[Alupis]

I trust Boom has smart people working on these things, but... model aviation doesn't scale up[1].

It's interesting they're going with a scaled-down model instead of a full-scale testbed. The article seems to incidate they're wanting to go from the scaled-down model as a PoC, then onto an actual airline that JAL want's to fly. I'd think they'd need a full-sized PoC first...

> “They want to enjoy a first-mover advantage in supersonic and have invested 10 million dollars.”

That's chump change for an airline. Doesn't really signal strong support or anything - more of a curiosity I think. A Boeing 737-800 costs around $100 million, for comparison.

[1] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/3300/why-havent...

[starpilot]

Quadcopters don't scale up. Flyable scale models have used extensively in other aviation research:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgDRkNseNxU

[jahewson]

Certainly but it’s not quite that simple https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number

[grkvlt]

quadcopter aircraft scale up fine, for example the bell x-22 [0] research vehicle.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_X-22

[Alupis]

There's nothing special about a quadcopter.

An airfoil is an airfoil.

[Ericson2314]

My guess is it's more about marketing and perhaps securing investment from those that do not know about aviation.