In 2020 COVID decimated Rolls Royce given their concentration of revenue associated with selling & servicing existing aero engines.
They have yet to recover from that era which saw a ~10x decrease in enterprise value and record losses.
That said I would interpret this news as a "cut the $!@$! R&D bleeding in anything that won't be generating revenue in the next 4 quarters" vs a reflection on the feasibility or health of Boom's very early but very ambitious plans.
My understanding is that the only profitable part of being a modern commercial jet engine manufacturer is service contracts - on actually-in-service jet engines. Vs. Boom Supersonic has never built a plane which actually managed to take off. And even their 1/3-scale "technology demonstrator" plane is 5+ years behind its original schedule. (And has yet to taxi along a runway, if I read Wikipedia right.)
My guess - Boom wanted RR to sign a new money-losing or zero-profit R&D deal. RR wasn't interested in the "maybe, eventually, there might be some actual profit for us" economics of that.
Well all planes that haven't been developed yet are not in service, and development cycles for jet engines are always long. Investing in engine R&D is standard practice. While Boom doesn't have a fleet of aircraft at the moment, it didn't 2 years ago either, but it does have orders. While of course those orders don't mean much if Boom can't ultimately deliver and sunk cost is not a good reason to continue a venture, the fact that RR entered into the agreement in the first place suggests they believed at some point it made business sense.
Indeed, supersonic business jets are ideal for the service contract based market. Supersonic engines need much more frequent maintenance than subsonic engines, business jet owners are much less price sensitive than mass-market airlines, and its not like you can just swap in a different supersonic engine, operators are completely locked in.
Far more likely, RR wanted Boom to use one of the supersonic engines it already has developed with minimal modification but Boom needs either heavy modification or a clean slate design to reduce fuel consumption (the second biggest issue for commercial supersonic aviation).
mmm, yes, the 'legacy business model' of demonstrably competent business decisions at the interest of shareholders that produce quantifiable return on investment and further industry growth through innovation strikes again.
It may be that they DO actually have some talented engineers and some interesting IP (such as a much better engine design) but were hoping to also generate additional revenue or get bought out by a bigger company. The fact that we are also seeing lots of companies come out with smaller turbojet engines (made for retrofitting older small planes that run on regular style ICE engines) makes me wonder if material science or other advancements have gotten us to the point where we are going to see some big improvements in turbojet and turbofans.
Which is to say: Boom is aimed at the wrong product. The High Tech part of efficient supersonic transport is the engines, not the airframe. If there was an off the shelf engine solution, they could just buy it on investor money. The dirty truth is that there isn't.
Sadly Boom is doomed and it’s been a writing on the wall all along. They never had a good engine option. The military engines are not safe enough and developing a new civilian engine makes sense only if you make hundreds of them.
Their net-zero emission claim is also bogus. Their pricing model doesn’t make much sense either unless they’re willing to lose money for a decade or so. There is not much innovation in aerodynamics and shock wave shaping either. Their only innovation compared to Concorde is the use of composite materials which is just not enough to hit their targets.
More than hundreds, perhaps thousands, or at least hundreds in a much shorter time frame than in previous eras. Rolls Royce's firm rejection of requests to develop a new engine is the most immediate reason the A380 was canceled. IIRC, Emirates and Airbus decided to kill the A380 within days of the Rolls Royce announcement, and in any event Emirates was clear that it was Rolls Royce's decision that forced their hand. Emirates alone would have guaranteed to purchase hundreds of such engines, considering there were 4 on each plane, but in the end Rolls Royce simply had no appetite for new development of any kind, though presumably they were entertaining the idea for quite some time beforehand.
According to Emirates and some other analysts, and contrary to popular narrative, the A380's biggest competitive handicap was the generation of engines, not the mere fact they had 4 instead of 2. The engines were nearly a full generation behind when the A380 debuted, and the gap only grew over time. Engines on a 4-engine plane are smaller, meaning less drag; have narrower power bands, running more optimally at all stages of flight; and have lower maintenance costs, even at twice the number, as they're both less stressed and subject to longer MTBF requirements--losing 1 of 4 engines is much less of a problem than 1 of 2. All considered a 4-engine configuration might still be nominally less fuel efficient, but the difference was negligible given these countering dynamics and in the opinion of some more than made up by other factors favoring the A380. The hub vs point-to-point model disfavored larger planes, but the air travel market was growing and in absolute terms so too was the potential A380 market. But the efficiency gap between engine generations was simply too large to overcome.
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.
>Their only innovation compared to Concorde is the use of composite materials which is just not enough to hit their targets.
There’s been 50 years of commercial aviation development since the Concorde. Composite materials is only one thing on a list of differences between Concorde and boom.
