Will Boom Bring Supersonic Back? 

Real Science uploaded a video today that is honestly much better than this one, you should watch it: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DmanbWwMa5w.html

Putting "super easy, barely an inconvenience" into script is tight

That Ryan George reference was something i never expected on this channel, but I love it!

One tiny correction. The Concorde actually flew to Washington DC and on to Miami 3 times a week for many years. I worked in Miami and we used to watch the Concorde land if we were bored.

It's come up a bit already in the comments, but I think "Business Class plus WiFi" and "private jets" basically killed the market for supersonic passenger travel. The former means you can work on the plane in comfort (not possible in the 1970s) and even time your flights on a red-eye flight to sleep for much of it, and the latter means that the really wealthy aren't going to fly supersonic passenger travel when they can fly on their own private jets. All that's left are people who are really super-time sensitive, can't work remotely by WiFI in business class, and have lots of money, and I think that's too niche for it to survive (incidentally, "too narrow niche to survive" is what also kills the occasional giant airship revival that pops up every few years).

The concorde looks really like a marvel of engineering. I mean being able to develop a supersonic plane without modern technology and still being copied years after because your design was very good is like one of the biggest testamnent.

There is one reason that somehow wasn't often mentioned: 50 years ago any type of transport and flight in particular was considered as a time waster, you just sit and wait. Now you have Wi-Fi on your average jet so you can be as productive as in the office. Not to mention modern portable entertainment systems. So there is no need to pay extra to skip 3 hours, especially if you wouldn't even notice it.

Concorde was such a beautiful plane. I was living close to Orly. I could see it everyday going to work to Paris. One was in permanent position in front of the airport. I think it was the most marvelous non military plane of all time. The other being the sr71 to my opinion, that we can see at New York, on the naval museum carrier.

I really appreciate the level of scrutiny you're providing. Seems like many of their advertised claims simply aren't feasible. Looks like a good start and lots of the Concorde's drawbacks are being solved with today's tech advances, BUT: - They need an engine that doesn't exist and usually takes the better part of a decade to produce, yet they want it in a couple of years from scratch. - They haven't significantly decreased the boom - They haven't significantly increased range I guess this is more evolutionary than revolutionary, which as you pointed out probably still won't be economically feasible.

0:26 I think you got confused. Concorde definitely was *NOT* still flying in 2006. The final passenger flight was from New York JFK to London Heathrow on October 24 2003, and the final ever flight of a Concorde was from London Heathrow to Bristol Filton airport on November 26th 2003.

Note, the Concorde's final flight was in November 2003, 18 years ago yesterday. Not 2006 like it says in the video.

0:29 you'd rewind you'r clock FIVE HOURS regardless of speed, even if you took a cruize ship, as your clock would normally not stop ticking while traveling

In case anybody watches the video and thinks 105 dB can't be much louder than 75 dB, it's worth noting that decibels are a logarithmic, not linear, unit. 20 meters, a linear unit, is twice as long as 10 meter. 20 dB is 10 times louder than 10 dB. 30 dB is 10 times louder than 20 dB and so is 100 times louder than 10 dB. In other words, 105 dB is 1000 times louder than 75 dB.

Pinning the hopes of your new airliner on a yet-to-be-designed Rolls Royce engine? I hope it works out better than it did for the L-1011.

never knew ryan would collab with a science guy. unfortunately he didnt do a backflip to kill the bad guy.

As a Brit, I have a special place in my heart for concorde. I've been underneath its flight path when I heard the sonic boom, it's quite something! I remember feeling awed, but if I lived under the flight path, i guess it could have become irritating, obviously can't say for sure. I was very sad when I heard it was being decommissioned

I remember hearing sonic booms as a kid in the early 80's living on the California coast. I loved them. Its one of the things that started my interest of wanting to become a fighter pilot...then Top Gun came out and that sealed the deal. Unfortunately I was in a major accident in '89 at 14 that dashed those dreams. Still love sonic booms though.

"Droop snoot" Thank you for knowing that reference!

