[cm277]

Hmm, all of these things are hard; they are also fairly easy compared to building your own jet engine. There are a handful of jet engine makers in the world, 2 or 3 that can build passenger-grade engines and 2-3 (small overlap) that can build supersonic jet engines.

The physics within a jet engine are basically unknowable. The material science is the hardest we have. The tolerances and margins for error are insane. I wanted Boom to succeed and even believed some of their hype, but this basically means they are dead.

[constantcrying]

Kratos will build the engines. Plane manufacturers usually do not build their own engines.

[masklinn]

And Kratos is currently a minor manufacturer of engines for missiles and expendable drones ("attritable UAVs" in their own words), not a manufacturer of airliner engines, or even bizjet engines.

[constantcrying]

Yeah, apparently actual large scale manufacturers, GE, Honeywell, Safran, etc. have no interest in producing supersonic engines.

Gotta take what you can get I guess. Honesty I don't think you are wrong with the scepticism, if some actual large engine company took up the challenge I also would be more confident.

[hef19898]

Rolls Royce, the only company that ever made civilian super-sonic jet engines, for the Concorde, dumped Boom in September. So, it is not tha Boom doesn't have an engine OEM partner. They had, and that partner was not interessted beyond some initial research.

[masklinn]

Technically two other companies also did:

- Kuznetsov Design Bureau, now JSC Kuznetsov, designed the NK-144 which powered the Tu-144S

- Kolesov Design Bureau, now NPO Saturn, designed the RD-36-51 which replaced the NK-144 in the Tu-144D

Both are now under the UEC state-owned group.

[hef19898]

The aerospace industry of the USSR is something, isn't it? Fun fact, they used the metric system for everything, including flight controls. Was, aparently, quite a problem for all countries that continued to use Soviet aircraft after they joined NATO.