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Regarding Boom there are only two reasonable conclusions one can reach: 1. They are a Theranos-style operation 2. They are a Madoff-style operation I, a lone
by rocket_surgeron 4y ago
Regarding Boom there are only two reasonable conclusions one can reach:
1. They are a Theranos-style operation
2. They are a Madoff-style operation
I, a lone aerospace engineer working out of my garage in my spare time, have a better chance of achieving supersonic flight than Boom does.
Even their technology demonstrator is an obvious scam. It demonstrates nothing. It does not demonstrate the ability to design, build, or maintain a supersonic passenger airplane, and it doesn't demonstrate any new technologies or materials.
The bloatiest of bloated old-school defense contractors can throw together a supersonic prototype for less than $100 million, in fewer than 7 years.
- AustinDev 4y agoAs an aerospace engineer do you know what kind of thrust they'd need and why they can't just use something like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_J58#Specifications_(JT11D-20) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_J58#Specific...? My guess would be that the military engines are not at all designed to be economical on either fuel or unit cost.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoThose haven't been made for a long time and there's nothing presently in use like them. Also those were turbojets; Boom wanted to use turbofans for fuel efficiency.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago> 1. They are a Theranos-style operation If they were that, they'd be lying about having their own engine in development that is an order of magnitude better than the competitions but won't show it to anybody.
- rocket_surgeron 4y agoMy angle was the "charismatic and overambitious leaders who think that gumption and sticktoitiveness can overcome any problem and who aren't afraid to start lying when they find out that solving science and engineering problems isn't like the scammy adware/SEO/social network they made their first chunk of money on" aspect. I just can't believe people keep falling for it. I'm willing to bet most of the $100m+ they've raised went right into executive compensation and that their engineers have been making do with peanuts since the beginning. And I eagerly await the dueling Netflix/HBO documentaries to come.
- carabiner 4y ago> My angle was the "charismatic and overambitious leaders who think that gumption and sticktoitiveness can overcome any problem and who aren't afraid to start lying when they find out that solving science and engineering problems isn't like the scammy adware/SEO/social network they made their first chunk of money on" aspect. Are you talking about SpaceX?
- MichaelCollins 4y agoFalcon 9 flies very regularly, and the Raptor engines for Starship are in an advanced stage of development. The engines Boom needs don't exist. You're right about some of the rest of that though. Particularly the personality matter.
- rocket_surgeron 4y agoNo comment. edit: Ok comment. perhaps spacex is not the best comparison though. SpaceX had tremendous necessity driving it. The need for launch vehicles for commercial, scientific, and military purposes. There is no similar necessity for supersonic commercial aviation. A Boom customer isn't going to watch 14 test failures and say "well we have no other choice we gotta get people from ny to london in 2 hours" but there was a "we MUST be able to launch people and things into orbit on a US rocket" driving spacex.
- adolph 4y agoNot certain about "tremendous necessity driving" SpaceX. At the time few would have bet that SLS and Starliner would become the duds they are. Maybe Atlas and Ariane incrementing without re-usability and costly Starliner would be viewed positively since there wouldn't be an alternative story (unless BO did better).
- MichaelCollins 4y ago> My angle was the "charismatic and overambitious leaders who think that gumption and sticktoitiveness can overcome any problem and who aren't afraid to start lying when they find out that solving science and engineering problems isn't like the scammy adware/SEO/social network they made their first chunk of money on" aspect. Sure, but that's underselling Theranos' scam. For Boom to work they would need engines that could exist, but don't, and they weren't lying about the engines existing. Theranos was claiming they already had technology that couldn't exist.
- bell-cot 4y agoThat would not be a credible lie - it is too widely known how very difficult & expensive the technology needed to produce any such engine is.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoTheranos' lie wasn't credible to people in the biomedical technology industry. That's why Theranos had to get investors who knew nothing about it. If Boom's lies(or wishful thinking?) were as egregious as Theranos, they never would have gotten their foot in the door at Rolls-Royce.