As an engineering student, your videos are extremely helpful to have something in the background while I’m playing Minecraft avoiding studying for my final test.

Thanks for this BRILLIANT video -- as always. One downfall though: around the 1 minute mark, you say the Concorde lost many purchase agreements because of "soaring production costs". This is true, but it is important to mention that the US in particular did everything it could to penalise the program (eg: the Secretary of Transport only gave permission for landing the Concorde at Dulles, but the line was closed quickly due to low demand. Only in February 1977 was the ban lifted for JFK). This would obviously be a huge contributing factor to stop other airlines from purchasing the Concorde. Thank you so much for your great work, keep going!

Informative and well presented. Thanks for posting BTW, 0:30 Concorde wasn't retired in 2006. Its last scheduled flight was the return trip from JFK to Heathrow on 24 October 2003, and its last flight was Heathrow to Filton, Bristol on 26 November 2003. I believe it's on display at Filton.

0:50 "Super easy, barely an inconvenience" SCREEN RANT WANTS TO: 📍 KNOW YOUR LOCATION 😂😂

Another caveat is that developing a new (state of the art) engine costs many billions of dollars, which they would never be able to recover due to the limited market size. This leaves (older) off-the-shelf engines, which are fine for a prototype, but are going to be suboptimal for the speeds and/or amount of thrust required. And then there is the issue of using military technology, which is often required for the engines...

Thanks for doing this video! I've always been skeptical with Boom's claim. Even though 60 years of engineering improvements have brought many technologies that Concorde's engineers didn't have, supersonic jet engines haven't improved much since then. Only a few aircrafts can reach supersonic speeds without afterburner, and the pinnacle of that kind of engines was basically the Olympus and the PW J58, that have both been developed 60 years ago. So I always wondered how they would manage to beat the engineering prowess of 3 of the largest engine builders in the world. I feel like that partnership with Rolls-Royce should have been made much earlier in the process. To give a nowadays comparison, Space x didn't start building starship without Raptor's engine development being already well advanced. It feels like they started building an F1 car but planned to use a motorcycle engine

0:33 I don't think that's how clocks work. You have to rewind your clock 5 hours if you fly from London to New York no matter what.

I get what you mean, but everyone always turns back their watch by 6 hours when they fly from Paris to NY, no matter how fast the aircraft is.

This was an amazingly concise video on Aeronautics. You touched upon so many aspects in under 18mins. Also, your copy of _'Skunk Works'_ definitely get a like!

8:57 i love how you can hear him trying not to laugh when he says "droop snoot"

2:16 Concorde didn’t fly those routes exclusively. The only one i can name off the top of my head is the one to mexico city with refueling in dulles (The only reason i’m aware of this route is because my parents lived in mexico city at the time concorde flew there, they would hear it every time it flew overhead). Of course the routes that stayed constant throughout were the LHR-JFK and the CDG-JFK routes, but they weren’t the only ones to exist.

It's not just the sound barrier. It's the cost barrier. An even stronger effect.

the sonic boom is only one of several problems of supersonic flight. there's also engine noise and fuel consumption, and i don't know what can be done about those. - to generate thrust, you need an exhaust speed that is faster than the aircraft moves forward, and the problem is that the noise level increases with the square of the exhaust speed. it may be possible to block the noise from radiating downwards by putting the engine exhausts above the wings, but that leads to other problems that need to be solved - another problem is fuel consumption. not much to be done about that, and this problem will keep increasing as fuel prices keep going through the roof. there are several ways to make a jet engine more efficient. one way is to increase the bypass ratio which makes the engine LESS suitable for supersonic speeds. another way is to increase the TIT. this is not really an option because in modern engines the TIT is already close to the limit of what the available materials can handle. 14:50 more efficient than the concorde? maybe. efficient enough to compete with other airliners? i don't think so. all in all i think supersonic travel is gone for good, and those companies are wasting their money.

All I can say is that this guy really does deserve all the subscribers he has till now. He makes top notch quality content.

Amazing video and I love how you presented it! Thanks for being on RU-vid!

