Boom Supersonic takes baby steps toward breaking the sound barrier Aircraft biz Boom Supersonic completed the second test flight of its XB-1 demonstrator vehicle on Monday, during which the landing gear was retracted and extended for the first time and its new roll damper was tested. The 15-minute test flight took place in the Mojave Desert where the XB-1 reached an altitude of 10,400 feet …
"According to the company, the Concorde was just ahead of its time. In its heyday, there was a lack of modern materials and a less developed global travel market, which translated to high maintenance costs and restrictive ticket prices."
So the diabolical thirst for kerosene had nothing to with it. Have they fixed that?
-A.
I don't know about Boom specifically, but I know that other supersonic projects were focused on not needing an afterburner for supersonic flight.
I'm sure supersonic planes will still be thirsty (because physics), but there was some optimism that they'd drain the tanks at a slower rate than the old Speedbird.
Concorde didn't need afterburner to sustain supersonic flight. It cruised at M2 with no afterburner. It needed that only to get off the ground, and through M1 and up to about M1.7.
A12/SR71 did use afterburner, but that's missing the trick. To sustain M3, it didn't really use its engine core for thrust. So it's actually saving a ton of fuel too, despite the length fiery exhaust plumes.
Physics is interesting, because both aircraft became more efficient the faster they went. The problem was getting them up to such speeds in the first place.
The one thing Boom certainly can do is save weight, and likely save it in big arm fulls. That changes everything, makes all the other problems so much easier. Weight savings are useful for ameliorating the inefficient phases of flight that made Concorde so thirsty, and would make a Concorde-style M2 cruise-climb flight regime even more efficient than Corcorde could manage.
If anyone were targeting M3, the weight-saving might not be possible; a lot of today's lightweight materials won't like the heat of M3 flight. So titanium might be the most practicable material for M3 flight, and Lockheed have already been there and worn that T-shirt.
Concorde didn't need afterburner to sustain supersonic flight
The key was supercruise. It was a mechanism which adjusted the air flow into the engines based on air speed and density. It required a leap of faith to use modern (for its time) electronics.
Whilst we've certainly learned a lot since Concord(e)'s time, it was nontheless, an amazing piece of technology & engineering.
Well...
There is Sintered Aluminium (or Aluminum) Powder.
Developed as a high temperature cladding for nuclear fuel in the late 50's it's basically an Oxide Dispersed Alloy using fragments of Al foil which have been oxidised to alumina (you need them as flakes, not powder as that has too little surface area).
Roughly speaking it doubles the maximum operating temperature from around 180c to maybe 400c which (Hypothetically) makes a M3 Concorde a possibility.
Otherwise it's basically pure Al. But it's a bu**er to work with as heat destroys its properties so welding is right out. OTOH that still leaves casting, riveting (IIRC good enough for Concorde) and the ever tricky diffusion bonding.
> Developed as a high temperature cladding for nuclear fuel in the late 50's
<pedant mode> Er, so not modern then?! </pedant mode>
I'd not heard of that material. I'm guessing that the difficulty of working with it has kept its applications down to an absolute minimum. The interesting thing about it is that (assuming it has the properties similar to neat aluminium, or the alloys thereof), a M3 aeroplane made of it would be a whole lot lighter than the A12/SR71 was (weight for weight, Al beats Ti for strength), with all the attendant benefits that would have brought.
I wonder if anyone has tried friction stir welding for sintered aluminium? In case you don't know it, that's a welding process that avoids "melting" the material, and was used to weld aluminium alloy billets together for A380 wing spars (they couldn't buy billets big enough to machine the spars from, so they had to make their own!). It's also used for various other aerospace applications now that others have caught on to its advantages (SpaceX and SLS both trumpet their use of it). The Soviet Union first had the idea in the 1960s, but it was developed and commercialised in the UK by TWI in 1991.
Yep, Concorde was a riveted structure. Aluminium alloy airliners today still are. It's surprising how this construction method has endured, but I can see why. It makes repairs so much easier. Friction stir welding - cool thought it is (in every sense) - would be a very tricky thing to use to assemble an airliner fuselage.
Airbus has stuck with fasteners on the carbon fibre A350, partly because of the ease of manufacture and construction but also because of the ease of repair.