- hef19898 4y agoThey had money, those engines seemed technically possible given RRs history and RR delivered tests and whtnot. And Boom paid RR for it. Theranos could have easily found a medical lab equipment manufacturer to conduct some similar testing and early stage development.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago> Theranos could have easily found a medical lab equipment manufacturer to conduct some similar testing and early stage development. I don't think they could have. Siemens/etc would have already known that Holmes' idea of running that wide array of blood tests from a single drop of fingertip blood wouldn't have worked. One of Holmes' professors, Phyllis Gardner, told Holmes it wouldn't work before the whole scam even began. Siemens or other lab equipment manufacturers surely would have known it too, since they know what it takes to make blood testing equipment.
- rollinggoron 4y agoAgreed. I know nothing about aerospace engineering or aircraft design, but the hype around Boom always puzzled me. If this start up can all of a sudden make an economical supersonic jet, then surely the existing plane manufacturers could do it quicker and cheaper. Boeing, Lockheed, Airbus, etc... already have existing designs from decades past that they could at least use as a base. They have experts in material science, airplane design, and actual resources/contracts to actually build one. If it made sense.
- chadash 4y agoI agree with you, but to play devil's advocate, what if I changed your comment to: Agreed. I know nothing about automotive engineering or car design, but the hype around Tesla always puzzled me. If this start up can all of a sudden make an economical electric car, then surely the existing automotive manufacturers could do it quicker and cheaper. Toyota, Mercedes, Ford, etc... already have existing designs from decades past that they could at least use as a base. They have experts in material science, car design, and actual resources/contracts to actually build one. If it made sense. Sometimes the incumbents are just too entrenched in what they are doing to make what out an outsider sees as an obvious move.
- bri3d 4y agoIsn't there a third kind of operation, maybe a Magic Leap-style operation, where employees are earnestly developing against a goal which is fanciful but appealing to VCs? And in that case, what's the difference between that and the "usual" VC funded company? I don't really think Boom are a Theranos style operation, because they aren't claiming to have an operational product when no such item exists. A Theranos style scam would be flying a known-unsafe airframe, or parading their demonstrator around claiming "it totally has engines and is ready to fly lol! we just haven't tested it yet." But so far, Boom have just honestly said "we're delayed" instead. It's surely not a Madoff style operation as they employ staff who are earnestly working towards their goal, however fanciful it may be.
- adolph 4y agoWasn't Theranos sending lab tests to other vendor and passing it off as their results? That would be difficult for Boom to pull off--send someone blindfolded on a regular commercial flight, reset the time on their watch and pretend supersonic happened.
- johnbender 4y agoAs an aside Madoff Industries did employ people who earnestly worked outside the Ponzi scheme. I know because I met a few of them when I worked on a database architecture audit for them around 2008.
- bri3d 4y ago"Database architecture audit for Madoff Industries" is a pretty good conversation starter as a resume item! This is a good point, and something that occurred to me after I posted - there's also a type of scam company where honest employees are hired to do something real, but the executive staff are skimming inordinate compensation for themselves or hiding a more nefarious project underneath, like a Ponzi scheme, simple money laundering, or self-dealing / kickback style schemes. I suppose it's possible that Boom could be one of these, and I don't really have enough data to say whether it is or not. My personal take on Boom is that it's your typical amateur, marketing-savvy CEO with a lofty dream who managed to collect funding for a project they can't execute on. Whether this kind of thing is a net "good" or not, I'm not sure, but I really don't think it's a "scam" in a mal-intent sort of way. If I were a VC, I wouldn't invest in an aerospace founder with no aerospace background, but plenty chose to, and their funds are at least being redistributed towards employees and suppliers. The whole idea of Silicon Valley style "innovation" VC is supposedly that their moonshot upsides can patch over their moonshot downsides, no?
- carabiner 4y agoLol you're too harsh. I was an aerospace engineer at an aviation startup you've probably heard of. We built a jet and received a type certificate, and sold ships. The company still went bankrupt. Boom is trying something harder, but it's not Theranos, or cold fusion. It's still just an engineering problem. They have aerospace engineers and facilities. It doesn't look more like a scam than SpaceX did in its early days when they were constantly blowing up rockets. It's just they're trying something very hard stretching what any manufacturing startup could do. 3. They're a startup in a manufacturing-oriented, highly regulated industry and dramatically underestimated capital needed.