I am old enough to remember when it was thought that supersonic transport flights would be the future of aviation. I suspect that even this newly designed supersonic transport plane from Boom will not be a success and that only a few will be made. Here are the reasons for this opinion. It is the laws of physics, there will always be the double sonic boom when aircraft is flying at supersonic speed. Although the noise level can be reduced, it can not be eliminated. So this airplane will only be used on ocean crossing routes just like the Concorde. Also even though this supersonic airplane will be more efficient than the Concorde, it will still burn a tremendous amount of fuel to travel at supersonic speed. This and other factors like passenger capacity will make airline tickets costs for this airplane very expensive just like the Concorde where only a few very wealthy people will travel on this airplane. Also we live in a time when fuel conservation and fuel economy is a big issue. So my best guess is that there is not a future for commercial passenger supersonic transport.

The only way commercial supersonic travel could work is if 1) Planes can switch between supersonic and subsonic wing configurations (possible, Rockwell B-1 Lancer & Tupolev Tu-160 as basis for this) >> Needed to travel over land at subsonic speeds so they can reach airports without causing sonic booms >> Switching to supersonic wing config. when traveling over oceans/non-populated areas 2) Supersonic engines can achieve high fuel efficiency at supersonic speeds 3) Supersonic engines can achieve high fuel efficiency at subsonic speeds These were the three things that killed any prospect of using supersonic airliners for commercial air travel. Considering the large supersonic planes we currently have that use variable wing geometry mechanisms, I think it's possible to build supersonic airliners that can reach most airports without causing sonic booms over populated areas so we definitively could have a new Concorde or Tupolev 144 that could meet air travel regulations and reach most cities, but it'd be competing with other subsonic airliners to do that and the worse fuel efficiency would kill the supersonic airliner on that regard. For example, a supersonic airliner traveling from Moscow to Paris wouldn't be able to travel faster than a subsonic one, and one traveling from Paris to New York would lose some of its time savings while traveling over Europe before reaching the Atlantic ocean. This would still allow for several more destinations within reach compared to the Concorde, but without better fuel efficiency and lower operational costs it'd still be something for rich customers only, so we're not talking about a commercial, but a luxury, exclusive service. To summarize, IMO with the technology we have today a supersonic luxury airliner like Concorde that solves its sonic boom problems is possible, but the high costs compared to normal subsonic airliners kill any prospect of massively available supersonic commercial airliners.

Excellent explanation of the pros and cosn of the Boom project. Great work.

I absolutely love this channel. The content is excellent and you've got the perfect voice for narration.

- Guys what sould we call our plane company ? - How about boom or crash ? - You're hired !

0:28 Wasn't in 2003 Concorde's final flight?

5:00: Ahhh, seeing the Concorde again, takes me back in time. Ray Bradbury would be so proud at hearing a sound of thunder from the newer planes though.

My Grandmother flew on the Concorde 7 times back in the late 80's. Had photos framed of her on each trip in her house.

Don't think you can slip that Ryan George reference past us

the problem still economical, all this advantage will not result to improved economics, the Concord cabital cost was zero by 2000...and saftey is also factor of quantity, the more airplane, the more safe it becomes, which will not happen if not economical

Hello, just subscribed to your channel. Your videos captivated my attention, the way you analyse in great detail to the way you elaborate on them. You're just too good. I love this bro. KEEP UP THE GOOD JOB. 🥇🏆👍

Just bought nebula and watched all of your D-day logistics series - it's amazing and I love it.

We have an air show every year in Bournemouth at the end of August and even over the ocean they still can't hit Mach 1. We have the EuroFighter Typhoon Fly and it is one of the most impressive planes made. It's agility and capabilities are barely rivaled bar a few more recent planes. I would love to see the barrier hit to see the air compression and hear that crack but as it is too close to land they are restricted. I've been on the concord and that experience when hitting sonic speed is amazing. And when a passenger in a harrier pulling G and hitting those insane speeds is one of the best feelings I have experience

I'm commenting very rarely, but I wanted to thank you for all your videos, your new visuals on desks are so good (this is a mix with 3D and real shots ?).

