5 ms·

I've flown SYD,BNE<->SFO,LAX,LAS,YYZ an uncountable number of times. I want Boom or some other supersonic flight much more than this. I'd happily pay the extra

I've flown SYD,BNE<->SFO,LAX,LAS,YYZ an uncountable number of times. I want Boom or some other supersonic flight much more than this. I'd happily pay the extra $$ for it, even if it's twice as dangerous as standard jets. That's still way safer than travelling by car. I hope they can get certified by the mid 2020s.

kobeya 9y ago
It always seemed weird to me that the Concorde was a British-French thing whose chief routes was between London, New York, and Paris. I would have thought there'd be huge demand for the long-haul flights across hemispheres, between northern cities like London, New York, Tokyo and Syndney, Johannesburg, etc.
- jacques_chester 9y ago
  London and NYC are the financial capitals of the world. Concorde made a lot of sense for that route.
  - kobeya 9y ago
    Apparently not.
    - jacques_chester 9y ago
      Demand slumped after the 2000 crash, September 11 greatly diminished air travel of all kinds. They were expensive aircraft to fly, so once the premium route became quieter, it wasn't economical.
      - isostatic 9y ago
        There was then the Paris crash, and the increasing maintenence cost of an old plane. Had Paris not happened I suspect it would have hung on until 2008, but the added age would have meant 08 would have finished it off.
- ghaff 9y ago
  There was a London to Singapore (via Bahrain) flight for a few years. But, in addition to having various restrictions because of noise (and not just over the US), the Concorde had a max range of about 4500 miles. So,it couldn't do a trans-Pacific route without refueling--which would negate most of the time advantage.
chx 9y ago
Let's get realistic, shall we? Any new jet costs billion plus USD to develop. This was even true for the Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100, even more so for the Bombardier C Series. And these were relatively minor adjustments over existing tech, not an entirely new design for faster-than-sound travel. If you consider groundbreaking planes, like the 787 program, that was 32 billion. Boom, according to Crunchbase has raised $35.24M in 3 Rounds from 13 Investors. That's ... nothing. A rounding error in the budget to develop something like this. The CIA reportedly spent 3.7 billion to develop the SR-71 engine. And that was really long ago. What do you want to do with 35 million? 35 billion would be a much, much realistic number. This is not an industry to disrupt. If you intend to fly in the UK, EU, USA, Australia then you need to certify with the FAA/EASA/CASA etc and you can't pull a fast one with those.
- asdfologist 9y ago
  That sounds precisely the kind of industry that needs to get disrupted.
  - chx 9y ago
    I would guess that's what HN says. I am, however, an ancient -- by the measures of HN anyways -- frequent flier who really likes the current safety record of commercial flight. With Uber, it is understandable venture capitalists funded a fantastic trick shamelessly called "sharing economy", rolling back most advances labor achieved in a century. But with flying safety is too important for a similarly illegal company to get anywhere. Or in other words, breaking the law gets somewhere with the taxi industry because they are relatively small and weak but good luck trying to break the federal regulations set by the FAA. Many tried to be creative already but they didn't get anywhere and that was just getting creative with existing planes. I will get the popcorn as you people try to disrupt the freakin' FAA -- and even if Thiel and the like can get Trump / GOP led Congress to intervene, there's the EASA as well. For that's the really expensive part. You can build an app and release it (probably full of bugs) for real cheap and disrupt an industry (spits) but building a plane to such exacting standard as these authorities demand is a different world that techbros will find impenetrable, and, again, thanks God for that. And don't tell me they are not, here's the photo: https://boomsupersonic.com/assets/team-page-hero-photo-cdf1527228921f4dfca7c9f59786a4fc.jpg https://boomsupersonic.com/assets/team-page-hero-photo-cdf15... there's a grand total of two women and one black man on the pic among, I didn't bother to count how many white techbros.

kobeya 9y ago

It always seemed weird to me that the Concorde was a British-French thing whose chief routes was between London, New York, and Paris. I would have thought there'd be huge demand for the long-haul flights across hemispheres, between northern cities like London, New York, Tokyo and Syndney, Johannesburg, etc.

jacques_chester 9y ago
London and NYC are the financial capitals of the world. Concorde made a lot of sense for that route.
- kobeya 9y ago
  Apparently not.
  - jacques_chester 9y ago
    Demand slumped after the 2000 crash, September 11 greatly diminished air travel of all kinds. They were expensive aircraft to fly, so once the premium route became quieter, it wasn't economical.
    - isostatic 9y ago
      There was then the Paris crash, and the increasing maintenence cost of an old plane. Had Paris not happened I suspect it would have hung on until 2008, but the added age would have meant 08 would have finished it off.
ghaff 9y ago
There was a London to Singapore (via Bahrain) flight for a few years. But, in addition to having various restrictions because of noise (and not just over the US), the Concorde had a max range of about 4500 miles. So,it couldn't do a trans-Pacific route without refueling--which would negate most of the time advantage.

chx 9y ago

Let's get realistic, shall we? Any new jet costs billion plus USD to develop. This was even true for the Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100, even more so for the Bombardier C Series. And these were relatively minor adjustments over existing tech, not an entirely new design for faster-than-sound travel. If you consider groundbreaking planes, like the 787 program, that was 32 billion. Boom, according to Crunchbase has raised $35.24M in 3 Rounds from 13 Investors. That's ... nothing. A rounding error in the budget to develop something like this. The CIA reportedly spent 3.7 billion to develop the SR-71 engine. And that was really long ago. What do you want to do with 35 million? 35 billion would be a much, much realistic number. This is not an industry to disrupt. If you intend to fly in the UK, EU, USA, Australia then you need to certify with the FAA/EASA/CASA etc and you can't pull a fast one with those.

asdfologist 9y ago
That sounds precisely the kind of industry that needs to get disrupted.
- chx 9y ago
  I would guess that's what HN says. I am, however, an ancient -- by the measures of HN anyways -- frequent flier who really likes the current safety record of commercial flight. With Uber, it is understandable venture capitalists funded a fantastic trick shamelessly called "sharing economy", rolling back most advances labor achieved in a century. But with flying safety is too important for a similarly illegal company to get anywhere. Or in other words, breaking the law gets somewhere with the taxi industry because they are relatively small and weak but good luck trying to break the federal regulations set by the FAA. Many tried to be creative already but they didn't get anywhere and that was just getting creative with existing planes. I will get the popcorn as you people try to disrupt the freakin' FAA -- and even if Thiel and the like can get Trump / GOP led Congress to intervene, there's the EASA as well. For that's the really expensive part. You can build an app and release it (probably full of bugs) for real cheap and disrupt an industry (spits) but building a plane to such exacting standard as these authorities demand is a different world that techbros will find impenetrable, and, again, thanks God for that. And don't tell me they are not, here's the photo: https://boomsupersonic.com/assets/team-page-hero-photo-cdf1527228921f4dfca7c9f59786a4fc.jpg https://boomsupersonic.com/assets/team-page-hero-photo-cdf15... there's a grand total of two women and one black man on the pic among, I didn't bother to count how many white techbros.