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By this token, we should never see fission and fusion startups. Yet NuScale is quite successful. They are now a publicly listed company (ticker SMR) with a mark

By this token, we should never see fission and fusion startups. Yet NuScale is quite successful. They are now a publicly listed company (ticker SMR) with a market cap of more than half a billion dollars. Not quite a unicorn yet, but then they did not ship any reactor either. Once they do, their market cap will shoot up. Helion is the startup that Sam Altman is so happy to talk about (e.g. [1]). Maybe it will not succeed. Scratch that, most likely it will not succeed. But if it has a 1% chance to succeed, then Sam will see his investment go up by a factor of 10000, so in expected value it is a winner. Boom is just the same. The chance it will fail is about 90%. But if it does succeed, it will return much, much more than 10x to their early investors. [1] https://blog.samaltman.com/helion https://blog.samaltman.com/helion

foobiekr 4y ago
You had it right at the first sentence. Becoming publicly listed at a time when total garbage was getting on the market via SPACs (which is what NuScale did) is not validation of anything. Boom has a 99.999% chance of failing. Without an engine lined up, they aren't even in the business they're claiming they are, and haven't been for years.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  It so happens that NuScale went public exactly 6 months ago. Since then S&P500 went down more than 15% while NuScale went up more than 30%. As for Boom, I have to admit, they have a problem. The problem is that companies like GE that make jet engines, can make quite some nice profits by selling to the military. The XA100 [1] most likely exceeds any requirements Boom can only dream of, but being military technology, it is off limits for them. If GE lands a fat contract to provide engines for the F35, then they'll sell thousands of engines, with very little uncertainty. Getting involved with Boom will only complicate their life. If they don't fully compartmentalize the two departments, they can get in trouble. If they do, there's no synergy. Plus, the doubts will always be there that they leak military technology to the civilian side. That's a shame. GE makes some incredible jet engines. Maybe the war in Ukraine will end and one day Putin won't be president anymore, and Russia won't be under sanctions. Then Boom could buy an engine from Saturn, such as [2], the engine that powers various Sukhois. The military-civilian tension will still be there, but Russia will need to export things, so maybe a deal could be made. [1] https://www.geaviation.com/propulsion/military/xa100 https://www.geaviation.com/propulsion/military/xa100 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_AL-31 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_AL-31
  - smachiz 4y ago
    A military engine is unlikely to be the answer for Boom. They just won't be cost effective. The math for efficiency and maintenance is just different for sovereign governments, maybe a derivative could be made more efficient with less maintenance required. Fighter jets require like 6 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight - sure, it's not just the engines, but it's a big part of it. The real problem boom has is the number of viable flights is _very_ low - really just the ones Concorde flew (NY-LON, NY-PAR), and Concorde never made money. A couple comments up someone claimed DXB-NYC being a route - more than half of the great circle route is over land, and it's more than 50% longer than the rosy projections Boom put out. Realistically, they'll be lucky if they're within 10% of their stated range. But of course, not without an engine. This is what 4,250nm would get you from JFK: http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?R=4250nm%40JFK http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?R=4250nm%40JFK We also didn't care about being green back during the Concorde - but Supersonic flights will likely be 5x-10x worse on a per passenger seat mile basis for emissions. Really hard to get around wind resistance being a square of velocity.
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      > Really hard to get around wind resistance being a square of velocity. That's a common misunderstanding. Very common. In cruise mode Concorde was as efficient as a Boeing 747. When you go faster, you do two things: 1. reduce the angle of attack, 2. fly higher. Concorde was flying twice as high as subsonic jets. The end result is that you still get increased drag, but much less than the square (or cube) of velocity would suggest. Ok, but increased drag it is, right? Right, but you go faster. If your drag goes up by a factor of 2, but your speed by a factor of 4, then in the end you burn less fuel. It so happens that Concorde's drag went up virtually by the same factor as its speed. The problem with Concorde was that it was horrible aerodynamics during the takeoff stage. At that point the plane is the heaviest (its has full fuel tanks), so the problem was compounded by some sort of "tyranny of the rocket equation". Can Boom solve this problem? My guess is that this was their pitch to investors. In the 50+ years since Concorde was designed, both computers and computational fluid dynamics experienced huge advances. The computer I'm writing this on has probably performed more flops since I started writing this comment than the entire computational modeling for Concorde in its decade-long work. As for military engines (and their maintenance) being expensive. F-35 is like a Formula 1 car, as USAF general Charles Brown once said. Its engines are pushed to the limit on a constant basis. A commercial jet is very different. It does not need to pull huge Gs. Its trajectory is very, very predictable. I'm sure a company like GE could make a very cost efficient jet engine for Boom. It's just that they have much better ROI if they build engines for F-35.