Just last month they were saying they'd be manufacturing the first aircraft in 2024. This company just looks like another huge investor scam at the moment.
"Boom meanwhile added, “We are appreciative of Rolls-Royce’s work over the last few years but have mutually concluded their proposed engine design and legacy business model is not the best option for Overture’s future airline operators or passengers.”
Regarding Boom there are only two reasonable conclusions one can reach:
1. They are a Theranos-style operation
2. They are a Madoff-style operation
I, a lone aerospace engineer working out of my garage in my spare time, have a better chance of achieving supersonic flight than Boom does.
Even their technology demonstrator is an obvious scam. It demonstrates nothing. It does not demonstrate the ability to design, build, or maintain a supersonic passenger airplane, and it doesn't demonstrate any new technologies or materials.
The bloatiest of bloated old-school defense contractors can throw together a supersonic prototype for less than $100 million, in fewer than 7 years.
Isn't there a third kind of operation, maybe a Magic Leap-style operation, where employees are earnestly developing against a goal which is fanciful but appealing to VCs? And in that case, what's the difference between that and the "usual" VC funded company?
I don't really think Boom are a Theranos style operation, because they aren't claiming to have an operational product when no such item exists. A Theranos style scam would be flying a known-unsafe airframe, or parading their demonstrator around claiming "it totally has engines and is ready to fly lol! we just haven't tested it yet." But so far, Boom have just honestly said "we're delayed" instead.
It's surely not a Madoff style operation as they employ staff who are earnestly working towards their goal, however fanciful it may be.
Lol you're too harsh. I was an aerospace engineer at an aviation startup you've probably heard of. We built a jet and received a type certificate, and sold ships. The company still went bankrupt. Boom is trying something harder, but it's not Theranos, or cold fusion. It's still just an engineering problem. They have aerospace engineers and facilities. It doesn't look more like a scam than SpaceX did in its early days when they were constantly blowing up rockets. It's just they're trying something very hard stretching what any manufacturing startup could do.
3. They're a startup in a manufacturing-oriented, highly regulated industry and dramatically underestimated capital needed.
Well, the problem was never technological to start with. The problem with supersonic transports was and will always be economic. There's a reason that there were only two SSTs in the 20th century instead of the five or six that were planned, and it's because the bean counters at Boeing, McDonnel-Douglas, and Lockheed-Martin wouldn't let their companies bankrupt themselves over a vanity project.
So, you take that and couple it with 21st century VC-appeal and you have a fantastic money-losing-machine whether it works or not. Hell, it probably does work with enough R&D, but that was never the problem in the first place.
Harsh! I think Boom is trying to be SpaceX. A technology that is definitely possible, but pretty difficult to pull off as a start-up. But saying they are Theranos or Madoff is unfair. If they succeed to make the technology work and then succeed to make it profitable is of course not obvious at this point.
If they were that, they'd be lying about having their own engine in development that is an order of magnitude better than the competitions but won't show it to anybody.
Unless some government(s) steps in and dumps a ton of money into SST development and production nothing is going to happen.
The Concord showed this by shouldering the burden of research, development, prototyping, and then production. Turns out SS's don't have the load factor & associated economics to make it a viable mode. That revelation was before environmental and political challenges made those economics worse.
Unless unobtanium can me mined, tooled, and manufactured cheaply into airframe parts and power such as scram-jet or super cruising turbofans can push a plane at Mach 2 with 200+ seats behind the pilot, methinks its just a pretty artist's conception on a Pop Mechanics or Science magazine cover.
Agreed. I know nothing about aerospace engineering or aircraft design, but the hype around Boom always puzzled me. If this start up can all of a sudden make an economical supersonic jet, then surely the existing plane manufacturers could do it quicker and cheaper. Boeing, Lockheed, Airbus, etc... already have existing designs from decades past that they could at least use as a base. They have experts in material science, airplane design, and actual resources/contracts to actually build one. If it made sense.
As an aerospace engineer do you know what kind of thrust they'd need and why they can't just use something like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_J58#Specific...? My guess would be that the military engines are not at all designed to be economical on either fuel or unit cost.
Is it possible they had some insider knowledge of engines being developed at one of the big manufacturers?
Thinking out loud here - lets say you have a few senior engineers that know that GE or Boeing or RR or something is currently working on a smaller supersonic engine. You know you cannot yourselves design such an engine but if it is released maybe it would make sense to get a head start designing a product to take advantage of it?
Mentioned this elsewhere, but it belongs better here: If there's a market for a product that existing suppliers don't want to provide, that sounds like exactly what a startup should be doing.
