Item — HN Reader

From wiki:

"On June 3, 2021, United Airlines announced they had signed an agreement to purchase 15 Overture aircraft with an additional 35 options, expecting to start passenger flights by 2029.[14][15] On August 16, 2022, American Airlines announced an agreement to purchase 20 Overture aircraft with an additional 40 options.[16]"

later on...

"On December 13, 2022, Boom announced that it would develop its own turbofan engine after "Big Three" engine manufacturers Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney and General Electric, as well as CFM and Safran previously declined to develop a new engine due to high capital costs.[29][30][31][32] Named Symphony, (see § Engines below) the engine will be developed under partnership with three entities: Kratos subsidiary Florida Turbine Technologies for engine design; StandardAero for maintenance; and General Electric subsidiary GE Additive for consulting on printing components.[33]"

So not only do they think they are going to finish designing, prototyping, testing, certifying, and moving to production an entirely new aircraft, they also think they are going to design a brand new engine, that the big three didn't think made sense and also get it through all those efforts? All in the next 5 years?

If it doesn't come to anything, which seems likely, atleast it sounds like a fun way to spend lots of money.

4 comments

Note that SpaceX did this. They developed their own engines (altho initial 5 flights did get a 3rd party built turbopump, analogous to XB-1, I suppose), developed their own highly vertically integrated rocket, and offered launch services. Now, RocketLab does the same and they’re being joined by Firefly, Blue Origin, and Relativity, all being at least F9-level reusable eventually.

Everyone takes for granted launch vehicles being “easier” than airliners now, but go back to the 1990s and the attitude would’ve been switched (PARTICULARLY high-rate and economic reusable launch vehicles, which were considered virtually unattainable).

I think it’s totally doable to make both an airliner and an engine, and the main reason we don’t think so is successful PR by old aerospace primes.

First, to certify a new aircraft takes 5-9 years (source below).

https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/airworthiness_certific...

Lets say they are really good and they are ready to test fly in 3 years to meet that 5 year goal (which I'll tell you right now is not happening), they still need engines. 3 years to design, develop, and build a clean sheet engine. It took GE and Safran (CFM) 10 years between the announcement of the LEAP and its certification:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFM_International_LEAP

So no, it is quite unlikely that a company with no experience in commercial jet engines (Florida Turbines, subsidiary of Kratos) will be able to field the equivalent of a modern day concord engine in 3 years. I would say the main reason people think it could be is successful PR from new startups.

Projections for these projects are always very optimistic. Why are you focusing so heavily on their runway being tied to some ideal date in 2 early contracts they signed?

It's not optimistic, it's not an ideal date, it's marketing fluff with no bases in reality. Maybe I'm the odd one out here but does that not bother you?

Flying an engine once before a quick refurbish without risking human life isn’t the same as flying an engine for weeks before any significant downtime/maintenance.

It’s a very different optimization task.

SpaceX did it but nowhere like on the timelines they have anticipated. They also expected 4 years from start to Falcon 5 flight - which was cancelled and replaced by Falcon 9 eventually - but it took 8 years and then another 3 years before regular flights and another 5 before reusability started to really work.

But SpaceX rockets are not manned. You can claim success from the explosion of a rocket… Imagine this flight ended up in a crash.

Yes, they are. This launched 2 weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-ZlFPQrYM4

Why have China and India been struggling to make jet engines for decades?

Lack of an industrial base and native experience in doing so. Once one company does it, the experience gained can spread to other companies via employees moving around and forming suppliers for those same companies. For India it also has the issue of brain drain as any of the people working on India's engines could easily jump ship and move to the UK or the US and get pretty good jobs in our aerospace industries and get paid a whole lot more.

Also China does have it's own engines used in its military aircraft.

Designing very efficient engines that are also cost efficient is the focus of a lot of those big primes in the US/UK/Europe so competing with them may be difficult, however there is currently no one trying to make very efficient _supersonic_ engines. All supersonic engines are destined for military jets which care a lot more about peak performance as the primary design parameter. In other words there is no one operating in the segment Boom is trying to develop an engine and they can hire a lot of people from the rest of the US industry who already have a lot of experience designing engines or people who were trained by said people.

Ironically it may be SpaceX who kills off Boom if they're successful in implementing suborbital long distance passenger travel with Starship, though that's still very much an open question if it's possible. Such travel would, if successful, most likely be way faster and cheaper than supersonic long distance travel because of the reduced losses from drag.

I just don't see Starship getting any full commercial use like that on environmental and noise grounds.

If it happens, it'll have to happen dozens of miles out to sea.

