Boom Aerospace

[sghill]

Not space-related, but definitely aerospace news!

Boom Supersonic announced today the purchase deposit for 20 of its Overture supersonic passenger aircraft by American Airlines with a purchase option for 40 more. We may finally have supersonic flights again in the US!

This follows the 2021 deal with United for 15 aircraft and a purchase option for 35 more.

https://boomsupersonic.com/news/post/american-airlines-announces-agreement-to-purchase-boom-supersonic-overture-aircraft-places-deposit-on-20-overtures

and the aircarft:
https://boomsupersonic.com/overture

The Overture is about the same size and has nearly the same range as Concorde, but without the ear splitting engine noise on take-off.

AUG 16, 2022
American Airlines Announces Agreement to Purchase Boom Supersonic Overture Aircraft, Places Deposit on 20 Overtures
American, the world’s largest airline, poised to have the world’s largest supersonic fleet with new Boom Supersonic aircraft FORT WORTH, Texas, and DENVER, Aug. 16, 2022 — American Airlines and Boom Supersonic today announced the airline’s agreement to purchase up to 20 Overture aircraft, with an option for an additional 40. American has paid a non-refundable deposit on the initial 20 aircraft. Overture is expected to carry passengers at twice the speed of today’s fastest commercial aircraft.

[butters]

The Overture is about the same size and has nearly the same range as Concorde, but without the sonic boom and ear splitting engine noise on take-off.

Overture is essentially a 75% scale model of Concorde with three medium-bypass Rolls-Royce engines that don't exist yet. The engines will not have afterburners and should be significantly quieter on takeoff than Concorde. However, it's the only supersonic transport project of this new generation that is NOT pursuing low-boom solutions. The first flight of the XB-1 demonstrator in Mojave is apparently any month now.

[Cherokee43v6]

NOT without Sonic Boom.

Still cannot do Supersonic over land.

[soyuzu]

The Overture is about the same size and has nearly the same range as Concorde, but without the sonic boom and ear splitting engine noise on take-off.

Overture is essentially a 75% scale model of Concorde with three medium-bypass Rolls-Royce engines that don't exist yet. The engines will not have afterburners and should be significantly quieter on takeoff than Concorde. However, it's the only supersonic transport project of this new generation that is NOT pursuing low-boom solutions. The first flight of the XB-1 demonstrator in Mojave is apparently any month now.

It has become a 2/3 scale model of Boeing 2707 after recent update

[Robotbeat]

A smaller concord might’ve survived longer than the original concord due to higher flightrate.

That change alone could’ve made a big difference.

But also, global real GDP is more than 4 times what it was in 1969 when Concord debuted. Worldwide airline passenger volume is up like 20 times since 1969.

The original Concord was unchanged in any significant degree from 1969 debut until 2003, an extremely long run. No transatlantic passenger aircraft built in 1969 would be commercially viable today.

So with upgrading the efficiency to in line with modern standards (obvious differences due to supersonic regime!!!), upgrading avionics and safety and passenger comforts… I can definitely see it doing far better than the original Concord did. The same exact concord but with 20 times the demand for flights debuting in 1969 would’ve made the original Concord a success, with probably lots of follow-on aircraft and upgrades.

The near term wrinkle of COVID made a pretty big impact on international travel, but that’s a relatively near term thing and already in 2022 airline revenues are back to double what they were in 2003 when Concord retired.

I think Boom has a chance of success. The wrinkle I think is the fact that making ANY largeish cleansheet passenger jet is incredibly hard nowadays, costing billions in development money, even ignoring subsonic vs supersonic. Propulsion is still a huge questionmark for Overture.

If they can avoid being gobbled up by Boeing or Airbus (or some Chinese firm) while keeping above water financially, it’ll be a huge boon to the stagnant passenger aviation industry (and it’d be interesting to see them branch out to efficient subsonic as well). But let’s not burn that bridge before it hatches or whatever.

[butters]

A private supersonic jet makes more sense because the market that cares the most about trip time also wants to depart whenever they're ready to go. Some will want the prestige of owning their own supersonic jet, but most will probably want a fractional ownership arrangement like NetJets where they can fly pretty much whenever they want, and the Twitter bots can't climate-shame them because the tail number is not registered to the rich/famous people onboard.