- leecb 4y agoEclipse?
- ghaff 4y agoEngineering and economics problem--although properly speaking the former should imply the latter. Given that engineering isn't "We can build something that costs $X to build and operate but there's only a market for $X/5." That's still an engineering failure even if it works outside of cost constraints.
- cmdrriker 4y agoUnless some government(s) steps in and dumps a ton of money into SST development and production nothing is going to happen. The Concord showed this by shouldering the burden of research, development, prototyping, and then production. Turns out SS's don't have the load factor & associated economics to make it a viable mode. That revelation was before environmental and political challenges made those economics worse. Unless unobtanium can me mined, tooled, and manufactured cheaply into airframe parts and power such as scram-jet or super cruising turbofans can push a plane at Mach 2 with 200+ seats behind the pilot, methinks its just a pretty artist's conception on a Pop Mechanics or Science magazine cover.
- yabones 4y agoWell, the problem was never technological to start with. The problem with supersonic transports was and will always be economic. There's a reason that there were only two SSTs in the 20th century instead of the five or six that were planned, and it's because the bean counters at Boeing, McDonnel-Douglas, and Lockheed-Martin wouldn't let their companies bankrupt themselves over a vanity project. So, you take that and couple it with 21st century VC-appeal and you have a fantastic money-losing-machine whether it works or not. Hell, it probably does work with enough R&D, but that was never the problem in the first place.
- sidewndr46 4y agoTo be technical, I'd actually argue there were four. The first Concorde reached production & was later redesigned to include an afterburner (or reheat). Why I forget, but it apparently did actually save some fuel since it was used while accelerating to supersonic then shut off. The Tu-144 went the opposite direction. Introduce with military engines which require full time afterburner. Later it was redesigned and re-engined with a non-military engine not needing afterburner all the time. So two airframes, but with four distinct airplanes produced as a result. None of these were particularly economical, to your point.
- TylerE 4y agoHuh? The Concorde was designed with afterburners right from the start. It certainly did not enter service without them.
- pmyteh 4y agoYes; the Olympus engines used were derivatives of an existing military turbojet and had reheat from the beginning. It was used for takeoff and then to get through the high-drag transonic regime as quickly as possible to minimise fuel use. Once at cruising speed the engines operated 'dry'. There was a longer-range 'Concorde B' designed, which was intended to have larger engines with no reheat at all (as well as larger wings and some other changes) but this was cancelled when it became apparent that it would never be profitable.
- tlogan 4y agoI have very simple way of figuring if something will succeed ir it is a scam. If CEO have some experience in the field then it might succeed (workday, salesforce, okta, etc.) If not, then it is probably a scam. Of course, there are exceptions but these exceptions prove the rule.
- _fizz_buzz_ 4y agoHarsh! I think Boom is trying to be SpaceX. A technology that is definitely possible, but pretty difficult to pull off as a start-up. But saying they are Theranos or Madoff is unfair. If they succeed to make the technology work and then succeed to make it profitable is of course not obvious at this point.
- ghaff 4y agoI'd argue there's a significant market for the pre-SpaceX rockets--which are still used today. There's just a much larger potential market for significantly cheaper rockets given sufficient reliability as well. There is on the other hand no apparent market for commercial supersonic passenger flight given the economics. That doesn't mean that some people wouldn't pay the freight but that there hasn't been enough apparent market to build an airplane program around that.
- pbreit 4y agoAre any of your comments defensible?
- Melatonic 4y agoIs it possible they had some insider knowledge of engines being developed at one of the big manufacturers? Thinking out loud here - lets say you have a few senior engineers that know that GE or Boeing or RR or something is currently working on a smaller supersonic engine. You know you cannot yourselves design such an engine but if it is released maybe it would make sense to get a head start designing a product to take advantage of it?