As for maintenance costs, I imagine that one can expect a very substantial decrease due to the use of CAD, better materials and improved practices. Cost reductions of >40% per flight hour were achieved in the military for "equivalent" aircraft between 1970's and 2000's, and reductions of >50% per seat-mile were achieved in the same period for commercial aircraft (eg: early B747 vs B777). Maintenance costs for commercial airlines are a fraction of the fuel costs in any case.
Finally, it is worth remembering that the Concorde was a very profitable business for British Airways, with operating profit of ~40% for the Concorde!
You make some good points, but BA received their Concordes for free. It's easy to turn a profit with a 150 million pound gift. Air France did not have it as easy. Boom's customers will not be getting their planes for free. And a 50% efficiency saving does not translate into 75% cheaper tickets. And my experience is that claimed maintenance savings are never as good as promised, and that goes doubly so for the "A" variant of any plane.
Only the last four white-tails were close to free, they cost 1 Franc each.
The original UK Government-borne £115 million contract cost of the BOAC / BA Concordes was being recouped at a rate of 80% of their operating profit until in 1984 BA bought themselves out of the arrangement for £25 million.
They specifically mention that both Airlines didn't have to pay for the planes:
> Part of the reason the airlines could claim some profitability on the Concorde was because they did not have to incur capital costs on the planes. [...] The governments of England and France underwrote the costs of building the 14 Concordes, which were then turned over to the two national airlines.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/24/nyregion/for-concorde-econ...
FWIW Concorde ticket prices were so high because they were expected to be so high. By clients. BA raised their prices significantly in the early 80s to match what customers perceived the prices would be:
> Market research had revealed that many of Concorde's existing business customers had their tickets purchased by their employers, and thought the cost of a journey on Concorde was more expensive than it actually was; thus ticket prices were progressively raised to match these perceptions.
Partial payments like that are an investment in the chance that Boom will deliver something exceptional; they avoid not being in the first wave if Boom succeeds.
It doesn't mean they think the chances of Boom producing a worthwhile product are > 50%.
This doesn't make sense to me. The airline should have a netter idea of what passengers can and cant afford. Is they are confident enough to order planes, I feel its safe to assume the demand is there.
More importantly I'd like to know what the cost and payment down is. If its $100k you might have many taking a high risk punt. If its $20m you've got some real commitment and confidence.
Business travelers will be buying these. They'll have a travel budget, the trip will be justified, and the company card will pay. It will pass through silently and might eventually show up in a travel policy that states how only executives are allowed to book supersonic flights.
Not only won't the passengers be mad, they might even be more likely to fly given the reduced travel time. It will now be much faster from NYC to London than to the Bay.
forgotten / misunderstood / miscalculated / is hiding
something entirely fundamental to their business model.
Look, this is a company with adults on board. It's not just 2-3 kids doing another CRUD app in a domain they are completely new to. It's engineers with education and long careers in aviation. I think they know better than most of us the size of engines, that planes use fuel and what it cost. I think they know the cost of insurance and maintenance and other cost components that go into flying at supersonic speed.
Boom is using medium-bypass turbofan engines which are much more efficient.
As for comparison with the F-22, The F-22 engines are quite reliable. The F119 engine (to my knowledge) has never had a core failure requiring shutdown in flight. The RAM (Radar Absorbent Material) coating on the F-22 is maintenance intensive, but not required for a SST. Almost 50 years of research should provide a paint that can handle the heating of supersonic flight, with minimal maintenance.
The supersonic wing is also terrible at subsonic speeds, meaning it takes a terrifying amount of fuel to push it up to altitude and supersonic. Military supersonics deal with this by getting a drink from a tanker after takeoff.
As for aerodynamics, the F-22 is relatively efficient at high subsonic speed and also doesn't require external tanks like earlier jets do.
From a little further reading it seems it seems that supersonic turbofans are actually just the apex of the continued sophisticated work being done on jet engines which has allowed them to push the intake fans of low bypass turbofans up to supersonic airflow speeds.
Naïve question, I know. Just curious...
And what business passenger, by definition someone with a degree of wealth, would cram themselves into a concorde-like seat rather than the epic accommodations of a modern first class cabin? Just to save a couple hours?
There was some computational modeling, but mostly it was old fashioned engineering: slide rules, models, and as someone else remarked, some over-engineering. The same way people built bridges 150 years ago when that was a black art.
There's a wonderful/sad picture at the Hiller museum on 101 in San Carlos. It shows the day the Boeing SST program† was shut down. In front of the mockup (which is also at the museum) are wooden workbenches with vices attached.
