17 ms·

Overture is being designed to carry 65 to 80 passengers at Mach 1.7 over water — or twice the speed of today’s fastest commercial aircraft — with a range of 4,2

• akmarinov 4y ago
  Not only very expensive, but basically coach class all the way through, even for the rich people.
  • ISL 4y ago
    Rich people value time highly. Coach-class that gets you somewhere quickly can be worth a lot more than first-class that takes twice as long.
    • zionic 4y ago
      Also sanity. I’ve done a 16 hour flight before, and let me say never again. I slept for half of it and the other half was still miserable.
      • missedthecue 4y ago
        I don't think I could sleep for 8 hours on a plane
        • rhino369 4y ago
          The business class lay flat seats are pretty comfortable. I was able to sleep 8-9 hours on them, but was interrupted sleep. Better than nothing.
      • BurningFrog 4y ago
        Yeah, those take at least an additional day to recover from.
      • MetallicCloud 4y ago
        I live in Colorado, but am from Melbourne, Australia. I told everyone the last time I went back that it will be the last visit. That trip is hellish and once every 2 years is still too much.
        • chx 4y ago
          Try adding a break in Honolulu. It is indeed a long flight from Los Angeles but I found it's bearable if you spend a few days in Honolulu. Also, Jetstar-Melbourne can be very cheap in economy or it can be a very good price/value in what it calls business which really is just premium economy in today's transcontinental flights.
          • rootusrootus 4y ago
            Before the pandemic saved me from ever having to do it again, I was traveling from Portland to Hyderabad twice a year, and I told my manager that I wouldn't go back unless I could stop over in London for a day before continuing on to Hyderabad. Never did find out if that would have been accepted or not, but I was so tired of that particular three-flight nightmare.
        • njarboe 4y ago
          Maybe Starship can turn that trip into under an hour in the future.
          • upwardbound 4y ago
            I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. Point to point travel on Earth is one of the proposed uses for spacecraft.
            • jessaustin 4y ago
              I didn't downvote, but it seems unlikely that either of GP's endpoints will ever boast spaceports.
      • bluGill 4y ago
        I find planes impossible to sleep on. End up arriving over tired and stiff and sore after my 16 hour flight. I've never got my company to spring for a better class though. Next time I'm taking a 1 day layover in Germany or something.
        • rootusrootus 4y ago
          That moment when your body really understands that it is in fact 1 or 2 in the morning, but you can't sleep on a plane. I'd nod off repeatedly, only to instantly wake back up again. I'm quite jealous of people who can just conk out on a plane, but it does not work for me.
      • matwood 4y ago
        On those lengths you start to go a little crazy. I've done Atlanta to Tokyo and back before, and those are 13+ hours depending. You sleep and wake up and sleep and wake up, watch movies, and then wonder why there's still so many hours left to go. It does make me appreciate human engineering though. When you think about all the parts that work correctly day in and day out to have these longs flights run back and forth nearly non-stop.
        • rootusrootus 4y ago
          > On those lengths you start to go a little crazy 100% this. After 16 hours, I could have kissed the ground when I walked off that plane. At some point, after maybe 8-10 hours, order seems to break down a bit. People stop caring so much about keeping clean, the plane starts to get really cluttered and nasty, food ground into the carpet. I feel for the cleaning crews that have to spruce up the interior after a really long international flight. I still remember the first time I flew home from the north, we had taken off from Dubai and were headed to Seattle, which goes over the north pole. I watched that silly map more than I should have (it just makes things slower, I'm sure...) and I was so elated the moment we went 'feet dry' over North America. And then I realized that we still had six plus hours to go, more than if we were starting at the east coast. I was so sad for a few minutes I could have cried.
          • Fomite 4y ago
            The Seattle to Dubai flight is rough, but at least it's usually on a nice plane. The worst flight I've had in a long time was a British Airways flight to Nairobi. Not actually all that long a flight to Nairobi from London, but BA uses their "This plane is definitely about to be decommissioned" planes on that flight. The panel between the cabin and the fuselage came loose when I nudged it with my foot and slid down into the hold, so I spent the whole flight with essentially all my possessions wrapped around me, certain that anything I dropped would vanish into the void.
