[HN Gopher] XB-1 Supersonic Rollout
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XB-1 Supersonic Rollout
Author : tomovo
Score : 87 points
Date : 2020-10-07 19:20 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (boomsupersonic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (boomsupersonic.com)
| umvi wrote:
| Is most supersonic airframe tech military classified or
| something?
| areoform wrote:
| Airframes and the like automatically fall under ITAR.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_...
| the_duke wrote:
| Affordable supersonic aircraft seem like a great technological
| achievement, and I'm all for it.
|
| But would the impact be that high?
|
| Cutting flight time by 40-45% is nice, but end to end travel time
| includes driving to/from the airport and immigration, which does
| not change.
|
| Let's look at JFK-LHR (New York - London). The flight time is cut
| from 6.5h to 3.5h. Add 1.5 hours of travel and formalities at
| each end (which is ... optimistic), and you are at 6.5 vs 9.5.
|
| LA-Sydney is 14.5 vs 8.5, or 17.5 vs 11.5 end to end. That's
| certainly more significant.
|
| But is that difference really going to change if you take the
| trip or not? Would you be willing to pay a significant markup for
| that?
|
| Seems like the market would be constrained to high profile
| business travel, unless they can actually achieve parity with
| current business class prices.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| LA-Sydney would become as doable as Chicago-London, and one of
| these trips today is much, much easier than the other.
|
| The target per cost is equivalent to today's business class.
| Some people might jump at that. And we have no idea what a non-
| premium Boom cabin might look like.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| > _travel to /from the airport and immigration, which does not
| change._
|
| Musk's The Boring Company is working on changing the speed of
| travel to the airport. Midtown Manhattan to JFK is around 45
| minutes to drive. But it's only 11 miles away. If you can
| travel in a straight line at 80 mph, it should only take 8.3
| minutes).
|
| And rich people who buy flights like that can already take
| helicopters and have separate immigration/customs gates without
| lines and checks.
| tomcam wrote:
| Moving multilane traffic on a busy route to a single tunnel
| will cause an enormous amount of traffic churn on each end.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Nobody is talking about a single tunnel. The plan is to
| have a 3D network of tunnels.
| wefarrell wrote:
| High-profile business travel is a pretty huge market.
|
| They're likely to be indirectly relevant to mainstream air
| travel because coach seats are subsidized by first/business
| class, which this is likely to cannibalize.
| phkahler wrote:
| I noticed in the first video at 13:00 he says their team has
| former employees from other places like SpaceX, NASA, Amazon, and
| one other I cant remember, but the image shown has logos from
| those companies and Boeing. Had to wonder if not saying Boeing
| was deliberate given the problems they've been having.
| dingaling wrote:
| > the world's first independently developed supersonic jet
|
| Nope: https://www.jimbede.com/bd--10.html
| larkeith wrote:
| Well, IIRC no BD-10 ever actually went supersonic.
| [deleted]
| Someone1234 wrote:
| How does this seek to overcome the problem that killed Concorde:
| Civilian sonic booms over populations are _illegal_ , and most
| places aircraft want to fly to/from are cities?
|
| Concorde found a kinda niche between the East Coast of the US and
| European cities near the sea, but it really doesn't feel
| sustainable for an entire aircraft class to be limited to only
| that route (and wasn't for Concorde).
|
| If it doesn't go supersonic then what is the USP?
| gok wrote:
| Primarily they are targeting transoceanic routes. Transoceanic
| demand has increased substantially in recent years.
| Transatlantic traffic has doubled since Concorde went out of
| service. Transpacific travel has grown even more, and Concorde
| was unable to compete there.
| starik36 wrote:
| Why was Concorde unable to compete in the Pacific? Range?
| vkou wrote:
| Yes. Its maximum range was 4,500 miles. That won't even get
| you from Seattle to Tokyo (4,700 miles), let alone to
| anywhere else in Asia.