Far from it, which is a good thing.
The trouble with super-duper new wonder materials are a)No long term data on fatigue and fracture b)Little or no materials property data. c)Little or no data on mfg methods.
Concorde and the Boeing 2707 are a case study in "new" materials.
Concorde was built out of an aluminium alloy developed by Rolls Royce for pistons in their aero engines in the 1930's. IE 25-30 years of actual use, mfg skills, property data.
The 2707 was going to be built out of Titanium. Most of the actual experience of use was with Lockheed for the SR71 project. They'd written extensive reports which circulated in the US plane industry, but I'm not sure anyone actually read them.
The partners built and sold an actual plane the US got a $Bn plywood model.
Because nuclear fuel cladding is rather a niche market relatively few people knew it even existed so you had the cycle of no one knows about it --> no one uses --> people make do with what they have because they don't know of anything better.
Diffusion bonding was certainly known in Soviet era Russia, but I'm not so sure about FSW. TBH I always pictured it as the outcome of some botched DIY. A failed attempted to drill some metal with an under powered drill leading to........
Friction stir welding is also being used a lot in the railway business. The modern Hitachi 80x class trains in the UK are constructed from bits welded using FSW in Italy and Japan, and then assembled in Newton Aycliffe.
It's a pretty smart way to weld things. :-)
Bingo, bazza!
Concordski (the Tupolev Tu-144) needed afterburner in Mach cruise, which really messed up its range.
The ingenious flap system on the Concorde kept the Olympus engines from falling apart or needing to burn loads of fuel... It was effectively a turbofan/ramjet for Mach flight.
It'll be interesting what Boom's boutique engine builder comes up with (and how much they'll borrow from military technology). None of the big engine builders are involved.
The shape of the wing helped a hell of a lot as well.
Something the KGB agents who photographed the plans for the USSR (as it was at the time) didn't realise.
Lockheed (who'd built an actual M3 aircraft without swing wings) did recognize it but they lost the US competition to Boeing.
Sounds like someone hasn't bought any airline tickets recently. Sure, you can go rawdogging in Basic Economy in the cattle car end of a 737MAX but Concorde was first class only -- "Business Premium" in today's lingo. If you've bought any tickets for that end of the plane recently then you'll know that they're not just expensive, they're "Really Damn Expensive".
Concorde was a 1960s aircraft design and if you've spent any time on the old Great West Road by Heathrow's 28R runway during that era then you'll know that planes were incredibly noisy and very dirty. So give Concode a break. For the year it was pretty incredible and I'm sure that if the team that built it hadn't been dismantled, scattered to the winds (the earth salted etc.) then they wouldn't have produced some incredible planes. As it is we have to be content with Airbus which, just like the name suggest, are airbuses. (...and the A380 is still an incredible piece of engineering despite what the Boeing PR department plants about it!).
Funny you should ask that.
It's quite true Concorde was the only civilian aircraft fitted with reheat (Afterburner is the American usage) but was planned to be deleted at the block upgrade on the 17th Concorde. That would have substantially increased range and lowered the noise level as reheat was only used for takeoff and going through M1.
Basically through careful analysis of onboard telemetry data they'd figured out how to improve the aerodynamics and scheduling the engines through the different engine modes.
The IT angle? Each engine had 13 computers, although most were of the analogue kind, although at least one was a bone-fide programmable digital type (I think we're in LS74181 ALU territory, so good luck with finding an instruction set for it. Plessey? Ferranti?)
Concorde was never ahead of it's time. It was a product of it's time, just as everything else is; and, with forewarning of the oil crises of the 1970's it would never have been built at all.
The Olympus turbines on it had elements dating back to the 1950's. It was originally a Bristol design, bought out by RR. According to a former RR engineer I used to work with; the fuel consumption figures always looked "wrong" compared to anything else; including military aircraft. Once up to speed and altitude, they were great engines, the issue being getting there in the first place. Genuinely, a JATO assisted takeoff would have made a LOT of economic sense; if you could distribute the JATO's and have a means of picking up the spent units after use. The diabolical thirst was no concern to the hooray henry business customers that would book it on expenses, just because they could. Boom is more or less relying on the same group for this.