          • matwood 4y ago
            > order seems to break down a bit Haha, yes. At some point people stop caring. You see people mulling around, getting their own food and drinks - just anything to pass the time.
      • moomin 4y ago
        Try doing 24 hours, with a 9 month old. It was not fun.
        • cycomanic 4y ago
          I actually did 30 with a 2 year and a 2 month old. The young one is easy actually, they are in a bassinet and sleep most of the way. The 2 year old was much more a problem. She was just under 2, so didn't have her own seat, was obviously getting bored and her sleep rhythm was completely different to mine. Still was OK though.
    • cjrp 4y ago
      It's true, and makes sense where your face-to-face time is the key thing. But where it's just "work time", surely you can do a good amount of work on a 7 hour flight in a decent business class seat with reliable internet? Especially if you can also minimise the time wasted on the ground (fast security line, lounge with areas to work, airline calling your flight when it's almost finished boarding not at the start, etc.).
      • rtpg 4y ago
        There are definitely people who can get work done in a flight, but honestly I have a hard time imagining logging 7 hours. Maybe if you have a lot of reading to do?
        • cjrp 4y ago
          I'm the same, but I'm imagining the "super serious business people" who are presumably the target market for these planes (given the price). Is it worth the premium to get them from London to NYC in 4 hours, when they could do 5 hours of billable work in the lounge/on the plane anyway.
          • Scoundreller 4y ago
            Depends on how well you can sleep I guess. US to Europe is almost entirely overnight flights. Not so much the other way though.
        • afavour 4y ago
          I do too, but I also don't have a huge amount of experience sitting in an incredibly comfortable first class seat. I imagine I'd get a lot more done than I do in coach. I think if I had a decent internet connection (happening more and more) and comfortable seat I'd happily take a 7/8 hour flight over a 5 hour one in a coach-style seat.
          • everforward 4y ago
            I fly first class a fair bit, and I struggle to get anything done on the plane (in the terminal is fine, though). For me, there's no way to take a good break on a plane. I can't really get up and stretch my legs (unless you try to pace the aisle), and any kind of distraction is going to be on a screen. It is more comfortable than coach, but it's still not really comfortable. Coach is actively uncomfortable, first class is just kind of neutral; not actively comfortable or uncomfortable. I usually get more done sitting in the terminal than I do on the plane itself.
    • ksec 4y ago
      Makes me wonder if BOOM will ever enter the private jet market.
      • hef19898 4y ago
        Maybe that will be their go-to market once they realize tgat airline business is actually incredibly hard.
    • mshook 4y ago
      Still, flying westbound fast makes tons of sense as you can arrive "before" you took off (local time) and thus you get a whole day in front of you. But eastbound makes a lot less sense, unless you're just trying to save time. Because flying at night eastbound won't make you gain much compared to a regular red eye and flying during the day, you'll land at night...
      • FredPret 4y ago
        It always makes a lot of sense - time saved is time saved. Flying east fast after a day of meetings means you get in bed on time.
        • theYipster 4y ago
          No it doesn't. You are forgetting timezones. The above poster is correct - supersonics are suboptimal for eastbound, especially when you consider they can only be used at speed over the ocean. A super sonic flight that leaves JFK at 6PM arrives at 2AM in LHR after 3 hours of flying plus a 5 hour time zone change. It's much more optimal to take a lie flat seat on a traditional aircraft, get a decent nights sleep on the flight, land at 7AM, shower at the lounge, and charge forth with the day. My view is that the lie flat bed is really what made supersonic obsolete, and I see Boom as largely a folly.
