7 ms·

Not all of us dream of a future where the ultra-rich get to shatter everyone else's windows with their sky toys.

by idlewords 6y ago

ktta 6y ago
Isn't the bulk of today's commonplace technology previously something only the the rich could afford?
- nickik 6y ago
  People never understand that argument. With literally every new technology for over 200 years the same argument is made.
- crispyporkbites 6y ago
  Not really, most tech starts in industry or the military. Most things aren’t pioneered by billionaires- you could make the argument that millionaires are often the early adopters that commission/bring tech down to the rest of us. But there will never be a future where private jets are economical for the masses (even private cars aren't really economical for the long term for everyone globally), and I doubt the tech Boom are developing will make it into widely used commercial planes, but perhaps it will.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  When it comes to electronics: Sure, that has gotten cheaper by a thousandfold or however much it has been. When it comes to transport: Partially; air travel has become fairly accessible for a lot of people now compared to a hundred years ago. Cars are also pretty common now - although driving is still quite expensive. But I don't see how we can ever have personal airplanes be as affordable and accessible as cars. Not going to happen. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.
  - Tuna-Fish 6y ago
    Boom isn't in the market for making personal airplanes as affordable and accessible as cars. What they are trying to do is to make normal air travel, as it already exists, faster. Because very large jets cost a lot of money to design and develop, they start with smaller ones and work their way up. This first demonstrator is a two-seater. The next jet they are designing is the Overture, designed for the ~50 seater business jet segment. And as the name hints, they don't intend to stop there.
  - mpweiher 6y ago
    > can ever have personal airplanes be as affordable and accessible as cars. Sibling comment already addressed that Boom isn't "personal airplanes". However: why not? I mean, apart from the current fact that not enough people want this. Let's look at a Cessna. It masses around 800kg empty, so lighter than many modern cars, and that's not due to exotic, expensive materials, and without that, cost tends to be roughly proportional to weight. The engine is a four cylinder with 180hp. My car gets 200hp out of 2l with a turbocharger, but aviation tends to use very old-school engine tech for reliability, so it's got huge displacement, almost 6 liters. So there's some room for improvement there, particularly once we go electric, because electric motors are so much more reliable. Fully electric is already viable for flight-training and other short-range needs, and unbeatably cheap for those missions. (A friend and I had this idea of getting a used Antonov An 2 and stuffing it with electric bus batteries for a south-/west- to east-bay commute... The numbers worked quite well). Hybrid electric could mean getting to use much smaller, cheaper, common, efficient engines and use the electric engine and some batteries for safety. Avionics? Yup, somewhat complex and expensive, but really not for too many intrinsic reasons. The gold standard for GA today is (still?) the Garmin 1000. An iPad has most of the same sensors (as does my Apple Watch), and the compute power is nothing to write home about.
- hobofan 6y ago
  "The bulk" is hard to quantify, but looking around for technology in my apartment (and whatever else I use outside of it on a daily basis), I wouldn't say so. A lot of it was previously available for well-off (not rich) households, and then became cheaper mainly due to scale. That doesn't seem to be a direction they are going with a low passenger count plane that has the biggest benefit for people that spend a lot of time traveling between continents (like regular high-stakes business trips). More importantly most of those things don't inconvenience the people around me. If I use my computer or my kitchen-aid (high-price items in the past), it doesn't disturb my neighbors (or would have in the past when they were still in their infancy).
  - nickpp 6y ago
    Do you read? Books (and libraries) used to be something only kings could afford. Then technology (the printing press) made them something for everyone.
- rob74 6y ago
  Yes, but air travel is already something everyone (in the developed world) can afford. Same as almost everyone can afford a VW Golf, Ford Focus, Toyota... whatever. What Boom wants to build is the equivalent of a Ferrari or Lamborghini - it does the same thing as a normal airliner, but faster and in a more resource-consuming and therefore expensive way. And, like most people can't afford a super sports car, most people won't be able to afford a ticket for their supersonic airplanes (same as they couldn't afford a ticket for Concorde).
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > air travel is already something everyone (in the developed world) can afford Ship travel was already something most people in developed countries could afford. What’s the use of getting around faster and higher off the ground?
    - reallydontask 6y ago
      A Transatlantic crossing took around ~ 100 hours, whereas a plane takes ~ 7 hours. So, we are talking about an order of magnitude improvement. It's hardly the same thing with a supersonic airliner, which just reduces the time in roughly half.
      - credit_guy 6y ago
        However, the first commercial passenger transatlantic flights took 29 hours, on the Panam B-314. http://www.century-of-flight.freeola.com/new%20site/commercial/Transatlantic%20Services.htm http://www.century-of-flight.freeola.com/new%20site/commerci...