A small correction: at 0:36, you would not turn your clock back 2 hours. You'd still turn it back 5 hours as usual because you traveled west 5 timezones. The only difference would be that your arrival time is earlier in the day than your departure time was.

A huge negative factor with the Concord was the massive noise during takeoff. The Concords noise during takeoff would rattle buildings. Boom would need to solve the takeoff noise problem before it would be allowed near any major city.

Real engineering and real science videos in less than 1 hour! What a great Saturday!

"Super easy! Barely an inconvenience!" I love it that you, too, watch Ryan George's Pitch Meeting :)

It's amazing how much knowledge you fit in 18 minutes. Great video!

The Concorde nose also pointed into the airflow, creating a laminar flow over the top of the fuselage despite the steep angle of attack, which was critical to producing the vortex lift. If the air running down the top of the fuselage were turbulent, the vortices would have been broken up instead of being stable.

Super easy, barely an inconvenience!

0:50 he said the thing!

The far southwest of England had 2 sets of booms per weekday as Concord flights came in from the US. And those 2 times made EVERY pheasant cackle announcing where it was.

My elderly neighbor said that when there was a supersonic boom, for several days but almost never up to a week unless there were multiple booms on multiple days, that the chickens wouldn't lay eggs, some of the cows wouldn't make milk, horses acted super skittish, and would scare the crap out of pigs who got over it in approx 10 seconds. Yes, he grew up on a rural Arkansas farm.

At 7:28 the Ogival Delta Wing angles seem to have changed places. In addition the picture is illustrating the complement angle of the sweep angle (90° - sweep angle) while showing the right numerical value for the sweep angle. Great video, anyway! Thanks.

I thought about a little something for supersonic passenger planes which I call "slingshot routes". Basically, these would be inter-continental routes between distant but frequented destinations (NY-London, Paris-Montreal, etc.) served by advanced high-altitude supersonics. Over such long distances, speed is the most desired, these destinations get lots of travel between them, and flying very high in combination with modern engineering (like on NASA's X-59 QueSST) should reduce the sonic boom. Maybe this would also renovate the hub-and-spoke air travel system - supersonic to a major airport, then subsonic to the final destination.

I rewatch your videos so often, and every time they're still captivating!

One: I love this channel Two: sonic booms sound fun tbh

"Super easy. Barely an inconvenience." Me: OH REALLY?!?!

One of the most beautiful passenger planes 👌👌 Great video!

I grew up next to an Air Force base. As kids it was bragging rights if you lost a window. Most of the time it was a large 4' x 4'. The B52 was more of a long shrill where the Boom was a crack. They flew low enough you could make out the yellow markings on the planes.

Naming a plane company "Boom" in the post 9/11 world might not have been as good a marketing choice as they thought it was...

High bypass engines are also much quieter, so SST aircraft are louder even when flying sub sonically and especially at take off with maximum thrust.

I don't know if it's been suggested before, but I'd love to see a video on hybrid airships and Lockheed Martin's attempts: the P-791 and LMH1

Smoothest segue into Brilliant you've done yet!

