bscholl

Will never forgetting getting marked down in that class for producing a square, when I was asked to produce a rectangle. "No, I meant a rectangle rectangle!"

Lol!

Thank you!

Actually, Concorde was too big: 100 seats. It worked NY/London but at ~$20k/seat they couldn't fill enough seats several times daily on other routes. Which means you can't have many airplanes, which means no economies of scale.

With 40 seats and business class prices, the Boom airplane works on many more routes, which means we can make a lot of airplanes and enjoy economies of scale.

Looking into the future, as fuel efficiency further improves, per seat costs come down, and it will make sense to make ever larger aircraft. It's a virtuous cycle that will eventually allow supersonic flight at economy prices.

There's computational fluid dynamics—which are very good today especially at supersonic conditions. Also, we have some design optimization tools we've built in-house which let us quickly explore many alternatives and zero-in on the best design.

Speed: Mach 2.2 is the fastest speed possible with known technology already accepted by the FAA. At that speed, you can have good takeoff performance (and comply with airport noise restrictions) and good cruise performance. We'd to build a faster V2 or V3, in due time.

Capital: I can't comment quite yet. (Sorry)

YC has been awesome and supportive in so many ways, far beyond money. 5 stars, would do again!! :-)

Really good questions. We aren't sharing the details of the technical design quite yet (but will have more to say as we approach first flight).

Regarding engines: our first prototype (1/3 scale) flies with an off-the-shelf GE engine. For the product airplane, we're taking an existing subsonic engine and adapting it for supersonic flight. (Sorry, I know that's vague—much more to say about this in due time.)

We're baselining an experience better than domestic first class. One seat on each side of aisle, so everyone gets a window and aisle. There's more footroom and more headroom than the typical first class on a 737 or A320.

But this is something airlines can customize.

Thank you! It's an idea whose time has come...

Thanks! :-)

Sonic boom physics are subtle and counter-intuitive. High level, you: (1) keep the airplane as small and light as possible (reduces total shock energy) (2) carefully shape the fuselage and wings, so the shocks don't combine as strongly

schwarrrtz and azernik nailed it.

Today's batteries don't store enough energy for long international flights. There are some battery technologies in the lab (Google Lithium-air batteries) that might make this feasible, but they're not ready yet. Yet alone proven safe to carry passengers.

As fans of speed, we want to bring supersonics to market as quickly as possible. So, we're only using core technologies that have flown on other airplanes and are accepted by regulators.

There's plenty of opportunity for radical innovation in V2 and V3 once V1 is working!

exactly

TBH we really don't want to lock people out. I was disappointed that I never got to fly Concorde, not even once, and we want to open this to everyone (eventually make it routine).