  - anovikov 6y ago
    If it will be as expensive as Concorde, it won't work exactly as Concorde didn't. It's got to be a lot cheaper - at least 2x cheaper - to have any chance of working. And then, everyone who can afford a first class ticket, will be able to afford that. My bet is somewhere like $4000 roundtrip trans-Atlantic ticket or $3000 cross-country ticket in U.S. is about the maximum the market will bear.
- tomohawk 6y ago
  Visit a DuPont mansion from 100 years ago. What were considered extreme luxuries of the super wealthy are now commonplace. In fact, we live better in many ways. The reality we live in today was created through the use of wealth that employed people and produced better and better goods to meet more and more people's needs.
missedthecue 6y ago
Don't keep your windows in the Atlantic ocean then?
- vkou 6y ago
  I will bet money that if this plane ever starts carrying passengers, Boom will immediately start lobbying for overland supersonic bans to be lifted. Shareholders would demand it. Pardon my lack of enthusiasm for yet another fight between privatized gains at the cost of socialized harms.
  - nix23 6y ago
    In Europe they have no chance, if the Airplane makes boom, your out.
    - kenneth 6y ago
      Europe being the only geo to actually deploy a supersonic jet commercially…
      - nix23 6y ago
        If your talking about the Concorde...that's exactly why it would never happen anymore.
    - petre 6y ago
      It depends where it booms. If it's at 10 km above and nobody hears it, or above international waters, it doesn't matter too much.
      - nix23 6y ago
        For sure you hear it above 10km, it just does no destroy a window. > Supersonic operations over land must be conducted above 30,000 feet or, when below 30,000 feet, in specially designated areas approved by Headquarters United States Air Force, Washington, D.C., and the Federal Aviation Administration. https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104540/sonic-boom/ https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045... and https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/17661/can-a-sonic-boom-produced-at-60-000-be-heard-on-the-ground https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/17661/can-a-son...
nix23 6y ago
Said the guy on the horse about the first automobiles.
- TLightful 6y ago
  Said the guy existing within the boundaries of earth's capacity.
  - nickpp 6y ago
    How exactly do you think we’re gonna escape those bounds?
    - TLightful 6y ago
      We won't. And flying a few execs from New York to London in 3-4 hours with renewable fuels isn't going to quite achieve that.
      - nickpp 6y ago
        The world, a couple hundred years ago: We won’t fly.
        TLightful 6y ago
        The world, a couple hundred years ago: Our world is everlasting. You seem proud of our current predicament. There have been huge technical advances. Incredible progress. But equally huge destruction and incredible externalities. You seem to enjoy fireworks.
        nickpp 6y ago
        The world, a couple hundred of years ago: overpopulation will starve us all. Pessimists have been historically wrong. I consciously choose to be an (prudent) optimist.
nickpp 6y ago
Ice cream was initially a dessert only the rich could afford. Now it's for everyone. Except, of course, in communist wonderlands like Cuba or Venezuela...
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Chips and crisps used to be a delicacy. Can't see how that would be exclusive to the rich though, the components (potatoes and hot fat) are (and were) pretty commonplace.
  - iguy 6y ago
    Deep fried anything used to be a luxury, because calories were expensive, and a whole pot of boiling oil is a lot of calories. IIRC, southern fried chicken in the US descends from cooking styles that only the aristocrats of western England could afford. Which their 2nd sons (or rather, their 2nd son's cooks) brought along to Virginia.
- awiesenhofer 6y ago
  Ice cream is huge in Cuba and similarly affordable as in every other country https://www.mashed.com/220283/the-strange-story-of-ice-cream-in-cuba/ https://www.mashed.com/220283/the-strange-story-of-ice-cream...
  - nickpp 6y ago
    But the state-made one sucks https://qz.com/1320584/ice-cream-in-cuba-reveals-the-growing-class-divide-between-rich-and-poor/ https://qz.com/1320584/ice-cream-in-cuba-reveals-the-growing...
rkangel 6y ago
Technological advancement is good in its own right. The issues with inequality of wealth are real, and separate.
- jdub 6y ago
  > Technological advancement is good in its own right. Holy shit, it's 2020. Look around.
  - nickpp 6y ago
    What, did Ludditism become the official 2020 philosophy?!
- lm28469 6y ago
  > Technological advancement is good in its own right. I don't think it's as clear cut as you want to believe. Technological progress is almost exclusively fueled by economical gain, economical gain rarely aligns with long term progress. Was leaded gas a progress ? Freon ? Asbestos ? Privacy invading social networks ? I guess it depends on the scale you look at it but it's more "is technological progress always desirable ?" rather than "tech is always good, always trust the tech, always praise the tech"
  - rkangel 6y ago
    Do you mean that technological advancement usually makes someone rich? That's true recently, but in the past wars (and the military in general) have resulted in massive steps forward in technology. It may not have been worth the cost in lives, but the benefits we've had since from that technology are still benefits.
TLightful 6y ago
Downvoted by the comfortable, complacent, .... s