Boom is wasting their time building an airframe but what they really need to win is an engine. They should have built the engine first.
It's not like GE and P&W are bad choices given the fact that they made some of the best military jet engines in this world. While comparing fighter jet with large aircraft might not be fair, I think B-1B Lancer will be a good analogy in this case (similar size, 4-engine layout, and twice the takeoff weight). And B-1B Lancer use engines from GE.
Can they use for test demonstrator something like Mig-29 engines - those used planes are available including in US just for few millions. Once they are flying, GE or RR will probably be more interested.
Genuinely asking: Of all the possible efforts that the aeronautic industry can make in 2022, do you think supersonic planes is making the top of the list of what the world need? If so, why?
How surprising... Developing a specific supersonic jet engine for this kind of plane would not be cost effective anyway, the fleet would be too small to worth the investment.
Even starting from a military jet engine, the way they are run and maintained is very different from civilian jet engines.
On the maintenance side it's night and day, I used to work upstairs in the hanger building but not on the floor of a base with f-22's and before that f-16's and they rebuild those engines like clock-work there is always at least one being rebuilt if not a few.
Also good luck getting government approval for using a military engine derivate for commercial flight to Asia, or basically any country other than the origin of said engines. And even that will be difficult. Export control can be a bitch.
This article says that they are also partnering with Northrup Gruman to develop a "special missions" version for the government. So they very well could be getting a big government investment that so many here are saying would be necessary to pull this off.
I think we will have supersonic planes, but they will be electric.
But to get there we first need normal conservative electric planes to make electric planes more normal. Battery have to be getting better for this to happen but I think we will get there, some people overestimate how large battery improvements we need by basically thinking they need to match chat fuel.
If you look at how far the currently in development electric plans can go you can see lots of improvements that can be made to increase that range considerably.
You can also build your air-frame out of batteries. The batteries themselves need to become structural members in the air-frame. Some manufactures are doing that already for cars but for plans it will be even more important.
Things like using a PRANDTL Wing and prop blade would make a large difference for example.
It of course makes sense for startups like Heart Aerospace not to try these things but I think eventually people will. Electric planes will be so operational efficient that there will be huge demand to increase the range.
At this point I'm convinced the only way industry can actually produce something game-changing is if the government spends a huge amount of R&D on it first.
On the other hand, scrappy SaaS startup could parse your logs and send alerts for cheaper, yes.
I think you are underestimating the interplay between industry and government.
Government come in and sometimes push forward the technology industry already has, mostly by just given those industries more investment money.
But industry still invests gigantic amount of money to push technology forward and those innovations are constantly and consistently changing the game.
Government invests something in X and then for the next 100 years people in forum can say 'see this only happened because of X'. But that ignores a lot of the work before and after to actually make it game changing.
And what we also need to consider is that very often that huge government investment fails and goes nowhere. And at the same time large private investment can also fail.
To conclude from this no private investment can ever be game-changing doesn't really follow.
Starlink is a recent example that is pretty game-changing. Government didn't invest in it directly. Sure in the last 100s government invest in rocketry and electronics and antennas but so did private industry at a much larger overall rate (outside of rocketry).
So I think, at the end of the day, government will always have its fingers in almost every pie and will always talk about their success and never talk about their failures. If Boom isn't successful, well you can't innovate without the government. If Boom is successful, well Boom profited from government investment in supersonic military technology so they couldn't have done it without government.
So these kinds of arguments all circle in on themselves. At the end of the day, if you invest lots of money in something game-changing most of the time its gone go to shit, no matter who does it.
That seems like it would slow things down a bit, which is a problem in a higher rate world. Not sure business travel is going to stay on the same trajectory either.
This was probably to protect the flag carrier from a very attractive and more comfortable rival who were rumored to be considering a380 flights to the country
Concorde didn't fail for technical reasons but AA have put down a deposit for 60. This is limited to < Mach 1 over land so it's going to be most useful on the routes that Concorde could have serviced.
Is it just the noise aspect opening more potential routes? But then I would have thought we would be more concerned about noise now than in the 60s making the improvements a wash.
Supersonic is still banned over land, even if they can get the engines. We’ll see if overseas flights are a big enough market to be more than a loss leader.
aresant|3 years ago
They have yet to recover from that era which saw a ~10x decrease in enterprise value and record losses.
That said I would interpret this news as a "cut the $!@$! R&D bleeding in anything that won't be generating revenue in the next 4 quarters" vs a reflection on the feasibility or health of Boom's very early but very ambitious plans.
(1) https://www.barrons.com/market-data/stocks/rycey
(2) https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/rolls-...
