[kindatrue]

Previously Boom's CEO said this:

“That’s not travel, that’s like a thing you might hope to do once in a lifetime,” says Scholl, before adding, “Versus where we want to get, which is anywhere in the world in four hours for 100 bucks.”[1]

Anywhere in the world in four hours for $100 USD really caught people's imagination and attention. I'm puzzled by how they will achieve this.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/boom-supersonic-four-hour...

[hnuser123456]

Huh. The longest flights are around 10,000 miles. They usually cost over $1000. Fuel apparently accounts for about 25% of ticket price on long haul, so $250 in fuel normally. To do that in 4 hours is to travel 2,500 mph. Naively, traveling twice the speed requires 8x the power, so going over 4x the usual 550mph should mean over 64x more fuel burn, or $16,000 in fuel alone. Maybe a bit less since drag doesn't grow quite as quickly above transonic, call it $10,000. But if a ticket's only $100, I guess they've figured out how to get gas for 0.25% of typical prices.

[credit_guy]

The air density decreases exponentially with the altitude, while the drag only increases quadratically with speed. It is entirely possible that there is an altitude, maybe 70km, where it is much more economical to fly (at supersonic speeds) than the current subsonic planes. Most likely the CEO of Boom ran the numbers, and the $100 ticket price is doable, at least if you exclude things like profit, capital depreciation, insurance, etc.

[scythe]

>Naively, traveling twice the speed requires 8x the power, so going over 4x the usual 550mph should mean over 64x more fuel burn

You've forgotten to cancel the denominator. If you use the drag relation of speed to power, you're multiplying by time, but the time is reduced by the speed. It would be more straightforward to use the F ~ v^2 relation between speed and force. So going 4x as fast for the same distance would require 16x the fuel, while going 4x as fast for the same time would require 64x the fuel. But the latter would obviously never happen in practice as you'd circumnavigate the Earth.

[Ajedi32]

Once you get out of the atmosphere, drag (and fuel consumption) is ~0. So theoretically possible, but I'm not sure if that's what he was talking about. Certainly Overture won't be capable of that.

[wraptile]

> which is anywhere in the world in four hours for 100 bucks

That's while my tesla robotaxi is making that 100 bucks driving leprechauns to their golden pots!

Totally not vaporware guys.

[jandrese]

New York to Sydney for $100 in 4 hours? My bullshit alarm is blaring. Unless they have a secret teleporter project they aren't telling people about. If you're burning dinosaurs to do that it is not happening, not unless oil becomes magically free and even then I think you would struggle to make ends meet.

[JumpCrisscross]

> New York to Sydney for $100 in 4 hours? My bullshit alarm is blaring

LA to Sydney is $10k on a good day for lie flat. You could probably charge $15 even 20k a seat and (a) turn a profit (b) filling the plane.