Maintenance is a fact of life on all aircraft. Unless you are an irresponsible operator, in which case there are consequences. In Concorde's case, ticket price * number of passengers made up for the lower ticket price * bigger numbers on the 747. BA in the 1980's (and probably the 90's) was making a significant chunk of it's bottom line via Concorde, despite it being a tiny proportion of the fleet.
They never will.
Supersonic transport is limited by more than just fuel consumption, it is limited by cabin space. The Concorde, the TU-144, the SR-71, the XB-70...all have the same design 'feature', a high fineness ratio to the fuselage. The main fuselage must be quite narrow to achieve supersonic speeds with any level of even-acceptable fuel consumption, regardless of reheat or engine design / performance.
The Boom aircraft show the same fineness as just about every other supersonic design. Add in general fuel costs, not *even* counting the supersonic aspect...and you think you're going to promise NY to London at $100?
Anyone who willingly believe that level of hype sadly knows nothing about the science and development of supersonic aviation.
I suspect the real end goal of this is not supersonic transport for the masses, but supersonic business jets for the 0.1%. But to make that work they have to convince everyone they've solved the sonic boom problem, and it's much easier to get government subsidies to work on that if they convince everyone that the general public will benefit.
Ye canna change the laws of physics cap'n!
Concorde carried about 25%* of the passengers as the new 747 (late '60s new) and burned about two thirds of the fuel to go 85% as far, so Concorde was more fuel efficient as an aircraft but was burned by the 747 fuel cost per passenger mile.
I'd not be surprised if the new jet was similar when compared to current subsonic jets.
*high density layout, it was nearer 30% in a typical 747 seating plan.
This is designed to transport the global super-rich about when they're not lecturing us about sustainability, and I suspect the demand side economics have changed.
The share of total wealth held by the very rich is much greater today than in say 1970, using reputable research (eg Pew Institute*). Put another way, this isn't just down to Elmo and Schmuckerberg, there are now a heck of a lot more people who are super-wealthy. Think of all the money-laundering oligarchs from the FSU and China, organised criminal kingpins, all the people who lucked out in the various booms and busts, the toerags setting up private equity deals where they share the winnings but take none of the losses, or those leeches and bankers to the super-rich. The number of super-rich people is far greater than back in 1974. I'll assert without doing any research that they're also far more likely to want to hop around the world fast - to avoid residency taxes, take advantage of "investment opportunities" in dodgy locations, and sometimes to evade arrest. Keep on the move and less chance of being caught or taxed.
So I think there's a real market for this thing, and doubly so if they can resolve the sonic boom issue. Lay on twice daily flights between global business centres and super-rich bolt holes and there will be no shortage of passengers. This of course assumes the company can stay cash-positive in development and certification, and that is always the biggest problem when you're at the cutting edge.
* In 1970, Pew's upper income group held 29% of total US wealth, in 2018 they held 48%; Virtually all of that increase was at the expense of the middle income group.
The people you're talking about don't fly commercial, they have their own plane. There would be a market for a supersonic private plane for the superrich, but there's zero market for commercial air travel for them.
The commercial supersonic travel market isn't going to sell to the "superrich", it will sell to people who are currently buying first class tickets. i.e. executives on business travel, plus people who are striving to reach the 1%. When they actually REACH the 1% (which is an income of nearly $1 million per year now) they leave behind the world of cattle class travel where they have to rub elbows with the likes of us (supersonic or not) and endure the indignity of TSA screening and instead drive onto the tarmac of small airports where they fly NetJets or similar services, while they long for the day when they can afford their own jet.
Well, they better find other customers!
Very few people are business traveling today. I work for a company that operates in 8 countries at present. International travel is down to basically 1 person, the CEO.
That travel is about 1 per year to each country. So if they are going to be profitable they certainly need to find new customers. The senior political class maybe.
The idea of supersonic private aircraft sounds more lucrative. They will need to get the fuel costs down though.
I see the Boom as an interim solution until a quiet supersonic passenger airplane is finally developed, as NASA is doing with QUESST. High-supersonic speeds are needed to make supersonic speeds worthwhile. You need at least Mach 2 and preferably something beyond Mach 3 for it to have an impact.
I'd love to be able to fly to Australia or New Zealand in 8 hours or so. The long flight times are the thing that's keeping me from visiting these countries.
