[OrwellianChild]

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).

[class3shock]

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.

[imron]

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.

[arp242]

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.

[class3shock]

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."

[Turing_Machine]

> 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.

[class3shock]

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.

[imron]

> 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.

[class3shock]

2002 SpaceX is more where Boom was a decade ago when they were founded, what have they been doing since? They have one demo aircraft, not to scale of what they are marketing, and have not even demoed an engine yet. What about that makes you think they are the next SpaceX?

Even the comparison is poor. SpaceX had I guess the pieces that what would become ULA as competition? None of the players in the field had innovated for decades because they didn't need to, exactly the sort of area that is good for new people to come in and take a shot at getting a piece of the pie. And on top of that, you have an incredible amount of money and desire for the service. This has no where near the same market.

On top of that the commercial jet / engine world is incredibly competitive. Boeing/airbus and pw/ge/rr/safran have not been sitting idling by for decades reusing the same old designs with the same old technology. If you think that because this is supersonic it's not in competition with them... well I guess that's your choice in how to look at it.

[coderenegade]

No one was laughing at the idea of self landing rockets, because the DC-X did it 1993, and even by then it was known that it was probably feasible within Earth's atmosphere. The issue was always around the economic feasibility of it, since you have to carry the propellant needed to bring the vehicle back, and whether or not a silicon valley billionaire with no aerospace experience could break through into the industry. I think at this point, history is on Musk's side, but I also think there were valid reasons to be skeptical.

And I'm skeptical that these guys are going to be able to type certify a new engine in the timeframe they've given. Jet engines are harder than rocket motors in some ways. Certainly the way in which they're used imposes stricter reliability requirements. They run constantly, and can take weeks to spool down, for example, when a rocket might only fire a few short burns on a mission. Realistically, I think they would need similar government support as SpaceX received to bring this kind of product to market, but that's just my opinion. It's good that they're trying, and I hope I'm wrong, but this stuff is hard and expensive.

[_Tev]

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

This is just plain wrong, look up Tom Mueller's history.

[Turing_Machine]

> 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.

[null_shift]

Based on what?

[Turing_Machine]

Knowledge of history?

Startups eating the lunch of entrenched, bureaucracy-laden organizations is a very old story indeed -- long before Silicon Valley.

[Alupis]

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...

[ricardobeat]

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

[yeknoda]

100M outright. But billions from the existing knowledge, hired in talent, etc.

[mlindner]

So you're arguing that Boom doesn't have access to existing knowledge? Or that they can't hire in talent?

[Dalewyn]

>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.

[fragmede]

slightly is doing a lot of work there. I'll admit I'm doing okay myself, and can afford $300 for a commercial plane ticket every once in a while, but there's a gulf between that, and being able to afford a $4,000 plane ticket, and another jump to $10,000 for a plane ticket, to being ever able to afford a to blow $250k on a trip to see the Titanic, however I'll fated that might be.

There's the top 1%, but there's also a .1% and .01% that is, actually, wealthy. But you're right that there's a weird "can't touch money" vibe in some circles that's weird.

[ericd]

You don't need to go to the .1% or .01% to pay for those more expensive flights, top 1% cutoff (of the US) is >$600k/yr.

[Alupis]

Of course not - but this exact idea was tried and failed. What is Boom going to offer that makes it survive? So far, it seems nothing.

There's estimates that if Concord still flew today, Trans-Atlantic ticket prices would start around $10,000. How many people actually want to fly in a cramped cabin for that fee? You can get very luxurious first class cabin space for much less.

Ultimately, Boom will fail just like Concord. After the novelty wears off, there's very few actual customers - and even fewer repeat customers.

[Aeolun]

I think it’s kind of bizarre that all the armchair airplane developers here know how this will end already.

You could, presumably have faith that both the founders and investors have asked themselves the same questions and have come up with an answer that satisfies at least them.

[imron]

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

The question I was replying to is not whether they can build a profitable business, but whether they can build their own engine within 5 years.

There's a greater than zero percent chance they can do this if they put in the focus and the effort.

There's also a greater than zero percent chance that they can build a successful engine and then still go bankrupt.

Early SpaceX had funding issues and likely would've gone bankrupt if the 4th launch of the Falcon 1 didn't succeed (the first 3 all failed).

So good luck to Boom. Even if they don't succeed, I'm glad they are going to try.

[Turing_Machine]

> SpaceX got lots of funding because of military/government potential.

Boom has raised a lot of money, including an undisclosed (but presumably large) slug of cash from the Saudis last November.

> There's less than zero percent chance Boom will be able to offer cheap "everyday joe" prices on their aircraft.

You do realize that the history of technology is a long list of failed predictions just like this, right?

That doesn't mean they're going to succeed, of course, but one scoffs at new things at one's own peril.

[egl2021]

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

[ks1723]

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

[class3shock]

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.

[Turing_Machine]

> 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.

[class3shock]

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.

[ethbr1]

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.

[class3shock]

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.

[aeyes]

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

[twobitshifter]

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