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by Melatonic 1377 days ago
Could be that they were hoping to get bought out and had made some actual improvements though no?

I would imagine that a plane using new advances in material sciences for the outer skin (maybe something like Quasi Crystals) might have significant advantages over an older design like the Concorde. Heat must be a big issue at those speeds.

1 comments

I don’t know much about their long term business strategy but what bothers me is that they’re vague about how they intend to achieve the flight mission objectives. This is very different than SpaceX which focused on reusable rockets and landing them.

As for materials, the main advantage of composites is the strength to weight ratio but they’re more challenging to work with compared to aluminum and titanium. Heat is one aspect but there are many more challenges. It’s been done though for example B787 and A350 are mostly composite. So Boom has a genuine advance here over Concorde. But supersonic flight is inherently fuel inefficient due to wave drag so the economy doesn’t make sense.