from Hacker News

Rolls Royce Ends Boom Supersonic Partnership

by theparanoid on 9/8/22, 4:46 PM with 245 comments

by aresant on 9/8/22, 6:26 PM
In 2020 COVID decimated Rolls Royce given their concentration of revenue associated with selling & servicing existing aero engines.
They have yet to recover from that era which saw a ~10x decrease in enterprise value and record losses.
That said I would interpret this news as a "cut the $!@$! R&D bleeding in anything that won't be generating revenue in the next 4 quarters" vs a reflection on the feasibility or health of Boom's very early but very ambitious plans.
(1) https://www.barrons.com/market-data/stocks/rycey
(2) https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/rolls-...
(3) https://simpleflying.com/rolls-royce-record-loss/
by bell-cot on 9/8/22, 5:20 PM
My understanding is that the only profitable part of being a modern commercial jet engine manufacturer is service contracts - on actually-in-service jet engines. Vs. Boom Supersonic has never built a plane which actually managed to take off. And even their 1/3-scale "technology demonstrator" plane is 5+ years behind its original schedule. (And has yet to taxi along a runway, if I read Wikipedia right.)
My guess - Boom wanted RR to sign a new money-losing or zero-profit R&D deal. RR wasn't interested in the "maybe, eventually, there might be some actual profit for us" economics of that.
by namirez on 9/8/22, 6:23 PM
Sadly Boom is doomed and it’s been a writing on the wall all along. They never had a good engine option. The military engines are not safe enough and developing a new civilian engine makes sense only if you make hundreds of them.
Their net-zero emission claim is also bogus. Their pricing model doesn’t make much sense either unless they’re willing to lose money for a decade or so. There is not much innovation in aerodynamics and shock wave shaping either. Their only innovation compared to Concorde is the use of composite materials which is just not enough to hit their targets.
by trollied on 9/8/22, 5:23 PM
Just last month they were saying they'd be manufacturing the first aircraft in 2024. This company just looks like another huge investor scam at the moment.
by bombcar on 9/8/22, 5:08 PM
The semi-snide comments from the Boom side is, as the kids would say, "sus".
by rocket_surgeron on 9/8/22, 6:03 PM
Regarding Boom there are only two reasonable conclusions one can reach:
1. They are a Theranos-style operation
2. They are a Madoff-style operation
I, a lone aerospace engineer working out of my garage in my spare time, have a better chance of achieving supersonic flight than Boom does.
Even their technology demonstrator is an obvious scam. It demonstrates nothing. It does not demonstrate the ability to design, build, or maintain a supersonic passenger airplane, and it doesn't demonstrate any new technologies or materials.
The bloatiest of bloated old-school defense contractors can throw together a supersonic prototype for less than $100 million, in fewer than 7 years.
by topspin on 9/8/22, 5:17 PM
There are perhaps 3 companies on Earth that could conceivably provide engines for this application. RR was one of them. Where to now?
by lacker on 9/8/22, 5:53 PM
I'm rooting for you, Boom. The world needs supersonic planes and you're so close. Good luck.
by galgot on 9/8/22, 6:10 PM
How surprising... Developing a specific supersonic jet engine for this kind of plane would not be cost effective anyway, the fleet would be too small to worth the investment. Even starting from a military jet engine, the way they are run and maintained is very different from civilian jet engines.
by Melatonic on 9/8/22, 10:08 PM
This article says that they are also partnering with Northrup Gruman to develop a "special missions" version for the government. So they very well could be getting a big government investment that so many here are saying would be necessary to pull this off.
https://airwaysmag.com/boom-supersonic-refined-overture-desi...
by panick21_ on 9/9/22, 8:33 AM
I think we will have supersonic planes, but they will be electric.
But to get there we first need normal conservative electric planes to make electric planes more normal. Battery have to be getting better for this to happen but I think we will get there, some people overestimate how large battery improvements we need by basically thinking they need to match chat fuel.
If you look at how far the currently in development electric plans can go you can see lots of improvements that can be made to increase that range considerably.
You can also build your air-frame out of batteries. The batteries themselves need to become structural members in the air-frame. Some manufactures are doing that already for cars but for plans it will be even more important.
Things like using a PRANDTL Wing and prop blade would make a large difference for example.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCwtcDNB15E
It of course makes sense for startups like Heart Aerospace not to try these things but I think eventually people will. Electric planes will be so operational efficient that there will be huge demand to increase the range.
by MichaelZuo on 9/8/22, 6:13 PM
To put this in perspective, developing a modern high-efficiency supersonic engine requires an order-of-magnitude more money than the airframe itself.
by keepquestioning on 9/8/22, 5:22 PM
At this point I'm convinced the only way industry can actually produce something game-changing is if the government spends a huge amount of R&D on it first.
On the other hand, scrappy SaaS startup could parse your logs and send alerts for cheaper, yes.
by kurthr on 9/8/22, 5:10 PM
That seems like it would slow things down a bit, which is a problem in a higher rate world. Not sure business travel is going to stay on the same trajectory either.
Of course weirder stuff is happening:
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/israel-ba...
Banning 4 engine aircraft from Israel means no more 747 freighters or new leisure supersonics.
by benj111 on 9/9/22, 8:47 AM
So what's changed since Concorde?
Concorde didn't fail for technical reasons but AA have put down a deposit for 60. This is limited to < Mach 1 over land so it's going to be most useful on the routes that Concorde could have serviced.
Is it just the noise aspect opening more potential routes? But then I would have thought we would be more concerned about noise now than in the 60s making the improvements a wash.
by cromulent on 9/8/22, 8:00 PM
Supersonic is still banned over land, even if they can get the engines. We’ll see if overseas flights are a big enough market to be more than a loss leader.
https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight (Read the last sentence).
by Kukumber on 9/9/22, 10:42 AM
They should have done that a long time ago, Boom never reference RR in any of their PR documents, including their websites [1]
This partnership have been running for quite a while and no results in the end
Also it is interesting to see only negative comments about RR? i wonder why? :) [2]
[1] - https://boomsupersonic.com/
[2] - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/boom
by 6stringmerc on 9/8/22, 10:54 PM
Still have my money on Darkhorse showing promise to actually work at least.
by ggm on 9/8/22, 10:22 PM
Doesn't this say more about the RR engines company than Boom?