          • FredPret 4y ago
            If I’m a jetlagged businessman in NYC, operating on internal London time, and I’m finishing my work day at 6PM local time/11PM internal time, I want to get home and wake up with my family ASAP rather than try and sleep on a plane. Thank goodness for Zoom
          • dfadsadsf 4y ago
            As somebody who flew quite a few lie-flat business flights on JFK->LON - you absolutely do not get good night sleep. Flight time is 7:30 and you can realistically go to sleep 30 minutes after take off (when they start serving food and other passengers are still noisy - good luck falling asleep quickly) and you are generally woken up about 1-1.5 hour before landing (Why? I have no idea but they turn on the lights, serve breakfast and do announcements about weather in London about that time before landing). So you get at most 5.5h of mediocre quality sleep which is better than nothing but not enough to function 100%. 3 hour flight will change a lot of things for JFK-LON business trips as they open up opportunities to loose only 1 full day during business trip instead of loosing two full days. I generally stay on NYC time with meetings in the afternoon LON time if trip is less than 5 days so short flight is game changer.
    • cannaceo 4y ago
      As someone who flies first class there is no way I'm flying coach to save time. Flying business is about the lounges, the meals, the service, and the ability to stretch out your legs.
      • moomin 4y ago
        As someone who flies coach everywhere, I’d do the same if I had the means to do so. A long flight in coach is extremely draining even if you’re time-focussed, you’ve got to take recovery time into consideration.
      • MaxikCZ 4y ago
        If you value that over speed, why not take a oceanic cruiser? More lounges, more service, you can stretch your legs way more (or take a swim), better meals (and more of them).. Its always a tradeoff of comfort vs speed.
        • stickfigure 4y ago
          The internet tells me that there is only one ocean liner left (Queen Mary 2), which travels only between the UK and the US east coast.
          • indecisive_user 4y ago
            There's only one left because there is no demand for that kind of travel, which is good evidence that people value time over comfort.
            • maxwell 4y ago
              There's certainly demand for low-cost ocean voyages as vacations, with over 300 cruise ships in service (and cruise lines generally quite profitable). It's high-cost, non-vacation, long distance travel/transport where ocean liners were beaten in the 1960s by airliners (and airlines, in contrast, are generally not very profitable).
            • 4y ago
    • ghaff 4y ago
      That's true mostly of "rich people" who are also highly scheduled executives. Otherwise there are a lot of tradeoffs involving comfort, time, schedule, and so forth.
    • akmarinov 4y ago
      If that was the case, wouldn’t we still have Concorde or something similar?
  • chrisseaton 4y ago
    > coach class all the way Has there been a render of the interior or something?
    • darrenf 4y ago
      There is on the Boom site, and it certainly doesn't look like regular cattle class https://boomsupersonic.com/static/images/overture-experience.jpg https://boomsupersonic.com/static/images/overture-experience...
      • chx 4y ago
        I can't see how that seat could possibly transform to lie flat and it's a dud if they try to get people to pay big money for non-lie flat seats.
        • chrisseaton 4y ago
          I guess the idea is that the trip is such a short hop that you don't need to lie flat. For example train seats in first in the UK aren't lie flat either, because they're only ever a few hours at most.
        • mh- 4y ago
          I'm not sure lie-flat is a must if the flights are so much shorter. I'd rather have a comfortable seat for working if we're only talking about a 3 hour flight.
      • jameshart 4y ago
        Yes and pre-launch renderings of the interior of the Dreamliner featured a piano bar and all-round led screen walls. Interior buildout in planes is always at the discretion of the airline, and the concepts shown by manufacturers should not be taken as realistic.
  • abujazar 4y ago
    You mean couch class? https://boomsupersonic.com/static/images/overture-experience@2x.jpg https://boomsupersonic.com/static/images/overture-experience...
    • KptMarchewa 4y ago
      Interior will depend on the line.
    • cycomanic 4y ago
      I recall all the crazy designs that were shown before the A380 came out, bars, entertainment areas etc.. Unsurprisingly airlines instead opted to put more seats in (well Singapore did implement those suites with a bed, but that was it). These interior concepts never become reality because of the economics. They look nice in investor brochures and airline magazines though.
  • gbronner 4y ago
    Concorde was not very pleasant to sit in from what I've heard. Great food, but the seats were basically economy 2x2.