Then you're really looking at Reaction Engines.
They were the only one's who made a serious effort to deliver the EU requirement for Brussels to Melbourne* (IIRC) in about 5 hrs.
Reaction developed SCIMITAR as a specific M5 pure air breathing engine. No rocket engine bits to fly to orbit, which simplified things a bit.
* Well it was an EU project.
Except, sadly, Reaction Engines again finds itself at the short end of the stick because no-one really is interested in what they're doing (other than Boeing who fronted them some money). Right now it's Formula 1 that keeps the lights on in Culham...
It's a shame really. There's a lot of tech they've developed that could improve efficiency of both rocket and non-rocket type engines.
Actually you're wrong.
DARPA helped bankroll their US operation and the British MoD has them as a partner for various high Mach projects, which feed into their widening their skills envelope. The part of Boeing that did so was their development fund. Nothing to do with the once-great airliner mfg side of the business.
They also develop various thermal management systems for everything from the UK Ammonia fuelled aircraft programme (which for civil aviation makes a lot more sense than hydrogen or other forms of biofuel. Yes ammonia can be made by bugs in a tank).
The latter makes them somewhat independent of raising yet-another round of startup funding.
Having recently spent four weeks in Oz, I can confirm it's well worth the utter misery of c22 hours cattle class flight, although do make sure you're on an A380.
If you want to do it in 8 hours, then you'll need a Mach 3 aircraft and/or 11,000 mile range, you'll need them to have solved the sonic boom problem AND got approval from the slow moving regulators in some very backward countries that the boom problem has gone away. This all ignore the emissions that'll still be about 3x those of conventional aircraft (per seat km). There's also the noise issue - for supersonic travel an aircraft can't use high-bypass fans, and the net result of that is LOTS more noise - I'd guess that the supersonic aircraft in question will have a noise footprint not unlike a Boeing 727, and it's basically illegal to operate a civil aircraft that noisy out of any civilised location.
"Well, His Imperial Highness Musk is actually working on point-to-point rocket travel, funded by the US military. This would be 30-45min flights to anywhere.
We'll see how that goes... I'll give it 50-50 odds because I'm feeling optimistic today."
No, yeah, no.
The promise was an hour anywhere, not 30-45mins, but that's if you are at the launch site, the rocket is tanked up and the weather is clear on both ends. It's also important that it doesn't have a tendency to go "boom" or get all melty. The military has giant cargo aircraft that can pull right up to where goods are ready to load and fly in all sorts of weather. If the weather on the far side sucks, they can land as close as possible and wait until it breaks to complete the journey.
It makes no sense and the Common Sense Skeptic did a great job of burning that idea to the ground. It's far from original too.
The final note is that it isn't being worked on.
The US Postal Service of all people tried this in the 1950s with their "missile mail" program - their idea was to have mail delivered across the US and to other countries by rocket. They tried a test flight from a nuclear submarine using a Regulus missile (with the nuclear warhead replaced with letters in a suitable container) which successfully "landed" at a US Navy base, the mail was then sent on it's way (mainly commemorative envelopes for distribution to congresspeople, the President etc).
They shortly thereafter gave up on the idea as it was too expensive per mail mile compared to loading it into the hold of an airliner (which even in the 1950s had decreased the transport time of a letter from the US to Europe from several weeks to a day) and it was more a demonstration of US missile capability than anything else.
And the German (or was it Austrian) postal service had a "Rocket mail" delivery service in the 1930's.
"Halfway to anywhere" looks at the subject of VTOL SSTO and it's benefits for delivery of very-high-value packages (the sort of parts that shut down $100m chemical plants) or of the VIP's who have the skills to use such parts.
Not exactly a "new" idea.
Trouble is VTOL rockets look a lot like an incoming ICBM. And if their guidance fails they can behave a lot like an incoming ICBM. There's a picture in a book called "Birth of the Missile" that showed a V2 test. It produced a crated about 100ft across and 20ft deep without a warhead. Just the KE carried by vehicles (by now) empty mass.
Long may NZ (and anywhere that is 'remote' relative to somewhere nearing it's antipodes) be a long tiresome journey away. It keeps things real, and deters those tourist lemmings who have no idea why they are visiting somewhere else and have even less interest in the impact of their massed and ignorant presence on the lives and wellbeing of the local residents and ecology.
