«I am the CEO of Orbital Design Studios, and am the designer behind the canceled "Descent IV" project in 2002. This game is a thing I thought I'd never see, aside from prototypes in my company's archives.
A very warm welcome back to Matt & Mike and all of the old crew of Parallax and Outrage Entertainment who have returned to create this long dreamed of and hoped for creation. Thank you for putting my regrets that D4 couldn't get made, to rest. Overload will stand for all time in its place.»
"Overload" was a game made in Descent style, by the original creators of Descent (Mike and Matt), with a great deal of input from the Descent community. My wife and I spent a week at the studio (while ~6 months pregnant with a child we named for a Descent friend) working on Overload's flight model and tweaking some in-game stuff. The game is now largely maintained by fans, with significant multiplayer mod support and even a full remake of the D1 campaign!
Pure speculation on my part, but on a first flight when you're shaking out the fundamentals, it's safer to not retract landing gear in case there is a catastrophic failure in, say, your hydraulic system.
One dynamic that may be at play: Designing a new engine is a gamble. For a company who already makes money with existing designs, there may be little upside on a small-volume new product. This is likely the reason the "Big 3" passed on designing an engine they don't have an off-the-shelf option for.
Boom would probably be the primary beneficiary of such an engine existing, so it isn't all that surprising that they will have to fund the development. The second supersonic airframe that can use their engine would be the one to turn that R&D profitable for Boom (and ease the introduction of more supersonic airframe options).
I would agree that the big three didn't think they could make it work, be that for technical reasons, money reasons, limited market reasons, etc. the end result is the same.
Where I would disagree is that Boom can make it work. The amount of specialized knowledge you need in design and analysis as well as test and manufacturing facilities makes it near impossible for an outsider get in the game. Which is why there aren't any in the commercial jet engine space. GE, PW, RR and I guess Safran is pretty much it. You can't just decide you are going to do the R&D yourself and pop out a new engine in 5 years.
It took them almost 20 years to do a manned flight though. And that's with professional astronauts knowingly taking the kind of risk you can't do with a passenger aircraft, unless you want to do a OceanGate.
That's the tricky bit. I guess they can put something together in that amount of time. But making sure it's safe? More skeptical on that. Look at the recent woes at Boeing for example, and while Boeing's organisational issues are at fault for no small part, it does show all of this is tricky business. Also many other aircraft have had serious design issues, including Concorde.
Also not convinced on the economic potential on all of this. There may be also issues with increased noise, environmental impact (possibly via regulations), and things like that.
"Amended type certificates typically take 3-5 years to complete. By comparison, the certification of a new aircraft type can take between 5 and 9 years."
> It took them almost 20 years to do a manned flight though.
Given that manned flight occurred in 1903, manned supersonic flight occurred in 1947, and manned spaceflight didn't occur until 1961, it appears that manned spaceflight is considerably more challenging.
I think if we were just talking about the airframe I would agree that is was possible. Not the engines though. Look at some of the costs and timeframes involved in one of the big 3's newer engines:
Now consider that you aren't starting with existing knowledge base, talent, facilities, etc. (which SpaceX had already started to build up) but from scratch. SpaceX also had nearly a billion in Falcon 9 and Dragon, Boom in its totality looks like it's worth a few hundred million? Lastly SpaceX had 150 employees in 2005 and 1150 in 2010. Boom has 150 and Florida Turbines (the part of Kratos working on this) has 100.
All of that is to say they need more money, more people, and more facilities very quickly if they were to have any chance of hitting any of those timeframes.
> Not the engines though. Look at some of the costs and timeframes involved in one of the big 3's newer engines
Compare the cost of rockets when SpaceX started. People laughed SpaceX off too.
SpaceX didn't start with an existing knowledge base, talent and facilities either.
The idea of starting a rocket company and building reusable rockets was so laughable at the time that they couldn't even hire anyone for the chief engineer (Elon assumed the role because no-one else would do it).
In 2002 SpaceX realised it wasn't going to be able to buy an existing engine from the Russians, and decided to make their own <- this is essentially the place where Boom is now.