During the heyday of Concorde, there was a stampede to the bank of payphones in the terminal after deboarding. A lot of the reason why they were paying a premium was to minimize the amount of time they were out of contact with their organizations. Today it's a different world, and with Starlink coming to commercial aviation, the loss of productivity associated with time spent on the airliner is becoming even smaller.

There is a minimum practical size involved, because a delta-winged twinjet isn't going to cut it for transoceanic flights. I was astonished when Boom announced their original plan because it was a twinjet, and with a low aspect supersonic wing, it's not very nice to lose half your thrust over the middle of the Atlantic. They pretty quickly pivoted to a trijet for this reason.

[hektor]

Can it carry a small airborne launcher and drop it at supersonic speed ? 

[JAFO]

United and American are both in contract talks with their pilots. United put their Contract vote on hold after American released a better proposal to their pilots during the voting period, and after outrage from the pilot group over the contract proposal. Boom is a combination of 3 things: incentivizing the pilots over a new toy (see also: Shiny Jet Syndrome), PR to the general public, and hiding money to not pay employees a better wage.


I doubt any pilots currently employed by either United or American will ever fly these planes.

[BrightLight]

It would seem that Boom is going to have to put hard currency on the table to get the engine development going if this report is correct:

https://theaircurrent.com/engine-development/boom-supersonic-rolls-royce-engine-business-model/

The article suggests that Rolls Royce wont develop the engine without Boom putting in the cash.

[butters]

United and American are both in contract talks with their pilots. United put their Contract vote on hold after American released a better proposal to their pilots during the voting period, and after outrage from the pilot group over the contract proposal. Boom is a combination of 3 things: incentivizing the pilots over a new toy (see also: Shiny Jet Syndrome), PR to the general public, and hiding money to not pay employees a better wage.


I doubt any pilots currently employed by either United or American will ever fly these planes.

Pan Am used this strategy for quite a while. They were the first (and I think only?) US airline to place a non-binding order for Concorde, and they told their pilots that they would be the first airline pilots in America to break the sound barrier. This was the order that frakked off JFK and prompted the phone call to Juan Trippe that led to the ill-fated US SST effort.

[butters]

Rolls-Royce has officially terminated their relationship with Boom, declining to develop engines for the aircraft:

https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2022-09-06/boom-seeks-engine-airlines-mull-supersonic-use-case

We here at NSF understand that it's hard for an aerospace transportation provider to innovate and to control their own destiny when they rely on other companies enmeshed in existing business models to supply appropriate engines.

[libra]

United and American are both in contract talks with their pilots. United put their Contract vote on hold after American released a better proposal to their pilots during the voting period, and after outrage from the pilot group over the contract proposal. Boom is a combination of 3 things: incentivizing the pilots over a new toy (see also: Shiny Jet Syndrome), PR to the general public, and hiding money to not pay employees a better wage.


I doubt any pilots currently employed by either United or American will ever fly these planes.

Pan Am used this strategy for quite a while. They were the first (and I think only?) US airline to place a non-binding order for Concorde, and they told their pilots that they would be the first airline pilots in America to break the sound barrier. This was the order that frakked off JFK and prompted the phone call to Juan Trippe that led to the ill-fated US SST effort.

Bingo. Happened in June 1963. I have an old science magazine (thanks mom) from March 1964 going into the details of the whole thing.
The same Pan Am was the first to cancel their Concorde six airframes order in January 1973 - even before the first oil shock. I can only understand why they did that. 747 was a far better bargain for them.

That engine issue is a big one. Military turbofans come the closest, but have their own limits. Civilian turbofans are quiet and fuel efficient, but way too slow. Clean-sheet-of-paper engine of course has no such such issues, but will be a huge investment for a company like Boom.

Back at EBACE 1997 Dassault (4000 combat jets and 3000 bizjets under their belt, so they know both stuff) disclosed the SSBJ projet.
Four years later they had an honest to god design but had ran into a brickwall: no way of getting an engine. They couldn't pay for a "clean sheet" one (too expensive for less than 500 airframe market) civilian turbofans were too big and slow, M88 (from their own Rafale baby) was too maintenance expensive, noisy and thirsty.

