Well, they also occasionally fund stupid shit like uBeam.

> "Yes of course SpaceX is going to make Musk money" -- HN.

Isn't it? Except that money is wisely reinvested into the Mars transportation project.

> "Funding a supersonic plane is a stupid idea" -- HN.

Supersonic passenger plane is not a smart idea for various technical and economical reasons. I don't think that's just "HN opinion".

AFAIK, the technical and economic reasons boil down to: "Too expensive to build, too expensive to fly, people object to the sonic booms".

I don't know if there is a way around the sonic boom problem, but for the first two there's an "easy" fix: make it cheaper. I don't have a clue how to do that, but and I have no particular opinion on Boom, but if someone came up with a way around that "small" problem then everything else falls into place.

E.g. taking 5 hours to go to a place (2h flight + airport overhead on both sides) by a plane vs. 12+ hours by bus makes many destinations suddenly accessible to people to visit for a weekend. Except maybe on intercontinental, I don't see a supersonic passenger plane enabling another quality class of travel.

If the price point comparison is (more plausibly) between business class in one of several A380/777 flights, chartering a flight and leaving exactly when and where you want if there's a group or coach class in a Boom, I think the choice is rather less straightforward. I'm not saying there's no demand - obviously Concorde filled seats - but I am saying it might not be sufficient to make a viable commercial aircraft programme even without restrictions on where they can fly.

That said, the concord was much closer to a prototype than what economical supersonic aircraft will look like. But, nobody is trying to build thousands of 400 passenger supersonic aircraft which makes your comparison more realistic.

But I'd imagine there's a reason that jet doesn't exist even in the realms of the most hyperbole-filled press releases of supersonic jet ventures...

So.. the case for it is arguable? Which no longer makes it a "not a smart idea" - it might be a very smart idea, depending on numbers which we don't know but presumably investors have seen.

I dunno - maybe it'll end up a stupid idea. But I just don't see it being so obviously crazy as all the initial comments were making out.

So their quality of life may go up if they could take a super sonic, but I'm not sure it would expand the market much: either way it's a crappy day and you only do it if you absolutely need to.