Boom Supersonic Overture M1.8 SST

Trying to ensure that the more eco radically inclined of the current majority party in Congress don't get it into their heads to kill the funding, more than likely.
 
It's not a matter of Congress or politics or even Global warming: supersonic airliners or bizjets are an economic idiocy, as they already were 60 years ago. Plus the sonic boom issue.
Same for all the hypersonic hype (Hermeus...)

Go suborbital / ballistic with jets and rockets. No sonic boom, no more heat barrier, only proven engines. Can hit Mach 22 instead of Mach 2, Mach 5 or Mach 6.

Not an Elon Musk die-hard fan, but using Starship there is pretty smart. Except for rocket thunder - not good, although the offshore platform trick is smart.

Horizontal / atmospheric / airbreathing flight is only viable subsonically. After that, the sound and heat barriers are total hell. Better to shoot vertically out of the troublesome atmosphere, on rocket power; as soon as possible.
 
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Archibald said:
Horizontal / atmospheric / airbreathing flight is only viable subsonically. After that, the sound and heat barriers are total hell.
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Sorry, but that's rubbish. The practical heat limit for conventional light alloys is Mach 2.2, and flight profile management to mitigate sonic booms is a long-established art. The Mach 3+ Lockheed Blackbird spyplanes coped with the sonic boom issue all right; halving their cruising speed not only helps even more with that, but allows the use of cheap light alloys and carbon composites throughout.

I'd also take strong issue with your claims for the economics of near-orbital rocket speeds, but that is off-topic here.
 
I should have said: ECONOMICAL limit. As in: 747 succeeded, Concorde failed... on economics ground.

Makes little economic sense for civilian aircraft to try and fly beyond the sound barrier, or running straight into the heat barrier...
-Technically, yes, thank you Captain Obvious, it's feasible.
-For the military, too, it makes sense.
 
Archibald said:
I should have said: ECONOMICAL limit. As in: 747 succeeded, Concorde failed... on economics ground.
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Perhaps you haven't noticed, but Boom's principal strategy is to do better than Concorde in every area - technological, environmental and economical. Space tourism is a big enough market to attract several players already, it seems untenable to suggest there is no room for a little Mach 1.5 globetrotting squeezed in between.
 
Also, by distributing the cost of supersonic flight among a larger share of passengers, Supersonic airlines will re-attract the high-end share of business travelers. A profitable share of the market pulled away from commercial flight by the pandemic and the speed and range of the new business jets.

For that, you'd need real speed. And just doing Mach 1.+ won't make it:
- counterbalance border crossing time
- offset international hub transit time
- offer a price advantage as regular schedules.

So, by flying as fast as Mach 2, you can counter balance the first two points
By having enough cabin volume, you can access departure slots, unavailable to a smaller design or a supersonic business jet and compress the fixed cost per premium seats.
 
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^ Indeed! You hardly needed to have been a Delphinian Oracle to predict this wasn't going to go smoothly. The glossy brochures are easy. Flight-rated hardware is...not. Sure you can go supersonic but can you balance the books while doing it? Between the green revolution, the explosion in use of zoom et al and oil-prices in general? [8-Ball] Outlook not so good. [8-Ball]
 
A civilian mach 2 engine with a decent fuel consumption and not too much noise nor pollution is like squaring a circle. If a turbofan it sucks in supersonic flight regime. If a turbojet, it doesn't sucks in supersonic but gets thirsty and noisy and polluting.
And with the growing hatred against SUBSONIC air travel, going supersonic adds another layer of hate, straight out of anti-Concorde and anti-SST protest from exactly... 50 years ago.

What could possibly go wrong, I don't know.
 
Opportunistic Minnow said:
Archibald said:
What could possibly go wrong, I don't know.
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Ooo oooo! I know this one, a hot-air balloon over the runway? (I like that film - sue me!).

Seriously though, I agree. I really don't know why they are persisting.
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Yeah, but The Great Alain Delon Himself was at the controls, so nothing could happen to Concorde. Not even slightly damaged when doing a belly landing on the snow in the Alps (from memory...).
(Alain Delon is famous among french critics to speak of himself in third person, like Jules Cesar back in the day. French "Spitting image" - Les Guignols - had a field day with his puppet.)

In passing, Airplane was an all too necessary and very defintive ruining of this very kind of Disasters movies craze.
To think they lifted entire dialogues out of "Zero hour" without changing a word. And then they handled that to Nielsen, with a straight face obviously.

"Our survival hinges on one thing – finding someone who not only can fly this plane, but didn't have fish for dinner." ROTFL
 
Flyaway said:
I don’t think you can blame Boom for the pandemic turning up now and the changes that has caused to work and travelling.
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Not sure anyone is but their business case before C19 was dependent on the vagaries of fuel prices. With the recent seismic shifts in the aviation landscape in addition to the usual economic and geopolitical tumults, is it really out of order to question the wisdom of this venture?!
 
The economic case of civilian supersonic travel has been doubtful since 1963 at least... the year PanAm bought Concordes and JFK got another "Apollo moment" with the SST.
 
Opportunistic Minnow said:
Flyaway said:
I don’t think you can blame Boom for the pandemic turning up now and the changes that has caused to work and travelling.
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Not sure anyone is but their business case before C19 was dependent on the vagaries of fuel prices. With the recent seismic shifts in the aviation landscape in addition to the usual economic and geopolitical tumults, is it really out of order to question the wisdom of this venture?!
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I’d argue that is now relegated to little more than a what if scenario. We can only deal with the economy as it is due to the pandemic so big an impact has it had especially on travel.
 