Not all of us dream of a future where the ultra-rich get to shatter everyone else's windows with their sky toys.

ktta 6y ago

Isn't the bulk of today's commonplace technology previously something only the the rich could afford?

nickik 6y ago
People never understand that argument. With literally every new technology for over 200 years the same argument is made.
crispyporkbites 6y ago
Not really, most tech starts in industry or the military. Most things aren’t pioneered by billionaires- you could make the argument that millionaires are often the early adopters that commission/bring tech down to the rest of us. But there will never be a future where private jets are economical for the masses (even private cars aren't really economical for the long term for everyone globally), and I doubt the tech Boom are developing will make it into widely used commercial planes, but perhaps it will.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
When it comes to electronics: Sure, that has gotten cheaper by a thousandfold or however much it has been. When it comes to transport: Partially; air travel has become fairly accessible for a lot of people now compared to a hundred years ago. Cars are also pretty common now - although driving is still quite expensive. But I don't see how we can ever have personal airplanes be as affordable and accessible as cars. Not going to happen. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.
- Tuna-Fish 6y ago
  Boom isn't in the market for making personal airplanes as affordable and accessible as cars. What they are trying to do is to make normal air travel, as it already exists, faster. Because very large jets cost a lot of money to design and develop, they start with smaller ones and work their way up. This first demonstrator is a two-seater. The next jet they are designing is the Overture, designed for the ~50 seater business jet segment. And as the name hints, they don't intend to stop there.
- mpweiher 6y ago
  > can ever have personal airplanes be as affordable and accessible as cars. Sibling comment already addressed that Boom isn't "personal airplanes". However: why not? I mean, apart from the current fact that not enough people want this. Let's look at a Cessna. It masses around 800kg empty, so lighter than many modern cars, and that's not due to exotic, expensive materials, and without that, cost tends to be roughly proportional to weight. The engine is a four cylinder with 180hp. My car gets 200hp out of 2l with a turbocharger, but aviation tends to use very old-school engine tech for reliability, so it's got huge displacement, almost 6 liters. So there's some room for improvement there, particularly once we go electric, because electric motors are so much more reliable. Fully electric is already viable for flight-training and other short-range needs, and unbeatably cheap for those missions. (A friend and I had this idea of getting a used Antonov An 2 and stuffing it with electric bus batteries for a south-/west- to east-bay commute... The numbers worked quite well). Hybrid electric could mean getting to use much smaller, cheaper, common, efficient engines and use the electric engine and some batteries for safety. Avionics? Yup, somewhat complex and expensive, but really not for too many intrinsic reasons. The gold standard for GA today is (still?) the Garmin 1000. An iPad has most of the same sensors (as does my Apple Watch), and the compute power is nothing to write home about.
hobofan 6y ago
"The bulk" is hard to quantify, but looking around for technology in my apartment (and whatever else I use outside of it on a daily basis), I wouldn't say so. A lot of it was previously available for well-off (not rich) households, and then became cheaper mainly due to scale. That doesn't seem to be a direction they are going with a low passenger count plane that has the biggest benefit for people that spend a lot of time traveling between continents (like regular high-stakes business trips). More importantly most of those things don't inconvenience the people around me. If I use my computer or my kitchen-aid (high-price items in the past), it doesn't disturb my neighbors (or would have in the past when they were still in their infancy).
- nickpp 6y ago
  Do you read? Books (and libraries) used to be something only kings could afford. Then technology (the printing press) made them something for everyone.
rob74 6y ago
Yes, but air travel is already something everyone (in the developed world) can afford. Same as almost everyone can afford a VW Golf, Ford Focus, Toyota... whatever. What Boom wants to build is the equivalent of a Ferrari or Lamborghini - it does the same thing as a normal airliner, but faster and in a more resource-consuming and therefore expensive way. And, like most people can't afford a super sports car, most people won't be able to afford a ticket for their supersonic airplanes (same as they couldn't afford a ticket for Concorde).
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > air travel is already something everyone (in the developed world) can afford Ship travel was already something most people in developed countries could afford. What’s the use of getting around faster and higher off the ground?
  - reallydontask 6y ago
    A Transatlantic crossing took around ~ 100 hours, whereas a plane takes ~ 7 hours. So, we are talking about an order of magnitude improvement. It's hardly the same thing with a supersonic airliner, which just reduces the time in roughly half.
    - credit_guy 6y ago
      However, the first commercial passenger transatlantic flights took 29 hours, on the Panam B-314. http://www.century-of-flight.freeola.com/new%20site/commercial/Transatlantic%20Services.htm http://www.century-of-flight.freeola.com/new%20site/commerci...
- anovikov 6y ago
  If it will be as expensive as Concorde, it won't work exactly as Concorde didn't. It's got to be a lot cheaper - at least 2x cheaper - to have any chance of working. And then, everyone who can afford a first class ticket, will be able to afford that. My bet is somewhere like $4000 roundtrip trans-Atlantic ticket or $3000 cross-country ticket in U.S. is about the maximum the market will bear.
tomohawk 6y ago
Visit a DuPont mansion from 100 years ago. What were considered extreme luxuries of the super wealthy are now commonplace. In fact, we live better in many ways. The reality we live in today was created through the use of wealth that employed people and produced better and better goods to meet more and more people's needs.