Rant over.
"While SpaceX showed its possible to disrupt an industry"
If I won a big lottery, took the money and bought milk to sell at a loss, I could "disrupt" the dairy business in a big radius around ground zero. There's also the Microsoft version where they see a small software company announcing some software that seems pretty neat and quickly announcing that M$ will be introducing a competing product that will integrate seamlessly with all other M$ software right out of the box until they scrap the whole things as non-viable after the small software company has been put out of business. The intent wasn't to destroy a competitor, but to keep the space clear while they figure out if it will be a money spinner or not. That's disruption as nobody thinking of a similar product is going to want to go up against M$.
What most assume is that SpaceX has done something that is so much better that they've leapfrogged everybody else. I used to work on rockets and can say that they are doing nothing new. Commercial satellite launches are about where they were before SpaceX if you delete all of the launches for Starlink. Yes, there's a bit more small sat launches that can rideshare a few dozen at a time, but not much in the way of big corporate birds increasing. The cost isn't in the launch in the first place, it's in the payload. There's also a need for a launch provider to always be working on the next vehicle and interim improvements on existing craft to keep up with the times and component availability. SpaceX charges to little that they don't have the money from profits for enough R&D. Several times a year they have funding rounds to make up for not getting enough government handouts. The US government contracted SpaceX to demonstrate a human landing system to take people from lunar orbit to the moon's surface that was supposed to fly unmanned in Jan 2024. Of the $3bn in the contract, SpaceX has been paid 2/3 thus far and Elon has stated that the Starship program is burning $2bn/year. Even if they can get a completely empty Starship to fly a sub-orbital mission AND can build the next version that might be able to carry 100 tons, they would still have to have the whole thing allowed to launch from Cape Canaveral as Boca Chica can't support the cadence nor the flight path. That's a complete new GSE installation required in Florida AFTER getting the approvals which they can't just sneak in while calling it something else like they've done in Texas to hoax the yokels.
Yes and no.
F9 is a Kerolox TSTO with a GG cycle engine and Al alloy tanks. Very vanilla
How they built it, and how much they built it for (showing that the cost models for this, which incorporate decades of project overruns to estimate the "normal" project costs are in fact total bu***hit) were revolutionary.
We now know what a vehicle that size should cost at this technology level.
And Starship is revolutionary if it works.
You can't ignore Starlink launches, it the core part of the their business and in order to make that part viable they need to bring costs down which other customers have benefitted from. While the technology isn't anything that hasn't been done before, including propolsive landing is nothing new they have been able to turn it into a production line which has bought costs down.
At the end of the day, regardless of how they got there they have disrupted the launch business and offered capability that didn't exist before.
"regardless of how they got there they have disrupted the launch business and offered capability that didn't exist before."
Ok, what added capability?
SpaceX charges more now for astronaut seats to ISS than the Russians had been charging on Soyuz. The only difference is that the US government can hold SpaceX to a contracted price over time where that wasn't possible with Russia. Although, the expectation was that SpaceX was supposed to have the crew Dragon done 5 years prior to their first flight so there was hesitancy in any long term contract for seats on Soyuz.
Hum let me see,
- Heavier payload capability, nothing aside from SLS matches Falcon Heavy. There are missions like Europa Clipper or Lunar Gateway which just can't be launched on any other launcher. Aside from fairing size, it still has more capacity than Vulcan or New Glenn.
- Shorter lead times. You can have a launch within weeks if not sooner as opposed to years which used to be the industry standard. Will say Firefly did a demo with less than 24 hours notice which was very impressive.
- Cheaper costs. Cost per kg has never been lower.
Not sure where you are getting your costs for Commercial Crew, the extension prices have gone up to $72m per seat. Starliner is around $90m. Soyuz is around $80m to $90 depending which way the winds blowing.
Hum let me see,
- Heavier payload capability, nothing aside from SLS matches Falcon Heavy. There are missions like Europa Clipper or Lunar Gateway which just can't be launched on any other launcher. Aside from fairing size, it still has more capacity than Vulcan or New Glenn.