This video is outdated (and a surface ferry like shown would be too slow... probably would have to be some sort of aircraft, or the time on the ferry would make the rocket trip not worth it), but this shows the idea: https://youtu.be/zqE-ultsWt0

in the case of India, their engine development project for the HAL Tejas started out with ~50 million USD in 1989 and had a target goal of 5 years.

Given that (even after a 650% cost overrun and 30 years) the total engine development cost is still about $400 million USD, that buys about one and a half F-35Bs.

Even when picking good and cheap, there’s cheap and then there’s shoestring.

>and the main reason we don’t think so is successful PR by old aerospace primes.

It's partly that, and also partly that making engines successful is a different business. For capital intensive industries, it's natural that they separate and consolidate into specialties, which is why you see things work they way they do today. SpaceX is probably the exception that prove the rule, at least for space access. It would be nice to see Boom become that same exception for passenger jet aircraft. For obvious reasons, given the ongoings with Boeing.

One dynamic that may be at play: Designing a new engine is a gamble. For a company who already makes money with existing designs, there may be little upside on a small-volume new product. This is likely the reason the "Big 3" passed on designing an engine they don't have an off-the-shelf option for.

Boom would probably be the primary beneficiary of such an engine existing, so it isn't all that surprising that they will have to fund the development. The second supersonic airframe that can use their engine would be the one to turn that R&D profitable for Boom (and ease the introduction of more supersonic airframe options).

I would agree that the big three didn't think they could make it work, be that for technical reasons, money reasons, limited market reasons, etc. the end result is the same.

Where I would disagree is that Boom can make it work. The amount of specialized knowledge you need in design and analysis as well as test and manufacturing facilities makes it near impossible for an outsider get in the game. Which is why there aren't any in the commercial jet engine space. GE, PW, RR and I guess Safran is pretty much it. You can't just decide you are going to do the R&D yourself and pop out a new engine in 5 years.

SpaceX went from nothing to orbital spacecraft in ~6 years.

Plenty of people discounted them at the time too.

I’m not saying Boom will succeed, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility if they can dedicate themselves to task the same way SpaceX did.

It took them almost 20 years to do a manned flight though. And that's with professional astronauts knowingly taking the kind of risk you can't do with a passenger aircraft, unless you want to do a OceanGate.

That's the tricky bit. I guess they can put something together in that amount of time. But making sure it's safe? More skeptical on that. Look at the recent woes at Boeing for example, and while Boeing's organisational issues are at fault for no small part, it does show all of this is tricky business. Also many other aircraft have had serious design issues, including Concorde.

Also not convinced on the economic potential on all of this. There may be also issues with increased noise, environmental impact (possibly via regulations), and things like that.

Or getting it certified that it's safe.

https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/airworthiness_certific...

"Amended type certificates typically take 3-5 years to complete. By comparison, the certification of a new aircraft type can take between 5 and 9 years."

> It took them almost 20 years to do a manned flight though.

Given that manned flight occurred in 1903, manned supersonic flight occurred in 1947, and manned spaceflight didn't occur until 1961, it appears that manned spaceflight is considerably more challenging.

At this stage, supersonic flight is 77 years old.

I think if we were just talking about the airframe I would agree that is was possible. Not the engines though. Look at some of the costs and timeframes involved in one of the big 3's newer engines:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_PW1000G

Now consider that you aren't starting with existing knowledge base, talent, facilities, etc. (which SpaceX had already started to build up) but from scratch. SpaceX also had nearly a billion in Falcon 9 and Dragon, Boom in its totality looks like it's worth a few hundred million? Lastly SpaceX had 150 employees in 2005 and 1150 in 2010. Boom has 150 and Florida Turbines (the part of Kratos working on this) has 100.

All of that is to say they need more money, more people, and more facilities very quickly if they were to have any chance of hitting any of those timeframes.

> Not the engines though. Look at some of the costs and timeframes involved in one of the big 3's newer engines

Compare the cost of rockets when SpaceX started. People laughed SpaceX off too.

SpaceX didn't start with an existing knowledge base, talent and facilities either.

The idea of starting a rocket company and building reusable rockets was so laughable at the time that they couldn't even hire anyone for the chief engineer (Elon assumed the role because no-one else would do it).

In 2002 SpaceX realised it wasn't going to be able to buy an existing engine from the Russians, and decided to make their own <- this is essentially the place where Boom is now.

In 2008 they successfully launched Falcon 1 to orbit (on the 4th attempt), and would've gone bankrupt if that 4th attempt had failed like the first 3 <- Boom might never get to this point, but good on them for trying.

