5 ms·

> has made this economic. That remains to be seen. They don't even have an engine yet, so this is still firmly in the "we'll see" category.

paulmd 11y ago
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.
- nether 11y ago
  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.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    SpaceX has also had a lot of stuff blow up. That's fine with a rocket, but it's a company killer with a new plane.
    - manarth 11y ago
      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].
    - Axsuul 11y ago
      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.
  - lmm 11y ago
    SpaceX very nearly didn't make it. One more F1 failure and they'd've been out of business.
- baq 11y ago
  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?
  - paulmd 11y ago
    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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CRJ700_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CRJ700_series [2] https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/crj1000-takes-on-embraer-190-212301/ https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/crj1000-takes-on-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CSeries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CSeries [4] http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/embraer-e-jet-e2/ http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/embraer-e-jet-e...
- danjayh 11y ago
  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).

paulmd 11y ago

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.

nether 11y ago
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.
- jonknee 11y ago
  SpaceX has also had a lot of stuff blow up. That's fine with a rocket, but it's a company killer with a new plane.
  - manarth 11y ago
    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].
  - Axsuul 11y ago
    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.
- lmm 11y ago
  SpaceX very nearly didn't make it. One more F1 failure and they'd've been out of business.
baq 11y ago
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?
- paulmd 11y ago
  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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CRJ700_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CRJ700_series [2] https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/crj1000-takes-on-embraer-190-212301/ https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/crj1000-takes-on-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CSeries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CSeries [4] http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/embraer-e-jet-e2/ http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/embraer-e-jet-e...
danjayh 11y ago
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).