I clicked on this video with supersonic speed

I think that this concept, though very interesting, as a near-ZERO chance of success. It's still a pipe dream that simply will not work in the modern passenger aviation environment. The economics of supersonic flight have changed very little since the 1960s, and they're using a 1950s-era turbojet engine. Seriously? This idea is a relic of a very heady-but-bygone era in passenger aviation. The name of the game in modern passenger aviation is EFFICIENCY - achieving the lowest cost per passenger mile. Thus, modern passenger airliners use exactly two enormous high-bypass turbofan engines that sip fuel in comparison to previous-generation engines. The huge fans on the GE-90, GE-Nx, and other high-bypass turbofan engines create the VAST majority of the thrust - quietly and reliably. A turbojet engine simply has no way to do that. Turbojet engines burn massive amounts of fuel to create thrust, and there is realistically very little that can be done to improve the efficiency of them. All they do is burn fuel to create direct thrust. And they are LOUD... very, very LOUD because there is no slow-moving blanket of air created by the giant bypass fan around the high-speed jet exhaust to reduce noise. It's all just hot, fast-moving, and very LOUD jet thrust. There are probably some minor improvements that could be made, but they are very likely miniscule compared to the huge improvements that have been made by developing turbofans with ever-higher bypass ratios using larger and more efficient fans. Turbojet engines on a supersonic aircraft would be working hard during the entire flight. This would wear them out more quickly, and would significantly increase maintenance costs. Supersonic flight can never achieve anywhere near the efficiency of subsonic flight... at least as long as there is, you know, atmosphere and friction and all that other "physics" stuff in the world. The economics of achieving long-term, profitable, mass-market supersonic flight simply don't work. They never have, and I see nothing in this project to suggest that they will work any time soon. Saving a few hours of flight time on any flight is simply not worth the exponentially-higher cost in this modern age of efficiency. Supersonic flight will remain a very high-end service for wealthy passengers - if it ever really gets off the ground at all. And oh, as you pointed out. there is still the horrible sonic boom issue to deal with. The Ranger is STILL not gonna like that, Yogi!

Those animations look straight out of a mustard video. Damn they're clean.

whew, for a second I thought you weren't going to mention the "droop snoot" by name, glad it made it in there haha

Interesting video but you didn't discuss either of the key flaws in Concorde, which were the reasons why Air France 4590 crashed. The first flaw with Concorde was the wheels and landing gear. The materials were not up to scratch relative to the enormous loads they had to bare. It was a piece of scrap metal from the plane that took off before Air France 4590 that caused the explosion and fire in the wheels and landing gear that ultimately led to engine failure and disaster. The other flaw that led to the crash of Air France 4590 was the V1 point of no return. Once Concorde reached a certain speed on the runway it was impossible to abort the take-off without a cataclysmic crash, which is why Air France 4590 took off in the first place despite the in-flight warning systems indicating there may be a serious problem. So either the aircraft needs a lower V1 threshold, which is not really possible with the delta-wing design, or the runways themselves need to be longer to accommodate supersonic passenger jets like Concorde Summary:- Wheel materials and landing gear design along with V1 threshold (no aborted take-off possible without crashing) along with runways designed for regular passenger jets led to the Air France disaster and the end of Concorde (along with 2008 financial crisis)

The economics of supersonic commercial travel are tight!

0:49 love the reference

0:48 "Super easy, barely an inconvinience" Reminds me of someone else... XD

My completely undeducated intuition is Does the engine really have to be a pure jet? A number of fighter jets nowadays use low-bypass turbofans (albeit afterburning) and are capable of supercruise. The Eurofighter is one of those and its powerplant was largely developed and built by Rolls-Royce. So RR definitely have knowledge of supersonic capable turbofans.

First of all, great video. Usually I don't comment much but I need so say something. At 15:01 you say that Boom wants to use biofules which are pure ecological nonsense as you already explained in a previous video. But Boom doesn't specify what type of sustainable fuel they plan to use. At least I couldn't find it after 5 minutes. I always assumed they wanted to use synthetic fuels (Power-to-Liquid) just like Lufthansa. Many people don't know much about the whole P2L or P2G concepts. It would be great if you could explain these concepts with their pros and cons. Especially since you seem interested in the biggest challenge for going green: large scale energy storage

Your videos are always so well made man. Unreal work

I love a sponsor segue that I didn't see coming. Nicely done!

Truly amazing !!!! Thanks to everyone who is researching, and getting the facts behind the scenes. This subject is truly awesome. Keep up this great channel. So well done. God Bless 🙏

The claim at 0:35 is very confusing to me, the fact that a passenger would need to rewind their watch 2 hours on a flight from London to New York. Say the plane takes off from London at 8pm GMT, it would touch down in New York at 11pm GMT 3 hours later. This is 6pm in EST (New York time zone) so the passengers watches display 11pm at the time of arrival, so they would need to rewind their watches 5 hours due to the time zone change. The speed of the flight does not make an effect on how far a passenger would need to adjust their clock as the time zones remain constant.