> Look at some of the costs and timeframes involved in one of the big 3's newer engines:

Look at the cost and timeframes involved in spacecraft made by Boeing, Lockmart, Northrop Grumman and all their pals compared to SpaceX.

I'm about 99.99999% sure that there are considerable cost savings to be had in supersonic aircraft as well.

There's significant differences between SpaceX and Boom though.

SpaceX got lots of funding because of military/government potential. The US had no domestic capability to place people into orbit. SpaceX also promised cheaper satellite insertion.

Boom promises... ultra-wealthy people a few hours shorter flights?

Concord failed because of cost - few people could afford the ticket price, and even fewer actually needed to cross the ocean a few hours faster.

There's less than zero percent chance Boom will be able to offer cheap "everyday joe" prices on their aircraft. It will fail for the same reasons as Concord...

Falcon 1 was developed entirely with private funding on a budget of $100M. Only later, as it proved flightworthy, government funding came in.

>Boom promises... ultra-wealthy people a few hours shorter flights?

This along with another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39794935) begs the question: Does everything here have to be a "We Are The 99%" meme?

Practically every bleeding edge advancement is only available to the "wealthy", it's the "wealthy" who pay the First Adopters Tax so eventually the technology might trickle down to the commons.

I say "wealthy" in quotes since those concerned aren't even that particularly richer than most people. Just people with slightly more surplus money in their wallet to throw around.

I get the audience here is primarily FOSS and considers the very notion of money a fucking heresy, but the real world doesn't operate like that.

After all, building turbines is not exactly rocket science...

I would not disagree that you can do it, but I am skeptical that you can do it in 5 years.

Honda did develop their HF118 turbofan engine apparently from scratch, but it took about 8 years [1]. And for the actual commercialization they teamed up with GE and then it took another 10 years until certification of the successor HF120 [2].

[1] scroll down on https://global.honda/en/tech/eVTOL_gas_turbine_hybrid_system...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Honda_HF120

There's a world of difference between 2000 lb and 20,000 lb thrust though. And as you mentioned, they teamed up with GE in the end because, to be frank, turbojets are just hard.

> GE, PW, RR and I guess Safran is pretty much it.

Honeywell Aerospace, Williams International, United Engine Corporation, and AVIC are some others.

There are more than you might think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Gas_turbine_manufactu...

Not all of these make aircraft engines, of course, but a fair number of them do.

https://simpleflying.com/ge-rolls-royce-pratt-whitney/

CFM (GE + Safran) own 39%, PW has 26%, RR has 18%, GE on it's own has 16%. So together they own 99% of the market.

Honeywell and Williams don't do anything over 10k-lb thrust (that I see). UEC is russian state owned, so I don't see anyone working with them anytime soon and AVIC is chinese state owned so kinda the same deal.

If you are talking small turbofans (smaller than 10k-lb thrust) there are a variety of companies out there but as soon as you start looking for bigger stuff to power your 737 Max or 320NEO class planes, you are talking about a very exclusive club.

As an aside, I would love to see more competition, I just think it's a really tough space to enter.

Afaik, Kratos is prototyping supersonic-class UAVs (XQ-58C and D) for military customers, so I'd expect this isn't Boom starting from zero.

From Kratos's site:

https://www.kratosdefense.com/products/uav/air/turbines

Kratos has begun the first engine tests at its X-58 test facility. The newly commissioned test facility is used to carry out demonstrator engine development testing, allowing Kratos to grow its offering of low cost and high-performance small jet engines. The fully mobile test facility can accommodate fully instrumented engines up to 3000-lb thrust. Inlet and exhaust noise suppression is provided to reduce environmental impacts. All connections are designed to reduce test article set-up time thereby reducing program costs. The state-of-the-art data acquisition system and communications allow for high speed remote monitoring and real time data processing. Kratos is introducing several engines to support the need for low cost and high-performance engines for cruise missiles, powered munitions and UAVs.

3000-lb thrust is about an order of magnitude smaller than you need for a single row conventional commercial jet with two engines. Yes, they are ostensibly working in the same field but I don't think I can stress enough how different those two things are.

Wasn't one of the Boom selling points that their aircraft would use conventional engines? Now they are developing their own...

Also, boom could have asked for exclusive terms that they didn’t like.

« It’s never possible to innovate » This is currently the top comment on news.ycombinator.com

It's always possible to innovate. It just happens that often the people claiming too are mostly innovating at separating people from their money. If you want to chat why I think this is more the later than the former feel free to reach out, I love talking aerospace.