In 2008 they successfully launched Falcon 1 to orbit (on the 4th attempt), and would've gone bankrupt if that 4th attempt had failed like the first 3 <- Boom might never get to this point, but good on them for trying.
2002 SpaceX is more where Boom was a decade ago when they were founded, what have they been doing since? They have one demo aircraft, not to scale of what they are marketing, and have not even demoed an engine yet. What about that makes you think they are the next SpaceX?
Even the comparison is poor. SpaceX had I guess the pieces that what would become ULA as competition? None of the players in the field had innovated for decades because they didn't need to, exactly the sort of area that is good for new people to come in and take a shot at getting a piece of the pie. And on top of that, you have an incredible amount of money and desire for the service. This has no where near the same market.
On top of that the commercial jet / engine world is incredibly competitive. Boeing/airbus and pw/ge/rr/safran have not been sitting idling by for decades reusing the same old designs with the same old technology. If you think that because this is supersonic it's not in competition with them... well I guess that's your choice in how to look at it.
No one was laughing at the idea of self landing rockets, because the DC-X did it 1993, and even by then it was known that it was probably feasible within Earth's atmosphere. The issue was always around the economic feasibility of it, since you have to carry the propellant needed to bring the vehicle back, and whether or not a silicon valley billionaire with no aerospace experience could break through into the industry. I think at this point, history is on Musk's side, but I also think there were valid reasons to be skeptical.
And I'm skeptical that these guys are going to be able to type certify a new engine in the timeframe they've given. Jet engines are harder than rocket motors in some ways. Certainly the way in which they're used imposes stricter reliability requirements. They run constantly, and can take weeks to spool down, for example, when a rocket might only fire a few short burns on a mission. Realistically, I think they would need similar government support as SpaceX received to bring this kind of product to market, but that's just my opinion. It's good that they're trying, and I hope I'm wrong, but this stuff is hard and expensive.
Not in commercial jet engines. The four big players have been in the engine game since the 1920s-1940s. Others came and went, some were bought or merged into them, but no one has eaten their lunch.
If they were still using the same designs they made 50+ years ago (like the rocket industry in the 2000s) I would agree with you... but they aren't. They have been constantly pushing performance to get better thrust-to-weight, efficiency, noise, etc. Whenever they get lazy (which they have) one of the other players is the one that gets to dine well. Look up "The Airforce and the Great Engine War" for an example.
There's significant differences between SpaceX and Boom though.
SpaceX got lots of funding because of military/government potential. The US had no domestic capability to place people into orbit. SpaceX also promised cheaper satellite insertion.
Boom promises... ultra-wealthy people a few hours shorter flights?
Concord failed because of cost - few people could afford the ticket price, and even fewer actually needed to cross the ocean a few hours faster.
There's less than zero percent chance Boom will be able to offer cheap "everyday joe" prices on their aircraft. It will fail for the same reasons as Concord...
Practically every bleeding edge advancement is only available to the "wealthy", it's the "wealthy" who pay the First Adopters Tax so eventually the technology might trickle down to the commons.
I say "wealthy" in quotes since those concerned aren't even that particularly richer than most people. Just people with slightly more surplus money in their wallet to throw around.
I get the audience here is primarily FOSS and considers the very notion of money a fucking heresy, but the real world doesn't operate like that.
slightly is doing a lot of work there. I'll admit I'm doing okay myself, and can afford $300 for a commercial plane ticket every once in a while, but there's a gulf between that, and being able to afford a $4,000 plane ticket, and another jump to $10,000 for a plane ticket, to being ever able to afford a to blow $250k on a trip to see the Titanic, however I'll fated that might be.
There's the top 1%, but there's also a .1% and .01% that is, actually, wealthy. But you're right that there's a weird "can't touch money" vibe in some circles that's weird.
Even in that range. I've flown business class--generally because a client was paying or an upgrade through a combination of miles and 3 digit $s--whenever I'm tempted I come down to thousands of dollars will pay for a lot of meal upgrades and theater on the other side of the pond. It's a lot of money, even for someone who can afford it, to save a few hours or be more comfortable for a day in a metal tube in any case. If it's just pocket change, why not? But maybe now you just fly Netjets.
