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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 comple
by kilroy123 11y ago
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.
- cylinder 11y agoI honestly started laughing halfway through scrolling because I thought this was satire mocking the startup scene. Wow.
- bscholl 11y agoYes, 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)
- huuu 11y agoOfcourse everybody is a little skeptical but I think it's great that you took the first step! I hope in 10 years or so we say: yeah 10 years back we laughed at Boom but now they are booming business.
- bertil 11y agoI 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.
- paulmd 11y agoYour 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.
- bertil 11y agoIt 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.
- kriro 11y ago
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- baddox 11y ago> Very skeptical this little company can go all the way with this. I suspect they intend to become a bigger company.