    • quercusa 4y ago
      I've tried the seats at the Intrepid museum. They are very tight and the window is tiny. I'm sure the food and drinks helped. https://www.intrepidmuseum.org/The-Intrepid-Experience/Exhibits/Concorde https://www.intrepidmuseum.org/The-Intrepid-Experience/Exhib...
      • ghaff 4y ago
        When my dad was flying back and forth to Europe from the US East Coast a lot, he told me he got upgraded to the Concorde once for some reason. His reaction was that it was a neat experience but he'd just as soon fly first class in a 747.
    • kloch 4y ago
      There is a Concorde on display at the Museum of Flight near Seattle. You can walk down the aisle but the seats themselves are protected by plexiglass. The seats do look very cramped and the windows are very small. The museum of flight is amazing and much more interactive than most air museums.
      • mhandley 4y ago
        The windows are so small because Concorde cruised at 60,000 feet. At that altitude the usual oxygen masks won't keep you conscious. The windows are small so that if one ever failed, Concorde could descend fast enough to an altitude where the masks would work before the pressure dropped too low.
    • wmorein 4y ago
      This was something I always heard before I experienced it but the truth is it wasn't so bad. You definitely weren't sitting in a full First Class seat (which were smaller in any case back then) but it was still perfectly comfortable especially for the relatively short duration. And because the overall experience was so cool -- board directly from the lounge, the led display showing how fast you were going, seeing the curvature of the earth (sorry flat earthers), arriving before you left, etc. -- you never thought about the seat. I'm sure if you took it all the time you might care but most people it was awesome.
  • mikeryan 4y ago
    Three hours from SF/LA to Hawaii would have a ton of takers at a premium price even at coach class. It makes that trip doable for a long weekend.
    • arcticbull 4y ago
      At just under 5 it already is, I know a few people who do it. Hawaii is a bad example because its very much a leisure market. They can barely make business class work with recliners let alone a Concorde replacement. That’s why they put their worst business class on the route. This will end up running LAX-JFK-LHR in my opinion.
      • jfk13 4y ago
        Would they be allowed to go supersonic for LAX-JFK?
        • krallja 4y ago
          No, that route is over land.
          • arcticbull 4y ago
            Ah yes, I should have said 'I see a potential market for faster premium air travel on both the LAX-JFK legs and the JFK-LHR legs within the range of the Boom plane' - you are of course correct that they would not be able to fly LAX-JFK supersonic.
          • wbl 4y ago
            Between PA and LA there are not a lot of populated areas so strearing around them should be possible.
            • krallja 4y ago
              14 CFR Part 91.817, in essence, prohibits anyone from operating a civil aircraft at a true flight Mach number greater than 1 over land in the United States and from a certain distance off shore where a boom could reach U.S. shores. https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight
  • Elora 4y ago
    The luxury is saving time.
  • wongarsu 4y ago
    When the choice is a two day business trip flying in business class or a one day trip in elevated coach class, lots of people will choose the option that has them back on the same day.
• cma 4y ago
  How are they doing this with sustainable energy?
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • wahnfrieden 4y ago
    stupid lip service
  • replygirl 4y ago
    biofuels or synthetics. not sure if they plan to own the fuel supply chain, so "net zero" may come through offsets to cover the impact of producing the fuels
    • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      They appear to have signed a deal with YCombinator startup Prometheous Fuels to supply the SAF fuel, with carbon offsets to cover other carbon costs. https://www.prometheusfuels.com/ https://www.prometheusfuels.com/ (very cool website, not sure if thats a good or a bad thing)
      • solardev 4y ago
        > (very cool website, not sure if thats a good or a bad thing) Maybe I'm just old-school, but this was sooooo annoying. It'd be a cool intro to a Telltale game or something, but having it take over all the navigation (scrolling barely works, getting to the point takes forever) to tell its fancy 3d story was just a waste of my time, IMO. I want to know how their fuels work, not that they can hire someone to make a 3D game intro inside their browser. Just unnecessary shiny that gets in the way of usability :(
      • replygirl 4y ago
        carbon capture to fuels is pretty cool! wonder how much of the capture will run off gas or battery :|
      • 4y ago
• replygirl 4y ago
  it's all turboprops and no afterburner. so, expensive, but much more affordable than concorde, maybe to the point of competing with subsonic first class
  • cjrp 4y ago
    Turbofan (what's on most commercial jet aircraft), not turboprop (jet engine driving a propeller, generally on smaller commercial and some private aircraft).