It made me realize that not only were they designing everything with slide rules, but people then built all the parts by hand from drawings a draftsman (not draftsperson in those days unfortunately) also produced by hand from hand-sketches and notes by and engineer. Honestly this blew my mind when I realized that the ME-262, SR-71 and LEM were produced in the same way.
And I should have known: at MIT I took Unified the last year (1983) that the practical work was done entirely on old WW II surplus machine tools. In the next room, not yet unpacked, were early CAD systems.
† I still wonder if Boeing was every really serious about passenger SST.
When it ruins your life, it's a vice. When it holds your work together, it's a vise.
[1] California Dept of Transportation
Though on my course we only had 1 person who worked at a traditional engineering firm the rest of us worked in RnD at the RAE ARA or on campus at CIT.
Of course, supercruising in a fantastically expensive small fighter is not the same as supercruising in an airliner. And a military fighter being sold as "cheap to operate" such as the Gripen E is not the same thing as being able to sell seats in it at commercial prices. 75% less sounds like a LOT, but I'm not sure how much of the Concordes prices consisted of fuel, and how much consisted of other things (expensive development, expensive maintenance?)
I'm also an "aerospace veteran" and have seen more projects cancelled than succeed (most recently the Lear 85). Designing a new plane is capital "H" Hard. That goes doubly so for planes that are big departures from the previous experience of the company. Cessna makes great light business jets. They are currently trying to design a line of bigger jets and are finding it very hard. Lear can't figure out how to make anything without mechanical flight controls. It takes a couple generations of design to figure things out. So a bunch of engineers from Scaled and Boeing aren't going to help. How many ex-Concorde engineers have they hired?
All right, when you said you are an aerospace veteran I was prepared to take you seriously, but this cancels that out completely. Firstly any Concorde engineers would, if they started their career right out of college on Concorde, be about 80 years old by now. Then this plane is using different and much more modern engine technology, different control systems and different materials. Almost nothing learned from Concorde would be up to date and relevant to this plane, from an engineering perspective.
We should remain skeptical whenever someone says they will do great things that hasn't been done before, but immediately going to the conclusion of "it's impossible because I can't imagine how to make it work" is just plain arrogance - a true skeptic should be skeptical of his/her own judgement.
What? I don't think that has anything to do with it at all, and the distinction between types of engineering seems irrelevant. I think he's pointing out that they're trying to make a profitable business without understanding the necessary costs. Given the nature of startups to overpromise and underdeliver (as that's a common tactic to help raise money), his skepticism seems reasonable to me. I see just as many criticisms of software businesses on this site (actually many more, since there are far more articles about software companies here than hardware companies).
I have very little aerospace experience so I do not claim to be an expert, and while like to see people tackling big problems eventually succeed, his points seem salient to me.
Even with all the greatest computer model, one thing remains the same: it takes a massive amount of thrust to maintain supersonic flight. EVERY airplane that is/was capable of supersonic cruise (SR-71, XB-70, F-22, Concorde) have/had comically oversized engines compared to what design rules of thumb would suggest. New technologies enable slightly more efficient airframes and slightly more efficient engines, we are talking about a few percent overall. So, I can see tickets being 20% less than they were in the Concorde's day.
Part of the reason I think they have mis-calculated a number is that they might be calculating a flight cost that includes fuel only and doesn't include other things an airline has to price into a ticket- namely insurance and maintenance. Insurance for the first supersonic passenger plane since the Concorde is guaranteed to be higher than a 767. Maintenance is going to be crazy as well- flying at Mach 2.2 places different stresses on an airplane, and they break a lot. All of the current supercruising airplanes are/were maintenance nightmares. Don't think that technology can "magic away" all the maintenance issues that come up with sustained stress on your engines, skin friction, and cooling issues.
Unless something else changes, there is no way you'll be able to buy a NY to London plane ticket for 75% less than a Concorde. How might they get there? Packing people in like sardines, or replacing normal baggage space with extra seats, would both get more paying seats on board, but would be a big setback from what business class passengers expect. Or maybe there is some magic fuel out there that is lighter than Jet-A/B and delivers more thrust and is safe enough for use in a passenger jet. The existence of magic fuel is unlikely, so be prepared for one of two things- 1. your tickets cost more than expected, or 2. you are packed in like a sardine.
Again, I'm glad that someone is trying to make a supersonic passenger jet, but hyperbolic marketing ultimately hurts you in the long run when it becomes obvious that you can't live up to expectations.