(3) https://simpleflying.com/rolls-royce-record-loss/
neximo64|3 years ago
bell-cot|3 years ago
My guess - Boom wanted RR to sign a new money-losing or zero-profit R&D deal. RR wasn't interested in the "maybe, eventually, there might be some actual profit for us" economics of that.
jjk166|3 years ago
Indeed, supersonic business jets are ideal for the service contract based market. Supersonic engines need much more frequent maintenance than subsonic engines, business jet owners are much less price sensitive than mass-market airlines, and its not like you can just swap in a different supersonic engine, operators are completely locked in.
Far more likely, RR wanted Boom to use one of the supersonic engines it already has developed with minimal modification but Boom needs either heavy modification or a clean slate design to reduce fuel consumption (the second biggest issue for commercial supersonic aviation).
nimbius|3 years ago
Melatonic|3 years ago
ajross|3 years ago
namirez|3 years ago
Their net-zero emission claim is also bogus. Their pricing model doesn’t make much sense either unless they’re willing to lose money for a decade or so. There is not much innovation in aerodynamics and shock wave shaping either. Their only innovation compared to Concorde is the use of composite materials which is just not enough to hit their targets.
wahern|3 years ago
According to Emirates and some other analysts, and contrary to popular narrative, the A380's biggest competitive handicap was the generation of engines, not the mere fact they had 4 instead of 2. The engines were nearly a full generation behind when the A380 debuted, and the gap only grew over time. Engines on a 4-engine plane are smaller, meaning less drag; have narrower power bands, running more optimally at all stages of flight; and have lower maintenance costs, even at twice the number, as they're both less stressed and subject to longer MTBF requirements--losing 1 of 4 engines is much less of a problem than 1 of 2. All considered a 4-engine configuration might still be nominally less fuel efficient, but the difference was negligible given these countering dynamics and in the opinion of some more than made up by other factors favoring the A380. The hub vs point-to-point model disfavored larger planes, but the air travel market was growing and in absolute terms so too was the potential A380 market. But the efficiency gap between engine generations was simply too large to overcome.
Melatonic|3 years ago
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.
thetinguy|3 years ago
There’s been 50 years of commercial aviation development since the Concorde. Composite materials is only one thing on a list of differences between Concorde and boom.
phlipski|3 years ago
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/velontra
trollied|3 years ago
asciii|3 years ago
https://boomsupersonic.com/flyby/post/its-about-time-for-a-b...
randtrain34|3 years ago
rocket_surgeron|3 years ago
[deleted]
purim|3 years ago
bombcar|3 years ago
bambax|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
slater|3 years ago
"Boom meanwhile added, “We are appreciative of Rolls-Royce’s work over the last few years but have mutually concluded their proposed engine design and legacy business model is not the best option for Overture’s future airline operators or passengers.”
ssssssnap!
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
rocket_surgeron|3 years ago
1. They are a Theranos-style operation
2. They are a Madoff-style operation
I, a lone aerospace engineer working out of my garage in my spare time, have a better chance of achieving supersonic flight than Boom does.
Even their technology demonstrator is an obvious scam. It demonstrates nothing. It does not demonstrate the ability to design, build, or maintain a supersonic passenger airplane, and it doesn't demonstrate any new technologies or materials.
The bloatiest of bloated old-school defense contractors can throw together a supersonic prototype for less than $100 million, in fewer than 7 years.
bri3d|3 years ago
I don't really think Boom are a Theranos style operation, because they aren't claiming to have an operational product when no such item exists. A Theranos style scam would be flying a known-unsafe airframe, or parading their demonstrator around claiming "it totally has engines and is ready to fly lol! we just haven't tested it yet." But so far, Boom have just honestly said "we're delayed" instead.
It's surely not a Madoff style operation as they employ staff who are earnestly working towards their goal, however fanciful it may be.
carabiner|3 years ago
3. They're a startup in a manufacturing-oriented, highly regulated industry and dramatically underestimated capital needed.
yabones|3 years ago
So, you take that and couple it with 21st century VC-appeal and you have a fantastic money-losing-machine whether it works or not. Hell, it probably does work with enough R&D, but that was never the problem in the first place.
_fizz_buzz_|3 years ago
MichaelCollins|3 years ago
If they were that, they'd be lying about having their own engine in development that is an order of magnitude better than the competitions but won't show it to anybody.
cmdrriker|3 years ago
The Concord showed this by shouldering the burden of research, development, prototyping, and then production. Turns out SS's don't have the load factor & associated economics to make it a viable mode. That revelation was before environmental and political challenges made those economics worse.