|
| You can do two hops, by stopping in Anchorage, which will
| get you to Tokyo or Seoul on the second hop (Stopping in
| Hawaii won't get you the range to go to Seoul), but at that
| point a no-stop subsonic flight is faster, more
| comfortable, burns less jet fuel, and does not require you
| to make a landing within spitting distance of the Arctic
| circle.
|
| This jet promises[1] to deliver a range of 4,500 nautical
| miles, which will _barely_ get you from Seattle to crash-
| landing in the mountains east of Seoul (4530 nautical
| miles)
|
| [1] It remains to be seen whether it will deliver on this
| promise.
| lumost wrote:
| Transpacific and trans-hemisphere super sonic flights would
| be an interesting. the demand to fly to Asia from North
| America is likely higher than currently observed due to lack
| of interest in 12-24 hour flights.
|
| With careful planning the fastest I can get to Australia/New
| Zealand is ~18-24 hours flight time - on a 10 day vacation
| that's ~40% of my vacation time including recovery from an 18
| hour flight. I'd be fine flying 6 hours to the west coast
| then hopping on a supersonic flight for a 2-3x premium (
| still expensive, but worthwhile every few years ).
| mc32 wrote:
| Asia-North America. Would they do a polar trajectory? Or
| would they worry too much about the radiation?
| stetrain wrote:
| Existing flight routes between Asia and North America
| often fly over the arctic already:
|
| https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/winter-winds-how-
| singapor...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Not if it crosses a landmass, I guess.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I don't think the planned Boom plane has the range to go
| trans-Pacific. Maybe with a stopover in Honolulu to
| refuel (which could still be substantially faster)
| griffinkelly wrote:
| Concorde had a bunch of publicly tours around Asia. There are a
| few that could make sense-- HK to Tokyo? Tokyo to Singapore?
|
| The fuel requirements from the US to Asia are pretty intense,
| so I'm interested to see how they solve that issue.
|
| Sonic booms haven't always been illegal in the US (1973?). My
| dad grew up near O'hare, and he said you'd occasionally hear
| them when it was still a military base. Its just annoying, but
| for people who live near airports, jet noise is already
| annoying? I think as long as jets just boom over specific
| areas, it would minimize the public nuisance.
| tshaddox wrote:
| We heard sonic booms routinely growing up in the 1990s in
| small-town Missouri, presumably from nearby air force bases.
| It was little more than a curiosity, and never enough to
| rattle windows or really affect anyone much beyond perhaps a
| brief startling.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >[...] the problem that killed Concorde: Civilian sonic booms
| over populations are illegal
|
| Did this killed the Concorde? I don't know the story well, but
| I always though it was because it was never a profitable
| venture but it was kept because it was good PR. Then the
| accident happened and it was just not worth it anymore ...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Concorde was profitable. It initially wasn't, but then BA and
| Air France found out that customers thought Concorde was more
| expensive than it actually was. Once they increased prices to
| customer expectation the Concorde was fairly profitable.
| https://theadaptivemarketer.com/2012/01/14/a-pricing-
| lesson-....
|
| The major issue with Concorde by the time of its retirement
| was that it was very old and outdated, among other things
| needing a 3-person crew. The market for new Concordes was not
| large enough for a next-egeneration update to be profitable.
| And 9/11 had dented air travel demand.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >https://theadaptivemarketer.com/2012/01/14/a-pricing-
| lesson-....
|
| Thanks! I did not know about that.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's for Emirati playboys to continue their game of
| oneupsmanship while they still have money to burn.
| failuser wrote:
| We might be at the point when it can be legal again, just make
| sure you don't fly supersonic above mansions of people with
| actual power.
| jagger27 wrote:
| Their FAQ section^0 says this:
|
| > Overture flights will focus on 500+ primarily transoceanic
| routes that benefit from supersonic speeds--such as New York to
| London or San Francisco to Tokyo. Overture won't generate a
| sonic boom over land cruising at subsonic speeds. Its
| passengers won't even notice breaking through the "sound
| barrier," which will be inaudible and uneventful.
|
| So I guess they haven't really solved physics. edit: in an
| economic way.
|
| [0]: https://boomsupersonic.com/contact#faq-section
| nopzor wrote:
| that's an interestingly worded statement.