    • replygirl 4y ago
      ah, neat! looks like they recently switched from 3x turboprop to 4x turbofan edit: had to correlate sources to find that a bunch of popular aviation blogs got the original design wrong. was actually 3x turbofan -> 4x turbofan
      • replygirl 4y ago
        why the downvotes? the original design was trying to use 3x turboprops, and i can see articles on google about them switching to 4x turbofans after the xb-1 work edit: see parent edit, i was wrong. you guys are pretty good at making someone with misinfo feel bad though
        • cjbgkagh 4y ago
          You have to be mixed up; a turboprop has a propeller attached to the jet engine. No-one in their right mind would use a turboprop supersonically. It would make an insane amount of noise.
          • adolph 4y ago
            Define “right mind” The Republic XF-84H "Thunderscreech" was an American experimental turboprop aircraft derived from the F-84F Thunderstreak. Powered by a turbine engine that was mated to a supersonic propeller, the XF-84H had the potential of setting the unofficial air speed record for propeller-driven aircraft, but was unable to overcome aerodynamic deficiencies and engine reliability problems, resulting in the program's cancellation. [. . .] Unlike standard propellers that turn at subsonic speeds, the outer 24–30 inches (61–76 cm) of the blades on the XF-84H's propeller traveled faster than the speed of sound even at idle thrust, producing a continuous visible sonic boom that radiated laterally from the propellers for hundreds of yards. The shock wave was actually powerful enough to knock a man down; an unfortunate crew chief who was inside a nearby C-47 was severely incapacitated during a 30-minute ground run. Coupled with the already considerable noise from the subsonic aspect of the propeller and the T40's dual turbine sections, the aircraft was notorious for inducing severe nausea and headaches among ground crews. In one report, a Republic engineer suffered a seizure after close range exposure to the shock waves emanating from a powered-up XF-84H. The XF-84H design top speed was Mach .9 and probably made it to .7 in testing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H_Thunderscreech https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H_Thunderscree...
• nikhizzle 4y ago
  Interesting that this is slower that the Concord which cruised at Mach 2. I wonder if a slightly lower speed makes the economics more sustainable.
  • gruturo 4y ago
    If this is achieved without afterburners (as I understand it is), then yes, this is an immense difference in fuel consumption and radically impacts the economics.
    • willyt 4y ago
      Concorde only used afterburner(en_us)/reheat(en_uk) for a small part of the acceleration phase of the flight not for cruise.
      • phire 4y ago
        It used afterburners for takeoff and accelerating through Mach 1.
        • mshook 4y ago
          Well past Mach 1 actually, reheat was cut off at Mach 1.7.
      • gsnedders 4y ago
        Note that Concorde "B" was meant to use a variant of the Olympus 593 without reheat, but ultimately lack of sales of the original aircraft doomed it.
      • closewith 4y ago
        Afterburner is a common term in both countries. Reheat is and always was a semi-official slang used in the UK and is a reference to the similarity in concept to reheat steam turbine.
      • gnfargbl 4y ago
• samstave 4y ago
  >Probably will be very expensive but it's exciting for future possibilities Are you kidding me! I cant recall the last time I DIDN'T need to be in Honolulu in THREE HOURS!! This is a life changer for my Macadamia nut Addiction... --- In all seriousness, the best commercial prospect for this is high-speed-cargo. Need a part from GuangZhu like TODAY? Need an organ transplant from Ohio to Munich, TODAY? Need to fire 900 employees via ZOOM call whilst flying to your other mansions to feed your pet slaves, TODAY? Possibilities are boundless!
  • hinkley 4y ago
    Flying from Chicago to Tokyo or LAX to Hawaii is borderline traumatic. Getting those flights from 20 hours down to 8 would be a huge improvement.
