Even if supersonic flight becomes cheaper via new fuels or propulsion, that doesn’t reset the baseline. The same advances (materials, engines, fuel handling, manufacturing) will also apply to subsonic aircraft, where the physics are already far more energy-efficient. So if supersonic gets “cheap,” traditional jets will get much cheaper. Airlines will always arbitrage toward the lowest energy-per-seat-km for most routes, and supersonic flight is structurally disadvantaged there (drag, noise, routing constraints).

Historically, faster transport doesn’t replace slower transport wholesale; it creates a premium tier while pushing the mass market down to a lower cost/energy equilibrium. Concorde didn’t kill widebodies, widebodies got cheaper. My intuition: supersonic may of course exist as a niche (time-sensitive, premium), but its biggest impact would be indirect, accelerating efficiency gains that make conventional aviation even more dominant and cheaper.

and later in the article:

> Remember, Concorde burned 52% of its fuel just taxiing down the runway.

Setting aside that these are completely different claims, the author does not cite this claim at all and it fails my personal gut check. Where is this information coming from?

The whole post comes off a bit as someone who doesn't really understand the passenger air travel industry very well, and isn't particularly interested in changing that.

But in practice, what happened with semiconductors is the exception, not the rule.

We are still often making wild predictions about the future of technology based on some kind of exponential take-off, it may turn out to be a lot more constrained by physics and energy density.

Supersonic commercial air transport is one such technology, possible and proven, yet not viable.

Mars colonies or interstellar travel could be in a similar bucket.

I really don't believe this. Even the Boom website says that most of these are "options" to purchase, but I'm guessing the "firm" orders are basically just non-binding letters of intent that effectively say "Sure, if you build it with these specs, we'll buy some at price X. Unless we change our mind."

And I'm further guessing that the terms include dates that Boom has zero chance of hitting. The author estimates that these won't be in commercial service before 2033, but I think that's still optimistic. My understanding (could be wrong, not an expert) is that new regular airliners take many billions and 10+ years to design, build, and certify, and that's without the complications of supersonic and brand new engine designs.

The Boom stories have been circulating on HN for a decade now [1], and they originally were claiming two years to have a manned prototype, which was obviously untrue. I guess they are like the Tesla of the sky in that regard.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11329286

I struggle to imagine this is a very efficient design, that something designed for going mach 1.something breathing significant air is ideally suited for being at sea level not moving running a generator. Just feels like the stupid timeline having it laughs at us all again. https://boomsupersonic.com/press-release/boom-supersonic-to-...

Update: also, I was surprised in the first place because I thought the big challenge for boom was they were trying & failing to get engines. They eventually got Kratos to sign up but I thought it'd mostly be a Kratos engine... https://ir.kratosdefense.com/news-releases/news-release-deta...

And yes, I know flying only makes roughly 5% of world emissions. It also turns out that these are some of the most avoidable emissions. We should be cutting them first.

Because the technologies we had were good enough. It turned out that very few people needed to cross an ocean in three hours instead of six hours. On my way to this conference, I flew from Switzerland to San Francisco. It took eleven hours and cost me around a thousand dollars. It was a long flight and kind of uncomfortable and boring. But I crossed the planet in half a day!

Being able to get anywhere in the world in a day is really good enough. We complain about air travel but consider that for a couple of thousand dollars, you can go anywhere, overnight.

The people designing the planes of tomorrow got so caught up in the technology that they forgot to ask the very important question, “what are we building this for?”

Transpacific flights from California have no sonic boom population issues for 90% of the flight, and there’s already a large market of people spending $10k on business travel.

Reducing travel time from 12hrs to 4hrs would be a product with a lot more demand than 7hrs to 3hrs to Europe.

Since hearing that, I see the effect in other areas of life, and transportation is one. I travel differently when the flight is 3 hours as opposed to 7 or more. Shorter trips, less luggage, less advance planning, less exhaustion, etc.

At first it will be available only at a premium, but that's how innovation usually goes. When the market finds something people love, capital seeks opportunities to lower the cost and increase the quantity. The real price of travel by aviation has declined dramatically over the last 50 years, for example.

I've got friends and family all over the world... I would for sure go visit more often if it wasn't so darn long just to get there and back.

In an interview with CNBC Mr. Scholl talked about this pivot [2].

1. https://boomsupersonic.com/press-release/boom-supersonic-to-... 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELl2uUAfGBw

What is this? I can't find easily the meaning of "bits to atoms." Is this meaning that US is going away from digital "exports"?

What does that end up doing to the cost of a seat in coach?

That said, it might still be flying if its recertification flight hadn't happened on 9/11.

Nice (misleading) buried lede re: Boeing I suppose.

I'd love to be able to afford business or beyond but I honestly don't even want to try it because I know I won't want to go back.

That said the US used to have the space shuttle and that has gone the same way.

So the environmental impact isn't even worth mentioning?

There is a proven middle ground, where you can pay the current price or x the price for 2x the speed.

I swear boom spends more on puff pieces than any other aerospace company. They continuously make claims they will do things by certain dates that are unrealistic.

They claim they will be delivering airplanes to United that would be in service in 2029:

https://boomsupersonic.com/united https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/03/united-will-buy-15-ultrafast...

However new aircraft take 5-9 years to certify and they have not yet even built one! Not to mention new engines take a similar amount of time and they are supposedly building their own brand new engine, which is a substantially harder task.

Now they are claiming the first "test" flight will be in 3 years despite the fact that they still don't have a plane or an engine built. I hope someone over their let United know they are going to be a little late. Their website hasn't amended to article to say they were wrong.

I wonder if we can look to history to see how long it takes between when they say they will fly something and when it actually flies? Oh right, we can!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_XB-1

"The original design was unveiled at Centennial Airport in Dove Valley, near Denver, Colorado, on November 15, 2016,[6] and it was initially intended to make its first subsonic flight in late 2017"

"The XB-1 performed its first flight test on March 22, 2024, flown by test pilot Bill Shoemaker from Mojave Air and Space Port.[1]"

They were only 7 years off but we all make mistakes.

Astro Mechanica

- LNG isn't used because weight needed for fuel tanks that will keep it cold enough to stay liquid cancels out any benefits. For anyone interested in a famous failure of a similar idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_CL-400_Suntan - I don't know what analysis they are doing that makes them think reducing the number of passengers and going to supersonic is possible while maintaining current ticket prices... but it's not. - Engine and plane makers are not allowed to run airlines. Anyone unfamiliar with the field can look up United Aircraft. - Their engine does sound like it's trying to do some cool things. I kinda suspect it's just a fun way to pass the time on the governments dime given all the other unrealistic stuff they are talking about though.

Hermeus

These folks are legit. Don't know if they will be successful but outsourcing the jet engine and focusing their work on the ramjet and the integration of the two makes alot of sense.

What is this even supposed to mean?

To me this comes across as "I'm not sure if you'll be impressed by a supersonic jet that can surpress sonic booms, so I shoehorned AI into the description to jazz it up." It makes me wonder why the author doesn't think the former is impressive enough on its own.

Spacex and blue origin has already demonstrated heavy payload transport, why can we just move to this than work on supersonic

Sorry can't help but chuckle at this....

>no back to the future hoverboard

>no concorde

millennials bros we've been tricked

there's thing we lost we i.e skills, grit, creativity we might never recover from