|
| in concorde, the passengers didn't even notice breaking
| through the sound barrier either.
|
| regarding sonic booms over land, their plan iirc is to reduce
| the noise level to the point where they can lobby to change
| legislation.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| NASA has solved physics, though:
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/X59
|
| _The Low-boom Flight Demonstration mission has two goals: 1)
| design and build a piloted, large-scale supersonic X-plane
| with technology that reduces the loudness of a sonic boom to
| that of a gentle thump; and 2) fly the X-plane over select
| U.S. communities to gather data on human responses to the
| low-boom flights and deliver that data set to U.S. and
| international regulators.
|
| Using this data, new sound-based rules regarding supersonic
| flight over land can be written and adopted, which would open
| the doors to new commercial cargo and passenger markets to
| provide faster-than-sound air travel._
| JacobDotVI wrote:
| there is also ongoing research into making the boom less
| audible & turbulent over land, which would enable cross-
| country flights:
|
| >Graves explains that SonicBAT is an unusual test in that it
| uses a typical military aircraft with its loud sonic boom to
| help engineers better understand the sounds from future quiet
| supersonic aircraft
|
| >"We're hoping we can eventually lower sonic booms to a low
| rumble," he said. "The goal is to eventually accommodate jets
| that can fly from New York to Los Angeles in two hours."
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-supersonic-technology-
| desig...
|
| I'd hope that Boom is also working on such an approach
| lumost wrote:
| WRT to the US. I'd be curious if anyone has done a route
| analysis on trans-continental flights to minimize overheard
| booms. Once you're 200 miles from the coasts there is a lot
| of open space to fly through.
| qppo wrote:
| I think you'd be hard pressed to find a path where the
| boom cone's carpet doesn't pass over a moderately
| populated area and can be navigated by the aircraft at
| supersonic speeds. The US is not sparse east of the
| Missippi, which is more like 750 miles from the coast.
| fotbr wrote:
| The theory is that they can reduce the supersonic shockwave to
| the point where supersonic flight over populated areas can be
| legalized again.
| [deleted]
| jankassens wrote:
| Without any deeper knowledge, there might also be a good amount
| of business travel between Australia/East Asia and the US West
| coast?
| billclerico wrote:
| I think it is more likely that the economics killed Concord
| ($20k per seat), not the route, and it appears that Boom thinks
| like they can deliver a luxury, supersonic experience at a far
| cheaper, business class price.
|
| And if transoceanic supersonic travel becomes popular, pressure
| will mount to define overland supersonic corridors, or
| manufacturers will invest to reduce the noise, or both.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| In its later years I believe BA and Air France found that
| perceived costs of a Concorde ticket were actually more
| expensive than what they were charging, so they increased
| prices to match perceptions and then Concorde was fairly
| profitable.
|
| By the time Concorde was actually retired, 9/11 dented air
| travel demand in general and the thing was a flying dinosaur
| with not a big enough market to justify an upgraded version
| of the plane.
| Swizec wrote:
| Concorde's other problem was newfangled airport security. Why
| spend 5x on tickets for a 3h flight if you spend 2h at airports
| anyway? The day is wasted to travel regardless.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > How does this seek to overcome the problem that killed
| Concorde
|
| This did not single handedly killed the Concorde, there are
| plenty of routes with substantial flying time over unpopulated
| areas. Presumably if the cost of maintenance and the fuel
| consumption were lower it could still be flying.
|
| So assuming Boom fixes those 2 points, then not being able to
| go supersonic over land just lowers efficiency but does not
| mean it's not viable.
| seany wrote:
| Lobby to make them legal again? The restriction is stupid to
| start with.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| There were a lot of potential buyers for Concorde in other
| parts of the world. They backed out when the operating costs
| came out, and the range was found to be lower than expected
| (though BA managed to increase it through operational
| improvements).
|
| Whether supersonic travel is still relevant is another
| question, but there buyers then, maybe there would be now too.
