747 upstairs first class lounge :-))
Security, etc. is worse of course--though that's largely outside of the airline's control.
Speed only matters for the cruise part of the flight. The first and last 45 mins, plus airport time are not different. The slowdown portion of a Mach 2.2 flight will be even longer.
(edit: maybe not much on the slow-down: see Concorde data via link below)
Yes, but if the Concorde slows from Mach 2 to 0 over 45 mins then it's average may be ~mach 1. Which is faster than the average velocity of a normal 747.
Granted, if the Concorde shows up and needs to circle the airport for 20 minutes then that's the same delay.
It also shows fairly linear acceleration to Mach 2 over the first 30 minutes of flight and very rapid deceleration from Mach 2 to Mach 1. Which IMO suggests they could use a different decent profile.
One of the reasons Concord "failed" is that it could never fly supersonic over land and had to start slowing long before the destination otherwise it would overshoot (along with fuel costs causing Concord to be more expensive than business class).
NYC-LON seems like the one market where this enables something fundamentally new (well, Concorde did); single-day business trips between two major business centers which were otherwise a full day apart.
Transpacific flights would be nice, too, but cutting an already absurdly long flight in half doesn't make as big a difference. I personally would generally prefer an F cabin + great Ka-band Internet for 14h, vs. a coach/Concorde sized seat for 7h.
I wonder how long until there's a Business Jet variant of this, or a Government/Military/Scientific version -- the operating costs of commercial aircraft tend to be much less than purpose-built government aircraft, so there's probably a mission/role for it.