missedthecue 6y ago

Don't keep your windows in the Atlantic ocean then?

vkou 6y ago
I will bet money that if this plane ever starts carrying passengers, Boom will immediately start lobbying for overland supersonic bans to be lifted. Shareholders would demand it. Pardon my lack of enthusiasm for yet another fight between privatized gains at the cost of socialized harms.
- nix23 6y ago
  In Europe they have no chance, if the Airplane makes boom, your out.
  - kenneth 6y ago
    Europe being the only geo to actually deploy a supersonic jet commercially…
    - nix23 6y ago
      If your talking about the Concorde...that's exactly why it would never happen anymore.
  - petre 6y ago
    It depends where it booms. If it's at 10 km above and nobody hears it, or above international waters, it doesn't matter too much.
    - nix23 6y ago
      For sure you hear it above 10km, it just does no destroy a window. > Supersonic operations over land must be conducted above 30,000 feet or, when below 30,000 feet, in specially designated areas approved by Headquarters United States Air Force, Washington, D.C., and the Federal Aviation Administration. https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104540/sonic-boom/ https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045... and https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/17661/can-a-sonic-boom-produced-at-60-000-be-heard-on-the-ground https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/17661/can-a-son...

nix23 6y ago

Said the guy on the horse about the first automobiles.

TLightful 6y ago
Said the guy existing within the boundaries of earth's capacity.
- nickpp 6y ago
  How exactly do you think we’re gonna escape those bounds?
  - TLightful 6y ago
    We won't. And flying a few execs from New York to London in 3-4 hours with renewable fuels isn't going to quite achieve that.
    - nickpp 6y ago
      The world, a couple hundred years ago: We won’t fly.
      - TLightful 6y ago
        The world, a couple hundred years ago: Our world is everlasting. You seem proud of our current predicament. There have been huge technical advances. Incredible progress. But equally huge destruction and incredible externalities. You seem to enjoy fireworks.
        nickpp 6y ago
        The world, a couple hundred of years ago: overpopulation will starve us all. Pessimists have been historically wrong. I consciously choose to be an (prudent) optimist.

nickpp 6y ago

Ice cream was initially a dessert only the rich could afford. Now it's for everyone. Except, of course, in communist wonderlands like Cuba or Venezuela...

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Chips and crisps used to be a delicacy. Can't see how that would be exclusive to the rich though, the components (potatoes and hot fat) are (and were) pretty commonplace.
- iguy 6y ago
  Deep fried anything used to be a luxury, because calories were expensive, and a whole pot of boiling oil is a lot of calories. IIRC, southern fried chicken in the US descends from cooking styles that only the aristocrats of western England could afford. Which their 2nd sons (or rather, their 2nd son's cooks) brought along to Virginia.
awiesenhofer 6y ago
Ice cream is huge in Cuba and similarly affordable as in every other country https://www.mashed.com/220283/the-strange-story-of-ice-cream-in-cuba/ https://www.mashed.com/220283/the-strange-story-of-ice-cream...
- nickpp 6y ago
  But the state-made one sucks https://qz.com/1320584/ice-cream-in-cuba-reveals-the-growing-class-divide-between-rich-and-poor/ https://qz.com/1320584/ice-cream-in-cuba-reveals-the-growing...

rkangel 6y ago

Technological advancement is good in its own right. The issues with inequality of wealth are real, and separate.

jdub 6y ago
> Technological advancement is good in its own right. Holy shit, it's 2020. Look around.
- nickpp 6y ago
  What, did Ludditism become the official 2020 philosophy?!
lm28469 6y ago
> Technological advancement is good in its own right. I don't think it's as clear cut as you want to believe. Technological progress is almost exclusively fueled by economical gain, economical gain rarely aligns with long term progress. Was leaded gas a progress ? Freon ? Asbestos ? Privacy invading social networks ? I guess it depends on the scale you look at it but it's more "is technological progress always desirable ?" rather than "tech is always good, always trust the tech, always praise the tech"
- rkangel 6y ago
  Do you mean that technological advancement usually makes someone rich? That's true recently, but in the past wars (and the military in general) have resulted in massive steps forward in technology. It may not have been worth the cost in lives, but the benefits we've had since from that technology are still benefits.

TLightful 6y ago

Downvoted by the comfortable, complacent, .... s