4 ms·

> Boom - It'll fly you from Tokyo to San Francisco in less than six hours. Yes, but that's one of the only routes it will fly. With the Concorde, we discovered

by jbob2000 8y ago

> Boom - It'll fly you from Tokyo to San Francisco in less than six hours. Yes, but that's one of the only routes it will fly. With the Concorde, we discovered that flying supersonic jets around population centers is a big deal-breaker because of the supersonic boom. Given how few of these routes you can actually fly, I expect Boom will come to the same realization that the airline industry did 20+ years ago; you can't make money on supersonic.

jandrese 8y ago
I'm still taking everything I hear about Boom with a grain of salt. Maybe they'll make an airplane and actually get someone to offer routes with it, but there are a lot of hurdles that have to be overcome first. Concorde only happened because of national pride in the UK and France. It would be so easy for these guys to finish their first planes just as oil prices spike again, assuming they ever finish those first planes.
ajmurmann 8y ago
I thought the boom only occurred when the plane breaks the sound barrier but not during supersonic travel. Why couldn't the plane go over the ocean, accelerate to supersonic and then start flying to the other coast?
- vvillena 8y ago
  The plane is constantly breaking the sound barrier. The boom is what you hear and feel when the shockwave reaches you.
umanwizard 8y ago
US west coast <-> East Asia, and US east coast <-> Western Europe (especially London/Paris) already covers a sizeable fraction of business travel, doesn't it? Those are basically the four major global economic centers. And among those four, the only link that this service can't provide is Europe <-> East Asia.
- philwelch 8y ago
  > And among those four, the only link that this service can't provide is Europe <-> East Asia. Really? Most of those routes are either trans-arctic or trans-Siberian.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  US west coast <-> East Asia, and US east coast <-> Western Europe (especially London/Paris) already covers a sizeable fraction of business travel, doesn't it? Not necessarily. For example, Southwest Airlines got its start by moving businesspeople around Texas. It only started leaning on tourists later.
vtail 8y ago
Well, a lot of the flights from US East Coast to Europe or from US West Coast to Asia fly over water or unpopulated areas for substantial periods of time. Do you know a good way to check, for a particular flight route, how much of it would be eligible for supersonic flights?
- hueving 8y ago
  East to west US coast doesn't fly over unpopulated for substantial periods. Despite popular belief, people still live in the middle of the US. The only places in between with enough space to get up to supersonic and subsequently drop out in time for population are a few chunks of Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. Look at a night time satellite picture of the US to see how infeasible flying over most of the eastern US is.
  - olefoo 8y ago
    if it's only the transition _to_ a supersonic regime that generates a shockwave, then it wouldn't be out of character for carriers to get a variance allowing for "acceleration zones" which could be within 20 minutes flight time of most hub airports. If your plane leaves JFK and goes out over the Atlantic to go supersonic before heading to Seattle it would still be quicker...
    - dbcurtis 8y ago
      It's not. The shock wave is present as long as the plane is in super-sonic flight. I grew up in fly-over land, and military training flights based out of the Dakotas used to go overhead; we would get the occasional boom. (Also, once in a while doing my farm-kid chores driving a noisy piece of machinery across a hay field I would get buzzed by a jet sneaking up from behind me flying at a very low altitude. It was always startling because I never heard them coming over the noise of the tractor. I'm sure I made a pretty good surrogate for an enemy tank...)
- dbcurtis 8y ago
  Well, that isn't a straight-forward problem. Take Atlanta to Zurich, for example (a Delta flight I have been on). Conventionally, the plane flies up the East coast until it clears Nova Scotia, in part because that is approximately the great circle route, but also because pilot training 101 tells you that your flight plan must include nearest emergency landing point for every inch of your route. So for super-sonic flight, that path might be modified to be off-shore enough to keep sonic boom over the ocean, but follow the East coast closely enough that an airport capable of accommodating the plane for an emergency landing is always within a reasonable distance. (Bonus points for being able to fuel up and take off again.) It isn't simply a problem in spherical geometry.
bobthepanda 8y ago
Concorde had several major issues that Boom might not face [1]: - Boom. Boom supposedly targeted a 10x noise reduction for its sonic boom compared to Concorde, but whether or not it can convince the FAA remains to be seen. - Lack of bodies that could reliably fill seats at the ticket prices. Boom is targeting current business class ticket prices, and the plane is half as big as the Concorde; 55 seats is around the size of a current premium class cabin. - The wrong ocean. Flights across the Atlantic are not that long; six hours is a reasonable night's sleep from NY-London. On the other hand, the Pacific is massive; even Seattle-Tokyo is 12 hours. When Concorde was built, Asia wasn't rich and they could only convince Air France and BA to buy them; today JAL is investing in Boom, and there are probably people willing to pay a premium to halve 12+ hour flight times from the West Coast to Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, etc.
- Mizza 8y ago
  Another issue: it exploded, and 113 people died.
  - Kucher 8y ago
    A unique series of events unfolded during takeoff, leading to a loss of engine power and subsequent crash. It's unfair to say it simply exploded.
    - Mizza 8y ago
      Yeah, but when I think "supersonic jet", I think of the extremely vivid image of a the flaming Concorde crash[1] - it was the cover of every major paper. I think lots of people who remember that era still do, and it'll make me extremely unlikely to ever step into a Boom (the name doesn't help either), even though I do want them to succeed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590#/media/File:Concorde_Air_France_Flight_4590_fire_on_runway.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590#/media/...
      - bobthepanda 8y ago
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
There was also, I believe, a fairly effective lobbying campaign against Concorde by Boeing after it became clear that the 2707 wasn't happening. 2707 was cancelled round about the time Concorde prototypes had their first flights.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  The 2707 died in 1971. The Concorde died in 2003.
  - bryanlarsen 8y ago
    The sonic boom regulations that effectively killed the Concorde were enacted in 1972.
lawtguy 8y ago
The FAQ on Boom's web page has some answers on how they think their airplanes will make money: https://boomsupersonic.com/contact#faq-section https://boomsupersonic.com/contact#faq-section It looks like they are hoping to make money by having a more efficient, slightly faster and smaller aircraft than Concorde. It also has more range which they hope will open up transpacific routes which Concorde could not do. Their goal is to make it profitable for airlines to charge about the same as they do for a business class ticket. They also suggest that their aircraft will make a much smaller sonic boom. Possibly quiet enough to be tolerable over land routes. That would obviously be a huge game changer. Their still building their technology demonstrator, so I'd take all their claims with a big grain of salt. They want to fly their XB-1 in 2019, so hopefully we'll have a much better idea of how well this work next year.

