If Boom succeeds, we'll get less expensive supersonic travel (that is going to compete against something ballistic like Starship). If Boom fails, someone will buy the tech and still use the jigs, tooling, and IP for something in the aerospace domain (hopefully). Either way, Boom folks get to work on something they enjoy and is meaningful to them (hopefully), and we all get any benefit (hopefully) from their time grinding on aerodynamics, fluid dynamics, and material science problems.

If Boom fails, it will be a glorious day for tech journalists to write the punniest headline.

I admire your restraint.

did anyone buy the jigs, tooling, etc. for the concorde?

Airbus used the new tech for their next generations of plane I believe. I guess the fly-by-wire has been used for the A320 soon after. ABS brakes, a more resistant steel alloy, there is this list in French for some of the innovation made for the Concorde and used elsewhere afterward.

http://www.club-concorde.org/ssc/ret_tech-fr.htm

Different times. Communications and financing are a different beast today. One can reach out to folks they'd never have interacted with in the old days (Twitter, for example). Someone with experience could put together 7 digit financing in a few days, 8 digit financing in weeks, maybe more.

This is one of the most interesting features (or bugs, depending who you ask) about the current time we live in. We can organize massive funding and technological efforts like this over morning coffee and Twitter banter.

I think Airbus owned them outright.

Airbus pledged to supply to tools and spare parts for Concorde until the late 2000s, so yes.

(Of course they stopped supplying them in 2003 when the service was retired after the crash).

> Feels like we're still in a massive aviation crisis

Commercial aviation tends to be a cyclical industry so there will always be a crisis somewhere on the horizon. Airlines like United are trying to broaden their offerings so that they can better maintain margins in a downturn. Some "Time is Money" expense account travelers will always have money to spend on a premium product like getting there twice as fast.

In what way is there a crisis? The major US carriers keep expanding. keep adding new routes, buying more places, etc. Air travel was at an all time high before the pandemic and is likely to rebound and hit new records in coming years.

No way. Commercial air travel is ready for a 10 year slowdown.

The main profit center for commercial air travel was businessmen going places, not too concerned how much flights would cost.

Now business meetings happen by video conference. Flying round the world for a 3 hour meeting will never be big again.

TBH, I fully expect that by the end of this year our company will resume sending management on two-week excursions every six months to Hyderabad.

Now we know how to leverage video conferencing for meetings, and we are convinced more than ever of the limitations given current technology.

In fairness, most business travel is not flying around the world for a 3 hour meeting. I do expect events, roadshows, series of customer meetings, etc. to come back--albeit probably gradually and perhaps not reaching prior levels.

"Commercial air travel is ready for a 10 year slowdown."

You're not really offering any evidence, just speculation. The actions of the major airlines suggest an expansion, not a retraction.

Are they expanding... Or are they switching towards more fuel efficient planes with the expectation that it won't be long before countries start restricting flights that produce too much CO2?

Airplanes have a lifespan. Janky "third world" countries will let you fly a plane that should have been scrapped, but the big airlines in major countries scrap their old planes at the end of life to ensure flying is safe. Getting more fuel efficient planes is a side effect (and with the cost of fuel one they are excited to get)

"never again" are such big words. Let's not assume short to mid-term shocks will automatically translate into long-term changes.

On the flip side Boeing seems to be in the middle of imploding, the ideal time for a new player to come in.

i agree with the gist of your comment, but the us government will never allow boeing to truly implode.

But if we are, as I hope, on the peak of the crisis, and Boom wants to come to marked towards the end of the decade, it could be there exactly at the time the airline industry is in the next boom.