Falcon Heavy is something Elon wants to axe but Gwen won't let him since they have contracts. They only launch the F9H once or twice a year and it can be a couple of years between launches. That's a lot of infrastructure on standby for that cadence. The Delta IV heavy was retired since it was dated and there wasn't enough work for it. F9H can take more mass to LEO than a fully kitted out Vulcan, but whether that is useful would take an analysis of what's been going on the F9H to date. New Glenn still hasn't launched so it's impossible to evaluate. Their specs might change when they have one flight under their belt. Starship turns to maybe have 30T of capacity to LEO, but Elon had to admit that they aren't anywhere near 100T with the version they've been testing which goes to demonstrate the chicken/math law.
- Shorter lead times. You can have a launch within weeks if not sooner as opposed to years which used to be the industry standard. Will say Firefly did a demo with less than 24 hours notice which was very impressive.
No, you can't have a launch within weeks. There's also no reason for it. If you are building a payload, The choice of launchers is going to be narrow and there's always a lead time for launch site scheduling, integration and check out. Nobody has a completed payload and suddenly discovers they haven't contracted for a rocket to put it in space. If you need to switch providers, there's going to be a lead time to create and check out a new payload adapter.
- Cheaper costs. Cost per kg has never been lower.
Launch costs aren't a huge line item in terms of a whole project. Being cheap means the company has less money for R&D, maintenance and building/repairing infrastructure. It's one thing to optimize pricing to sell thousands of bags of dried pasta and something quite different to operating a business that does it's thing a few times a year. Average margins go right out the window since there's a much greater standing cost regardless of cadence. You can't just look at the incremental cost of each launch and mark it up by 20% and be a healthy company.
-Not sure where you are getting your costs for Commercial Crew, the extension prices have gone up to $72m per seat. Starliner is around $90m. Soyuz is around $80m to $90 depending which way the winds blowing.
SpaceX is up around $85mn per seat to ISS with all prices, fees and charges added up. Keep in mind that the US government is paying for Cape Canaveral and not all of the costs for a F9 astronaut launch are captured in the launch site fees. In buying seats from the Russians, there isn't all those outside costs so it's simpler to say what the price is.
There’s very little point reducing a six hour flight to three hours…..one you add a three hour check-in, plus an hour to get out of the destination airport. Plus probably an hour and half on each end travel-time to the airport. Then it only reduces 13 hours down to 10 hours. This is exactly why the rich now travel first-class, rather than caring about travel-time. And in addition, you can now remain connected email and phone on the plane, which one couldn’t in the sixties and seventies.
So, what’s the point of supersonic? Makes no sense.
"So, what’s the point of supersonic? Makes no sense."
From a commercial passenger perspective, I'd agree. Before Concorde ceased, I wanted to try it on a long trip where it would have let me stay in Europe a wee bit longer. A one and done bucket list item that always remained too expensive in terms of how many other bucket list items it would cost.
OTOH, Military uses abound. Scientific missions to fetch and return data on a tight timeline such as what SR-71's were doing towards the end. Satellites are often fine, but with a big natural disaster such as an earthquake, tsunami or volcano where comms are down, a fast flight can get much finer detail than a sat and get it very quickly.
Basically anyone today can make a plane fly 430km/h, thats barely any different compared to a pisto plane like the spitfire etc.
Fucking idiots, you are pretending that a plane slower than a WW2 plane is supersonic...
google: spitfire speed
ple also search for
North American P-51 Mustang
North American P-51 Mustang
710 km/h
Hawker Hurricane
Hawker Hurricane
547 km/h
Vought F4U Corsair
Vought F4U Corsair
718 km/h
Boom are first going to have to prove their design works for the phases of flight that get them to and from the supersonic phase. These are important because the aircraft can't just appear at 50,000+ feet doing mach speeds and then magic back to the hanger when it's finished. A design that can travel at high speeds is not necessarily comfortable at low speeds in the lower atmosphere, but that phase of flight is still important.
See they are doing it the tried and tested way - do a test run, observe anomalies etc, fix, then do a test run with the fixes/patches applied.
Repeat until all bugs/issues have been ironed out. Then increase the speed, and see what else breaks.
And hopefully they will also apply the lessons learnt from Concorde (and others) to their aeroplane.
Should be interesting to watch.
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