  • chx 4y ago
    > a range of 4,250 nautical miles. > Need a part from GuangZhu CAN-LAX is 6,284 nm. > Ohio to Munich OK that can work, CLE-MUC is 3,759 nm.
    • Turing_Machine 4y ago
      > CAN-LAX is 6,284 nm. Just add a refueling stop at ANC, the same as most cargo flights today (and the same as most passenger flights in the past). According to a Great Circle mapper, CAN-ANC-LAX is only about 250 km longer than CAN-LAX.
      • snovv_crash 4y ago
        Descending and climbing again will take a lot of fuel, jets are only efficient at high altitude. Plus of course the extra takeoff and landing adding cycles to the airframe.
        • Turing_Machine 4y ago
          Sure, but if it's the difference between "can" and "can't"... It's a small enough issue that it's the routine route for cargo flights between China and the U.S. West Coast. Anchorage is the second-largest cargo airport in the United States (after FedEx's home base in Memphis).
• chx 4y ago
  This is not a winning proposition. Even if we presume these will fly from a VIP terminal so the time you spend at an airport is low, you still need to get there. I just can't see everyone being flown in and out on a helicopter but maybe my imagination is stunted. Once you begin to add up those hours, you are just not saving enough time for the surely astronomical cost. You'd need a much longer range for this to be a real win. If you double that range then you can do JFK-SIN or PTY-SYD and then you could do an LHR-PTY-SYD flight in ~12 hours which would be a massive win.
  • MAGZine 4y ago
    a "reasonably" priced helicopter service already exists in nyc, I don't see why this would be so crazy.
  • bobthepanda 4y ago
    Boom Supersonic is targeting current business class seat costs per mile. So it‘s not Concorde level crazy.
    • hef19898 4y ago
      You can target any price you want, if you achieve it is a different story. All eVTOL companies arw targeting prices below taxi rates and have yet to proof thatvthey can actually do it.
  • fastball 4y ago
    I think Boom's entire business plan is that they can do supersonic passenger jets for not astronomical cost. It's not like they're unaware of the Concorde.
  • Justin_K 4y ago
    You are arguing with a straw man. Nobody said driving to the airport will change. The claim is for the price of business class, get there in half the time.
    • chx 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• awb 4y ago
  > over water All the imagined routes are over large bodies of water. Is it key to the functionality or intent of the aircraft in some way? Why not NYC to LAX in 3 hours?
  • eloff 4y ago
    Because of the sonic boom, you can't be flying over inhabited areas. Regulations prohibit that.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • gibolt 4y ago
    Supersonic booms are extremely loud. Without solving that problem, these can not be flown over populated areas.
  • ropiku 4y ago
    Due to noise constraints supersonic flight is banned over land right now. If they lower noise pollution maybe laws will be changed.
  • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I believe supersonic flight is currently banned over the USA (and most countries?). A previous entrtant in this area seemed to suggest that efficiency dropped near mach 1, but then rose again to 95% at speeds around 1.4 so being able to stay at that speed may make it cheaper to run and maximize their USP of speed.
  • extrapickles 4y ago
    It’s currently illegal to fly past Mach 1 over land barring a few exceptions (eg: military training areas). https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight
  • hadlock 4y ago
    When space shuttle Challenger broke up over Dallas, Texas about 20 years ago it came in really low (steep angle of attack) and there was a sonic boom, felt like a garbage truck had driven into the side of the house at full speed. Woke me up from sleep at about 6am. Got out of bed to see what was going on, turned on the TV to find out it was the space shuttle. People will tolerate a sonic boom once a quarter or so, but you've better have a really good reason, like national security.
• dmz73 4y ago
  Melbourne to LA flight is currently 13-16 hours. This plane would cut it to around 8 if they could extend the range and it would make the flight bearable (I find that first 8 hours are OK but anything after that slowly turns to agony). But the distance between Melbourne and LA is 6883NM and even Brisbane to LA is 6246NM. So, Australia is still out of reach. One could do Brisbane to Honolulu at 4088NM and then Honolulu to LA but with the layover total time will probably be the same at best or much longer. Maybe one day...