I like to be proven wrong, because Boom design is sexy and the company tries at least to tackle the "supersonic airliner" differently - no SSBJ, no Concorde either - something " in between".
But the engine problem seems to bit them back, and it is really a huge b**tch... female dog.

[Robotbeat]

There are so many different pumped rocket engine startups and many companies were able to make their own engines for their own launch vehicles. That enabled the proliferation of launch vehicles were have today (half of which have launched and half are set to launch in the next 24 months).

I wonder if… there just needs to be an in-house developed jet engine for this to happen.

[JAFO]

There are so many different pumped rocket engine startups and many companies were able to make their own engines for their own launch vehicles. That enabled the proliferation of launch vehicles were have today (half of which have launched and half are set to launch in the next 24 months).

I wonder if… there just needs to be an in-house developed jet engine for this to happen.

How do you make a Billion dollars in the airline industry?
Start with Two.

[Proponent]

A great deal of scepticism about the prospects for supersonic airliners is expressed in the 17 August episode of Aviation Week's Check 6 podcast. Supersonic business jets are expected sooner.

[Eric Hedman]

There are so many different pumped rocket engine startups and many companies were able to make their own engines for their own launch vehicles. That enabled the proliferation of launch vehicles were have today (half of which have launched and half are set to launch in the next 24 months).

I wonder if… there just needs to be an in-house developed jet engine for this to happen.

Pratt&Whitney got a $4.4 billion dollar contract in July to develop a variant of an existing engine for the F-35.  I suspect starting from scratch and building an engine development team would not be cheap.

[libra]

I would say that rocket engines are not restricted by FAA severe noise and safety issues (although we are coming closer from this: SpaceX Starbase, cough, cough). And yes, those requirements can make an aircraft engine much, much harder to design than a rocket engine.
Can't remember the exact name of the FAA takeoff noise regulation of the early 1970's (FAR-36 ?) but it was a huge PITA for SST engine designers. Rockets have no such worries.

[john smith 19]

It would seem that Boom is going to have to put hard currency on the table to get the engine development going if this report is correct:

https://theaircurrent.com/engine-development/boom-supersonic-rolls-royce-engine-business-model/

The article suggests that Rolls Royce wont develop the engine without Boom putting in the cash.

Should anyone be surprised at this?
What's in it for RR? Kudos of developing engine for first supersonic airliner? Got that with Olympus for Concorde.  Huge new market for this engine? What huge market?

At the least Boom are looking at some serious modifications to an existing engine.  At most they are looking at a clean-sheet development.  That's for an engine to civilian standards of life, repair and maintainability and civilian safety standards.

These days for an engine that size that's a multi $Bn committment.

In the late 60's RR bet the company on carbon fiber fan blades with the RB211. They went bankrupt as a result. They have excellent component tech but are very weary of new engine development without either a major rock solid customer (100s, not 10s) or a very clear market.

Boom doesn't offer either. 

[john smith 19]

Can't remember the exact name of the FAA takeoff noise regulation of the early 1970's (FAR-36 ?) but it was a huge PITA for SST engine designers. Rockets have no such worries.

Actually it wasn't. When the operator finally got a hearing they were able to show that takeoff noise (at the same measurement location) was lower than that of contemporary airliners that were taking off from that runway.

What made life difficult for Concorde was the time from the complaints being made to it being heard and the fact they were banned from flying during that period. 

What is known to be a problem is Concorde was designed with the noise standards in effect during it's time, not  with expected future standards, and of course not with oil prices rising 300% (to $12/barrell    )

[john smith 19]

Rolls-Royce has officially terminated their relationship with Boom, declining to develop engines for the aircraft:

https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2022-09-06/boom-seeks-engine-airlines-mull-supersonic-use-case

We here at NSF understand that it's hard for an aerospace transportation provider to innovate and to control their own destiny when they rely on other companies enmeshed in existing business models to supply appropriate engines.

Just as we understand it's difficult for an engine manufacturer to innovate when they reuly on other companies enmeshed in existing businness models to suppy appropriate airframes