I'm sadly surprised by the lack of Tupalev in the video, the original pointy boi who drooped the snoot and flooped the canards. I strongly suggest watching Well There's Your Problem video on supersonic travel. The engineering though, spot on, as always :)

Concorde was such an amazing plane! I hope supersonic travel returns!

I remember when real engineering is so excited about nikola. And then, not only they don't deliver. It was scam all along. This time, I'll take all of their claim with big grain of salt.

"Super Easy! Barely an Inconvenience." I see what you did there ScreenRant

Regarding engines, there is highly developed technology for "super cruise" in military aircraft. Perhaps not Mach 1.7, though - I believe the idea is merely that supersonic flight is possible without fuel-sucking after-burners (reheaters). In any case, there is little room to develop practical engines much faster than these. A major stumbling block is that there are components within an engine that must be cooled by compressor discharge air, which is quite hot and gets hotter with speed. One of these components is the first stage turbine disk; the Concorde's engine disks had to be replaced frequently, a gigantic maintenance cost not needed for regular engines. Don't bet on any breakthroughs - these components have been subject to enormous R&D efforts for 70 years.

Excellent analysis. Concorde failed because the CASM was incredibly high thus the exorbitant ticket prices. Had it been larger with more seats it may, MAY, have had a longer commercial life. (The US SST being developed at the same time as Concorde was to have approximately 300 seats.) Even with new materials and engineering methods there has to be enough people buying tickets to pay the bills. Additionally, when the marketing department throws out “green” be very skeptical. As noted in the video there is no bio-fuel approved for high altitude jet engine operation and it WILL be expensive!

Hey, I was wondering if you could make a deep dive video on Reaction Engine's SABRE engine?

I've meddled with supersonic flight in a little modeller's dream game called "Simplerockets2". There's a strange effect that happens with certain turbines, that some of them gain thrust after mach 1, i think it needs to have a terribly low compression ratio for it to happen though.

JFK departure - with a left hand turn, just at takeoff was incredible. Avoid Manhattan, flew over Jones beach / Canarsie climb out as quiet as possible. Dulles , was not a big deal with lots of unbuilt area. So no throttle up and down in noise abatement. It was a super loud aircraft - I sat back in the last row at takeoff and it was very loud. And the earth rumbled around you as you took off at 250mph. Was a fantastic experience and leaving at 10:00am - arrived in London at 6:20pm in 3hr 20mins. Just enough time for a gourmet meal and many glasses of Krug or similar champagne. Good luck to boom - however I think that will just never happen , if it does wont be in this decade - !!

I'm really optimistic about BOOM but this video in the end provided some insights to really consider..well put together video

Double thumbs up for the reference to Pitch Meeting.

Bombardier nearly went bankrupt building a more standard plane, and you want me believe a startup will be able to put a supersonic aircraft to the market? They will need very deep pockets behind them.

Hilarious tip o' the cap to Ryan George! Well done

Boom now have a cutaway impression of the Symphony power module on their site, showing the inlet ducting, engine sections, and exhaust ducting. Symphony measures approximately 7 feet diameter and 30.5 feet long. The inlet ducting is 7.6 feet long and the exhaust ducting is 10.1 feet long.

I love Sonic, gotta go fast!! 🦔💨💨💨

Saving time going fast on a jet to then having to waste it at the airport with customs and baggage collection and such is like racing to the next red traffic light.

Correction: The Cone Vortex used by concord originated from the leading edge, close to the wing root, not the same as wingtip vortex shown at 8:14, but based on similar principles. The cone goes over the wing to prevent the flow separation (Stalling). This phenomenon is also used by modern jets such as F-15, F-16, F-18 and Su-27 Family. 12:38 Supersonic aircraft don't NEED to use "pure jet" as in Turbojet engine. Most modern fighters and several bombers uses Low-bypass turbofans, ever since F-111 pioneered using turbofan instead of turbojets. But yes, low by pass is not as efficient. The problem with exhaust flow speed is a problem can be solved by adding a variable nozzle (like most fighters and B-1B and Tu-160).

I love the little laugh at 0:46