|
| https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-b
| failuser wrote:
| Wait, they are going to sell those to airlines, not to
| individuals? Ticket price will put them in competition with
| private subsonic planes, not with airlines.
| rst wrote:
| The announced target market is airlines (and they've already
| got commitments from some; Virgin has announced publicly);
| projected fares are comparable to business class on
| transoceanic flights (their initial target market, to avoid
| regulatory issues with sonic booms on over-land routes). But
| I'm sure if someone else is able to write a check for the
| purchase price, and it doesn't bounce, they'll be happy to cash
| it.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| What? Private transoceanic flights cost much more than a
| business class ticket.
| wiz21c wrote:
| Is it me or is it a military plane ?
| bigbubba wrote:
| I see what you mean. I think it's probably a case of
| 'convergent evolution', where two planes designed for the same
| sort of thing (size and speed in this case) come out looking
| sort of similar to each other. The American B-1 Lancer and the
| Russian Tu-160 look quite similar to each other for instance,
| but to my knowledge neither is a ripoff of the other.
| jagger27 wrote:
| It's a 1/3 scale prototype of their passenger jet.
| carabiner wrote:
| It's not a "scale" prototype since it has a different
| configuration from the passenger jet:
| https://aviationvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Boom-
| Te...
|
| It'd be scale if it was the exact aircraft except every
| linear dimension was shrunk down. But having a different
| number of windows, different inlets etc. makes it a smaller
| concept demonstrator.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It can still be 1/3rd of the scale, even if it's not a
| "scale model"
| carabiner wrote:
| Not when the configuration is drastically different.
| "Scale" has a very specific meaning in engineering. It's
| like saying a motorcycle is a 1/3 scale version of a car
| just because it uses the same motor. It still
| demonstrates that the heart of the vehicle works, but
| it's not a scaled version of it.
|
| Here's an actual scale model in aerospace:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHz2B_4g2tM
| nicoburns wrote:
| A motorcycle is not a "1/3 scale version" of a car, but
| it is "1/3 the scale" of a car (assuming a car is roughly
| 3 times larger). Scale is not just used in engineering.
| For example a zoo might have a scale comparison of
| different animals.
| vosper wrote:
| If you just want to see the plane, and not have an epileptic
| episode, then don't watch "the best part" video, watch the "XB-1
| up close" clip from further down the page instead:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bRx2dpooCQ&feature=youtu.be
| sneak wrote:
| Their stroboscopic unveil video reminds me of a slightly less
| polished version of the best Apple ad in recent memory, the one
| for the red iPhone 8:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5FIAniosZU
| propter_hoc wrote:
| Seems very small! How many passengers does it carry?
| tobinfricke wrote:
| The XB-1 is a "supersonic demonstrator" carrying a crew of
| two (and zero passengers). It is to be followed up by the
| passenger-carrying "Overture" in the future.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_XB-1
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Is there any evidence airlines would pay for this? Pre-covid, the
| dominant trend over decades has been for cheaper, cheaper,
| cheaper flights.
|
| Hardly anyone pays for first class, but will they pay three to
| four times as much to arrive a few hours earlier?
| levi-turner wrote:
| In the video (https://youtu.be/18x38IMAwrY?t=2201) they have a
| blurb from the chairman of Japan Airlines, Yoshiharu Ueki. I
| have zero experience in this but a cursory Wikipedia dive shows
| them as being the 6th largest global airline by passengers. So
| it looks like they have at least _some_ commercial partnerships
| / relationships.
| pedalpete wrote:
| They've had early interest from JAL and Virgin
| https://boomsupersonic.com/partners I doubt anyone would get
| this far without partners.
| vosper wrote:
| Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this seems like the
| crucial question. Even here in New Zealand we have experienced
| a huge tourism boom (pre-Covid) over the past 15 years. For
| most people getting here meant taking one or more really long-
| haul flights. It didn't seem to put a whole lot of people off:
| we had 3.7m tourist arrivals in 2017, without supersonic jets.
| Our population is only 5m.