Unless unobtanium can me mined, tooled, and manufactured cheaply into airframe parts and power such as scram-jet or super cruising turbofans can push a plane at Mach 2 with 200+ seats behind the pilot, methinks its just a pretty artist's conception on a Pop Mechanics or Science magazine cover.
tlogan|3 years ago
If CEO have some experience in the field then it might succeed (workday, salesforce, okta, etc.) If not, then it is probably a scam.
Of course, there are exceptions but these exceptions prove the rule.
rollinggoron|3 years ago
AustinDev|3 years ago
Melatonic|3 years ago
Thinking out loud here - lets say you have a few senior engineers that know that GE or Boeing or RR or something is currently working on a smaller supersonic engine. You know you cannot yourselves design such an engine but if it is released maybe it would make sense to get a head start designing a product to take advantage of it?
pbreit|3 years ago
topspin|3 years ago
cortesoft|3 years ago
smachiz|3 years ago
This was always a fools errand.
ajross|3 years ago
Boom is wasting their time building an airframe but what they really need to win is an engine. They should have built the engine first.
mshockwave|3 years ago
trhway|3 years ago
rjsw|3 years ago
keepquestioning|3 years ago
lacker|3 years ago
it_citizen|3 years ago
lyind|3 years ago
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/15/eco-airship...
Maybe they could fly fully autonomous when used as freighters.
AustinDev|3 years ago
lm28469|3 years ago
Yeah idk about that part, I doubt we need more of anything that enables more pollution
galgot|3 years ago
AustinDev|3 years ago
hef19898|3 years ago
Melatonic|3 years ago
https://airwaysmag.com/boom-supersonic-refined-overture-desi...
panick21_|3 years ago
But to get there we first need normal conservative electric planes to make electric planes more normal. Battery have to be getting better for this to happen but I think we will get there, some people overestimate how large battery improvements we need by basically thinking they need to match chat fuel.
If you look at how far the currently in development electric plans can go you can see lots of improvements that can be made to increase that range considerably.
You can also build your air-frame out of batteries. The batteries themselves need to become structural members in the air-frame. Some manufactures are doing that already for cars but for plans it will be even more important.
Things like using a PRANDTL Wing and prop blade would make a large difference for example.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCwtcDNB15E
It of course makes sense for startups like Heart Aerospace not to try these things but I think eventually people will. Electric planes will be so operational efficient that there will be huge demand to increase the range.
MichaelZuo|3 years ago
keepquestioning|3 years ago
On the other hand, scrappy SaaS startup could parse your logs and send alerts for cheaper, yes.
panick21_|3 years ago
Government come in and sometimes push forward the technology industry already has, mostly by just given those industries more investment money.
But industry still invests gigantic amount of money to push technology forward and those innovations are constantly and consistently changing the game.
Government invests something in X and then for the next 100 years people in forum can say 'see this only happened because of X'. But that ignores a lot of the work before and after to actually make it game changing.
And what we also need to consider is that very often that huge government investment fails and goes nowhere. And at the same time large private investment can also fail.
To conclude from this no private investment can ever be game-changing doesn't really follow.
Starlink is a recent example that is pretty game-changing. Government didn't invest in it directly. Sure in the last 100s government invest in rocketry and electronics and antennas but so did private industry at a much larger overall rate (outside of rocketry).
So I think, at the end of the day, government will always have its fingers in almost every pie and will always talk about their success and never talk about their failures. If Boom isn't successful, well you can't innovate without the government. If Boom is successful, well Boom profited from government investment in supersonic military technology so they couldn't have done it without government.
So these kinds of arguments all circle in on themselves. At the end of the day, if you invest lots of money in something game-changing most of the time its gone go to shit, no matter who does it.
MisterTea|3 years ago
This is how it has always worked.
kurthr|3 years ago
Of course weirder stuff is happening:
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/israel-ba...
Banning 4 engine aircraft from Israel means no more 747 freighters or new leisure supersonics.
kylehotchkiss|3 years ago
LadyCailin|3 years ago
benj111|3 years ago
Concorde didn't fail for technical reasons but AA have put down a deposit for 60. This is limited to < Mach 1 over land so it's going to be most useful on the routes that Concorde could have serviced.
Is it just the noise aspect opening more potential routes? But then I would have thought we would be more concerned about noise now than in the 60s making the improvements a wash.
cromulent|3 years ago
https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight (Read the last sentence).
Kukumber|3 years ago
This partnership have been running for quite a while and no results in the end
Also it is interesting to see only negative comments about RR? i wonder why? :) [2]
[1] - https://boomsupersonic.com/
[2] - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/boom
6stringmerc|3 years ago
ggm|3 years ago
BryLuc|3 years ago
[deleted]