So funny thing is you're in a thread about aerospace. If I might hazard a guess, discussing the concrete reasons why you think this is a scam can help educate curious readers about the challenges in this field and can probably start a discussion on the technical details of supersonic aircraft that has less emotional and more technical content.

It doesn't always work out that way though shrug.

From my own context, the work of certifying the airframe alone takes forever, let alone prototyping another engine and one that requires the thrust requirements a supersonic aircraft needs, so I too am really dubious of the timelines. But I'm curious why you think this is a scam as opposed to general exuberance, or why you think innovation in this space in particular is unlikely. There's other variables here like United's purchase; we all know companies like Theranos have defrauded established players like Walgreens, but do you think United did not do their due diligence here?

(I'm also deeply curious on why you feel that high-level criticism of the idea is relevant for this forum but the details of your criticism are not. I feel it'll teach me a lot about what motivates folks to use HN these days, but that's just my own curiosity.)

I wouldn't call it a scam, I think it's like alot of start ups. It looks good, has lots of cool marketing, and "in theory" could work. But after a few years of missing deadlines and goals (because they were unrealistic) and eating up money, the "in theory" could work turns into "in practice" did not. I work in the area so maybe it's just more galling to me hence my snarky response.

If by "innovation in this space" you mean supersonic commercial air travel, then not really. I could see someone making a couple planes that get bought by the saudi's and a few billionares but if you are talking in terms of eventually reaching all commercial air travel... that's a long way off if ever. Going faster takes you in the wrong direction in terms of efficiency (and thus cost and environmental impact), sound, manufacturability (and thus cost), maintenance (and thus cost), you get the picture.

As for United, I'm sure it sounded good at some point to someone. I guess we can check back in 5 years and see how that investment is going.

I guess my criticism is high level because, in my mind, the timeframe they market and what they claim to be trying to do in it, is so beyond what is reasonable that touching on simple aspects of the project, such as all the steps they need to go through before getting to their goal, is adequate to highlight unrealistic marketing for what it is.

If you look at some of my other answers I go more in depth on specific topics to provide more technical content. If you are curious to learn something more you can always ask? Alot of my posts are questions.

Edit: I wrote this and then saw there was more to your post I missed (or got added? maybe I'm having a stroke, do you smell toast?), will respond in below.

That’s not at all what they said.

And the history of aerospace is littered with companies that made lofty claims, raised a bunch of money, and eventually went under. When Boom launched eight years ago, they were telling investors they were going to have a prototype flying in two years. For anyone who has any experience in aerospace, this is unrealistic to the point of being fraudulent. People said as much back then [1]. And sure enough, it took eight years, not two. And the actual hard parts are still ahead of them!

99% chance the full-size supersonic aircraft never flies, and 100% chance it won’t be before 2035.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11334780

It’s not always economical though. When you have the top jet engine manufacturers in the world turning down your business the time has come to ask some tough questions.

This is old technology, we know how to do this - what we’ve not figured out is how to make it profitable. There were supposed to be 350 Concorde built but we got 14. Operating an Airline is a brutal business now matter how cool the planes may be.

So I can count on you to invest in my new startup that will be inventing human flight without any extraneous equipment right?

Delusional project planning kills products and companies. How many years before Starship rockets achieve rapid reuse after being caught by launch tower chopsticks and are reflown quickly enough to supply a yet to be designed and launched orbiting fuel station before the fuel and oxidizer boil off so that Starship can go beyond Earth orbit?

The critical path will bite you in the ass especially if your idea of project management comes from software projects. If you pile on enough dependencies, especially on untried concepts, you might not know which possible critical path will bite the hardest.

Boil-off can be prevented by loosely wrapping in 50~100 layers of aluminized mylar ("space blanket"), adding some solar panels and heat rejection panels, and a 2 or 3 stage refrigerator to keep the contents cold enough to not trigger the boil-off safety overpressure valve.

If you're clever with the orientation or possibly with a movable sun shade, you might even get by with just using space as a heat dump, by insulating against the earth and the sun and exposing to empty space to radiate the leakage heat away without a refrigerator.

I think they have enough experience with orbital electromechanical design to make this not a problem with much suffering.

I think this is a grand tradition on this fair site. I think we all are looking forward to whatever's coming next.

>the big 3 didn’t think was possible

The statement was they didn’t want to invest in the development.

The only “impossible” thing about it was that a couple board members couldn’t be assed to get a slightly smaller bonus for a couple years.

Looks like a collusion ripe for disruption.