jandrese 8y ago

I'm still taking everything I hear about Boom with a grain of salt. Maybe they'll make an airplane and actually get someone to offer routes with it, but there are a lot of hurdles that have to be overcome first. Concorde only happened because of national pride in the UK and France. It would be so easy for these guys to finish their first planes just as oil prices spike again, assuming they ever finish those first planes.

ajmurmann 8y ago

I thought the boom only occurred when the plane breaks the sound barrier but not during supersonic travel. Why couldn't the plane go over the ocean, accelerate to supersonic and then start flying to the other coast?

vvillena 8y ago
The plane is constantly breaking the sound barrier. The boom is what you hear and feel when the shockwave reaches you.

umanwizard 8y ago

US west coast <-> East Asia, and US east coast <-> Western Europe (especially London/Paris) already covers a sizeable fraction of business travel, doesn't it? Those are basically the four major global economic centers. And among those four, the only link that this service can't provide is Europe <-> East Asia.

philwelch 8y ago
> And among those four, the only link that this service can't provide is Europe <-> East Asia. Really? Most of those routes are either trans-arctic or trans-Siberian.
reaperducer 8y ago
US west coast <-> East Asia, and US east coast <-> Western Europe (especially London/Paris) already covers a sizeable fraction of business travel, doesn't it? Not necessarily. For example, Southwest Airlines got its start by moving businesspeople around Texas. It only started leaning on tourists later.

vtail 8y ago

Well, a lot of the flights from US East Coast to Europe or from US West Coast to Asia fly over water or unpopulated areas for substantial periods of time. Do you know a good way to check, for a particular flight route, how much of it would be eligible for supersonic flights?