|
| (On a personal level I hope there isn't a market of even more
| people who want to come here who'll be enabled by greatly
| shorter flight times. We had more than enough tourists already,
| TYVM. But economically, we won't be able to resist because
| jobs)
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| He mentions $100 for anywhere in the world. How realistic is
| that?
|
| Also wonder how will they compete with SpaceX Starship who's
| probably going to be operational sooner and be even faster.
| valusr wrote:
| It's hard to imagine that. Not to be a downer, but when was the
| last time we all could buy an Economy ticket for that price to
| anywhere in the world?
| ranieuwe wrote:
| Not very. This is from their FAQ for the airplane that XB-1 is
| input for:
|
| > Our focus with Overture is to develop and build a commercial
| supersonic airliner for anyone who can afford a business-class
| ticket, not a private jet.
| Animats wrote:
| It looks like the Douglas X-3, from 1952.[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_X-3_Stiletto
| hindsightbias wrote:
| No seeing it. Competitor in bizjet class though...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerion_AS2
| major505 wrote:
| I was thinking the same. Doing a turn in a plane like this
| seens like hard work.
| nopzor wrote:
| at the risk of over simplifying the point i'm trying to make:
| the shorter the wings the easier it is to turn.
|
| longer wings are better for lift (which is why gliders have
| super long wings), and shorter wings are better for
| maneuvering.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| That is exactly what I thought as well.
|
| On the one hand, that makes a lot of sense as in, "Let's build
| a supersonic platform based on one that we know works to prove
| to ourselves that we can actually build a supersonic plane."
|
| But the marketing spin around "Hey we made a copy of this plane
| that was built 60 years ago and we think it will work." Just
| doesn't have the same flair :-)
|
| Still, as NASA has shown time and again, if you have a reliable
| air frame that is well characterized, and you instrument the
| crap out of it, then you can set it up a wide variety of
| aeronautical experiments and collect really valuable data that
| feels more trustworthy then "theoretical results" from a 10K
| core parallel computer doing CFD analysis.
|
| If they are smart (and we can presume they are) they are doing
| both and updating their CFD models with data from XB-1 so that
| they are more confident that Overture will work. That said, to
| be really "ground breaking" they really should use the "low
| boom" technology that NASA has been researching to make a plane
| that can fly supersonic over land. That would actually be a
| _new_ spin on the old Concorde business plan where it opens up
| more routes. Just the "hey it will be cheaper" bet doesn't
| leave a lot of room for an assumption fail late in the
| certification process.
| tobinfricke wrote:
| One difference is that huge strides have been made in
| materials research. Boom advertises extensive use of carbon
| fiber, which was not available when the X-3 was
| designed/built.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Agreed, and it will be super helpful to see how carbon
| fiber deals with supersonic shock waves compared to steel.
|
| Like I said, it makes a lot of sense to build a platform
| that can prove that your tooling gets you to a working
| aircraft. And once you can do that, you can then iterate
| using the platform to inform your engineering choices.
| SpaceX has done this brilliantly and is the current poster
| child AFAICT.
|
| So I'm looking forward to the test program to see how it
| does, but was chuckling at the over the top marketing speak
| with which they "rolled out" this revolution.
|
| Step 1: Build a plane (check!) Step 2: Fly the plane (next
| on the list)
| tobinfricke wrote:
| I'd guess carbon fiber is replacing aluminum. I'm not a
| materials guy but it's hard to imagine replacing titanium
| with carbon fiber. I don't think steel is used much in
| aircraft.
|
| > So I'm looking forward to the test program to see how
| it does, but was chuckling at the over the top marketing
| speak with which they "rolled out" this revolution.
|
| Same! :-) I'm even more skeptical of their use of the
| word "sustainable," although I commend them on making
| that a goal.
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| > I don't think steel is used much in aircraft.
|
| It's not, but there's a very conspicuous counter-example
| - developed in the USSR.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25 -
| with only 9% titanium content, compared to 26% of the
| F-15.
|
| For a number of economic and engineering reasons, instead
| of making jets out of titanium, the USSR, for the most
| part, preferred to export it to the US.
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