@Flyaway I don't understand your post. I'm saying it wasn't a very good idea before C19 so after C19, it really isn't a good idea. No what ifs involved. Just cold, hard fiscal reality as it stands now. Unless they can break even with 4 sheiks and an astro-mogul?
 
The big problem with this project aside from the flawed business plan is that a tiny start up company is attempting to build a large SST while claiming that advances with CAD software, composites and engine technology means they can do it cheaper and faster than the previous attempts. Everyone who understands aircraft design knows that is a load of crap. Take a look at this interview. When asked how the aircraft will succeed where Concorde failed, their answers are generally vague without going into much detail. For example, they claim that the noise footprint will be very low without elaborating just how that will be done. Even if their demonstrator aircraft brings additional investors on board, an aircraft of this size and complexity will retire at least 5-6 billion dollars to make it through certification, not to mention the costs of setting up an assembly plant.

https://airwaysmag.com/interview/interview-seven-questions-for-boom-supersonic/
 
red admiral said:
You've got to remember that their business model is to get money from venture capital rather than actually deliver any aircraft. Can easily last 20 years or so from this approach and get a fair few million for the many directors.
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And you know this how?

Sorry not trying to be awkward here but these kind of claims need some kind of evidence to back them up.

It’s odd that people are so down on some of these startups, need I remind people Space X was a small startup once that many were confidentially predicting wouldn’t last or go anywhere and that reusable rockets were a madness.
 
Elon Musk was rather serious and had some credentials when he started it all (even if Tesla and SpaceX nearly ent under at the same time, circa 2008).

Those folks... we don't know. I specifically dragged Aerion there because they really lasted 20 years achieving little except burning a lot of money.
 
To Boom's credit they do have a subscale Demonstrator preparing to fly, which is a lot further than Aerion ever got.

The Greensboro choice is, however, concerning. Boeing thought setting up in SC would be a cakewalk, and even with all the resources they could call upon they struggled a lot getting that facility in shape. This site is hours from NC's existing aerospace knowledge base, and despite their "near the ocean" talking point it's about 200 miles to open ocean. I'm not saying locating in Taxbreakistan means they'll never amount to anything, but it's not a small red flag.
 
Flyaway said:
And you know this how?
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I might be wrong but their position is well beyond "optimistic".

But 2026 first flight for Overture isn't remotely credible. They should be past PDR and starting long lead item manufacturing. Instead they haven't even decided whether to build a new engine from scratch or not. Compare to X-59 which will take about 5 years PDR to flight test and that's got loads of off the shelf systems from T-38 and F-16.
 
Archibald said:
Elon Musk was rather serious and had some credentials when he started it all (even if Tesla and SpaceX nearly ent under at the same time, circa 2008).

Those folks... we don't know. I specifically dragged Aerion there because they really lasted 20 years achieving little except burning a lot of money.
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I happen to know many of the Boom folks, and trust me, they are serious in every regard. Will they be successful, who knows. But making unsubstantiated derogatory comments certainly will not help their clause. Furthermore, these are not the type of people that want to nor would line their pockets with investor money. There are plenty of folks in the aerospace industry that would do so, but not the Boom folks.
 
Moose said:
To Boom's credit they do have a subscale Demonstrator preparing to fly, which is a lot further than Aerion ever got.
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On the gripping hand, they rolled that plane out 16 months ago and still haven't even done a taxi test as far as we know.
 
TomS said:
Moose said:
To Boom's credit they do have a subscale Demonstrator preparing to fly, which is a lot further than Aerion ever got.
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On the gripping hand, they rolled that plane out 16 months ago and still haven't even done a taxi test as far as we know.
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Actually, they had an issue with Centennial airport not wanting them to conduct test work there. That is the primary reason there was no test work at the airport.
 
Saw an update on twitter today

"XB-1 is taxiing toward a key milestone: completion of engine runs. Ground testing is underway in Colorado on our supersonic demonstrator"

Sexy legs :p
 

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Moose said:
To Boom's credit they do have a subscale Demonstrator preparing to fly, which is a lot further than Aerion ever got.

The Greensboro choice is, however, concerning. Boeing thought setting up in SC would be a cakewalk, and even with all the resources they could call upon they struggled a lot getting that facility in shape. This site is hours from NC's existing aerospace knowledge base, and despite their "near the ocean" talking point it's about 200 miles to open ocean. I'm not saying locating in Taxbreakistan means they'll never amount to anything, but it's not a small red flag.
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I believe Boom is going to North Carolina.
Moose said:
To Boom's credit they do have a subscale Demonstrator preparing to fly, which is a lot further than Aerion ever got.

The Greensboro choice is, however, concerning. Boeing thought setting up in SC would be a cakewalk, and even with all the resources they could call upon they struggled a lot getting that facility in shape. This site is hours from NC's existing aerospace knowledge base, and despite their "near the ocean" talking point it's about 200 miles to open ocean. I'm not saying locating in Taxbreakistan means they'll never amount to anything, but it's not a small red flag.
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Bounce said:
Saw an update on twitter today

"XB-1 is taxiing toward a key milestone: completion of engine runs. Ground testing is underway in Colorado on our supersonic demonstrator"

Sexy legs :p
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Press release from last week here:

https://boomsupersonic.com/flyby/post/start-your-engines
Looks like they can do some low-speed taxi testing (up to 60 knots) at Centennial but they'll have to move to Mojave Air & Space Port for the high-speed taxi and flight testing.
 
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Pulled a few of the images from that link in case it goes away.... Mark
 

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I have some Aerionish feeling about all that...
XB-1 rolled out 10 month ago, no maiden flight still. Yet, XB-1 is a scaled down demonstrator for an early Overture aerodynamic configuration, now dramatically changed.
 

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