hueving 8y ago
East to west US coast doesn't fly over unpopulated for substantial periods. Despite popular belief, people still live in the middle of the US. The only places in between with enough space to get up to supersonic and subsequently drop out in time for population are a few chunks of Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. Look at a night time satellite picture of the US to see how infeasible flying over most of the eastern US is.
- olefoo 8y ago
  if it's only the transition _to_ a supersonic regime that generates a shockwave, then it wouldn't be out of character for carriers to get a variance allowing for "acceleration zones" which could be within 20 minutes flight time of most hub airports. If your plane leaves JFK and goes out over the Atlantic to go supersonic before heading to Seattle it would still be quicker...
  - dbcurtis 8y ago
    It's not. The shock wave is present as long as the plane is in super-sonic flight. I grew up in fly-over land, and military training flights based out of the Dakotas used to go overhead; we would get the occasional boom. (Also, once in a while doing my farm-kid chores driving a noisy piece of machinery across a hay field I would get buzzed by a jet sneaking up from behind me flying at a very low altitude. It was always startling because I never heard them coming over the noise of the tractor. I'm sure I made a pretty good surrogate for an enemy tank...)
dbcurtis 8y ago
Well, that isn't a straight-forward problem. Take Atlanta to Zurich, for example (a Delta flight I have been on). Conventionally, the plane flies up the East coast until it clears Nova Scotia, in part because that is approximately the great circle route, but also because pilot training 101 tells you that your flight plan must include nearest emergency landing point for every inch of your route. So for super-sonic flight, that path might be modified to be off-shore enough to keep sonic boom over the ocean, but follow the East coast closely enough that an airport capable of accommodating the plane for an emergency landing is always within a reasonable distance. (Bonus points for being able to fuel up and take off again.) It isn't simply a problem in spherical geometry.

bobthepanda 8y ago

Concorde had several major issues that Boom might not face [1]: - Boom. Boom supposedly targeted a 10x noise reduction for its sonic boom compared to Concorde, but whether or not it can convince the FAA remains to be seen. - Lack of bodies that could reliably fill seats at the ticket prices. Boom is targeting current business class ticket prices, and the plane is half as big as the Concorde; 55 seats is around the size of a current premium class cabin. - The wrong ocean. Flights across the Atlantic are not that long; six hours is a reasonable night's sleep from NY-London. On the other hand, the Pacific is massive; even Seattle-Tokyo is 12 hours. When Concorde was built, Asia wasn't rich and they could only convince Air France and BA to buy them; today JAL is investing in Boom, and there are probably people willing to pay a premium to halve 12+ hour flight times from the West Coast to Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, etc.

Mizza 8y ago
Another issue: it exploded, and 113 people died.
- Kucher 8y ago
  A unique series of events unfolded during takeoff, leading to a loss of engine power and subsequent crash. It's unfair to say it simply exploded.
  - Mizza 8y ago
    Yeah, but when I think "supersonic jet", I think of the extremely vivid image of a the flaming Concorde crash[1] - it was the cover of every major paper. I think lots of people who remember that era still do, and it'll make me extremely unlikely to ever step into a Boom (the name doesn't help either), even though I do want them to succeed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590#/media/File:Concorde_Air_France_Flight_4590_fire_on_runway.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590#/media/...
    - bobthepanda 8y ago

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

There was also, I believe, a fairly effective lobbying campaign against Concorde by Boeing after it became clear that the 2707 wasn't happening. 2707 was cancelled round about the time Concorde prototypes had their first flights.

reaperducer 8y ago
The 2707 died in 1971. The Concorde died in 2003.
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  The sonic boom regulations that effectively killed the Concorde were enacted in 1972.

lawtguy 8y ago

The FAQ on Boom's web page has some answers on how they think their airplanes will make money: https://boomsupersonic.com/contact#faq-section https://boomsupersonic.com/contact#faq-section It looks like they are hoping to make money by having a more efficient, slightly faster and smaller aircraft than Concorde. It also has more range which they hope will open up transpacific routes which Concorde could not do. Their goal is to make it profitable for airlines to charge about the same as they do for a business class ticket. They also suggest that their aircraft will make a much smaller sonic boom. Possibly quiet enough to be tolerable over land routes. That would obviously be a huge game changer. Their still building their technology demonstrator, so I'd take all their claims with a big grain of salt. They want to fly their XB-1 in 2019, so hopefully we'll have a much better idea of how well this work next year.