foobiekr 4y ago

You had it right at the first sentence. Becoming publicly listed at a time when total garbage was getting on the market via SPACs (which is what NuScale did) is not validation of anything. Boom has a 99.999% chance of failing. Without an engine lined up, they aren't even in the business they're claiming they are, and haven't been for years.

credit_guy 4y ago
It so happens that NuScale went public exactly 6 months ago. Since then S&P500 went down more than 15% while NuScale went up more than 30%. As for Boom, I have to admit, they have a problem. The problem is that companies like GE that make jet engines, can make quite some nice profits by selling to the military. The XA100 [1] most likely exceeds any requirements Boom can only dream of, but being military technology, it is off limits for them. If GE lands a fat contract to provide engines for the F35, then they'll sell thousands of engines, with very little uncertainty. Getting involved with Boom will only complicate their life. If they don't fully compartmentalize the two departments, they can get in trouble. If they do, there's no synergy. Plus, the doubts will always be there that they leak military technology to the civilian side. That's a shame. GE makes some incredible jet engines. Maybe the war in Ukraine will end and one day Putin won't be president anymore, and Russia won't be under sanctions. Then Boom could buy an engine from Saturn, such as [2], the engine that powers various Sukhois. The military-civilian tension will still be there, but Russia will need to export things, so maybe a deal could be made. [1] https://www.geaviation.com/propulsion/military/xa100 https://www.geaviation.com/propulsion/military/xa100 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_AL-31 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_AL-31
- smachiz 4y ago
  A military engine is unlikely to be the answer for Boom. They just won't be cost effective. The math for efficiency and maintenance is just different for sovereign governments, maybe a derivative could be made more efficient with less maintenance required. Fighter jets require like 6 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight - sure, it's not just the engines, but it's a big part of it. The real problem boom has is the number of viable flights is _very_ low - really just the ones Concorde flew (NY-LON, NY-PAR), and Concorde never made money. A couple comments up someone claimed DXB-NYC being a route - more than half of the great circle route is over land, and it's more than 50% longer than the rosy projections Boom put out. Realistically, they'll be lucky if they're within 10% of their stated range. But of course, not without an engine. This is what 4,250nm would get you from JFK: http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?R=4250nm%40JFK http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?R=4250nm%40JFK We also didn't care about being green back during the Concorde - but Supersonic flights will likely be 5x-10x worse on a per passenger seat mile basis for emissions. Really hard to get around wind resistance being a square of velocity.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    > Really hard to get around wind resistance being a square of velocity. That's a common misunderstanding. Very common. In cruise mode Concorde was as efficient as a Boeing 747. When you go faster, you do two things: 1. reduce the angle of attack, 2. fly higher. Concorde was flying twice as high as subsonic jets. The end result is that you still get increased drag, but much less than the square (or cube) of velocity would suggest. Ok, but increased drag it is, right? Right, but you go faster. If your drag goes up by a factor of 2, but your speed by a factor of 4, then in the end you burn less fuel. It so happens that Concorde's drag went up virtually by the same factor as its speed. The problem with Concorde was that it was horrible aerodynamics during the takeoff stage. At that point the plane is the heaviest (its has full fuel tanks), so the problem was compounded by some sort of "tyranny of the rocket equation". Can Boom solve this problem? My guess is that this was their pitch to investors. In the 50+ years since Concorde was designed, both computers and computational fluid dynamics experienced huge advances. The computer I'm writing this on has probably performed more flops since I started writing this comment than the entire computational modeling for Concorde in its decade-long work. As for military engines (and their maintenance) being expensive. F-35 is like a Formula 1 car, as USAF general Charles Brown once said. Its engines are pushed to the limit on a constant basis. A commercial jet is very different. It does not need to pull huge Gs. Its trajectory is very, very predictable. I'm sure a company like GE could make a very cost efficient jet engine for Boom. It's just that they have much better ROI if they build engines for F-35.