Of course not - but this exact idea was tried and failed. What is Boom going to offer that makes it survive? So far, it seems nothing.
There's estimates that if Concord still flew today, Trans-Atlantic ticket prices would start around $10,000. How many people actually want to fly in a cramped cabin for that fee? You can get very luxurious first class cabin space for much less.
Ultimately, Boom will fail just like Concord. After the novelty wears off, there's very few actual customers - and even fewer repeat customers.
I think it’s kind of bizarre that all the armchair airplane developers here know how this will end already.
You could, presumably have faith that both the founders and investors have asked themselves the same questions and have come up with an answer that satisfies at least them.
Boom was founded by 3 people, 2 software guys and Joe Wilding (who had actual aerospace development experience). Now it's run by the only remaining software guy. sure there's an impressive staff, 700M invested in the company, but it's nowhere near the required many billions. and even after that there's zero guarantee that they can make money.
I would not disagree that you can do it, but I am skeptical that you can do it in 5 years.
Honda did develop their HF118 turbofan engine apparently from scratch, but it took about 8 years [1]. And for the actual commercialization they teamed up with GE and then it took another 10 years until certification of the successor HF120 [2].
There's a world of difference between 2000 lb and 20,000 lb thrust though. And as you mentioned, they teamed up with GE in the end because, to be frank, turbojets are just hard.
CFM (GE + Safran) own 39%, PW has 26%, RR has 18%, GE on it's own has 16%. So together they own 99% of the market.
Honeywell and Williams don't do anything over 10k-lb thrust (that I see). UEC is russian state owned, so I don't see anyone working with them anytime soon and AVIC is chinese state owned so kinda the same deal.
If you are talking small turbofans (smaller than 10k-lb thrust) there are a variety of companies out there but as soon as you start looking for bigger stuff to power your 737 Max or 320NEO class planes, you are talking about a very exclusive club.
As an aside, I would love to see more competition, I just think it's a really tough space to enter.
Kratos has begun the first engine tests at its X-58 test facility. The newly commissioned test facility is used to carry out demonstrator engine development testing, allowing Kratos to grow its offering of low cost and high-performance small jet engines. The fully mobile test facility can accommodate fully instrumented engines up to 3000-lb thrust. Inlet and exhaust noise suppression is provided to reduce environmental impacts. All connections are designed to reduce test article set-up time thereby reducing program costs. The state-of-the-art data acquisition system and communications allow for high speed remote monitoring and real time data processing. Kratos is introducing several engines to support the need for low cost and high-performance engines for cruise missiles, powered munitions and UAVs.
3000-lb thrust is about an order of magnitude smaller than you need for a single row conventional commercial jet with two engines. Yes, they are ostensibly working in the same field but I don't think I can stress enough how different those two things are.
HN title is wrong. From the article:
"Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric..."
Discussion is about a more slowly growing market - not one in decline. YoY sales are up like 40%. This is FUD.
Rent control only fights against upward pressure for existing renters... When you describe rents continually going up, it's due to more people competing for limited rental units. Cities can and do see rent declines (they first show up as "first month free" etc. before landlords bite the bullet and reduce rate). Seattle has seen temporary competition for rents in some neighborhoods as new construction started in 2019/2020 comes online. It won't last since we've seen such a decline in new construction starts, but the mechanism is sound.
Worth getting a bit specific about terminology here... The article states that _insurance_ profits are capped, but that PBMs and other stages of care are not. That's why they're all vertically integrating - so they can steer margin to the un-regulated entities. Can't help but feel like this is a simple anti-trust issue just like you'd see in other industries. If they were truly separate companies with robust competition, we could see a lot more efficiency and less rent seeking.
It's all a shell game...sure insurance profits are capped, but it doesn't stop executives from taking lavish salaries. I worked for a Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliate in 2006-2007. The CEO was making 2.1 million dollars per year. Think about that.
Not trying to single you out as this has been brought up in multiple comments in-thread, but I think this is apples-to-oranges. Diets work when followed. The problem is that the vast majority of people struggle to adhere to them. This drug aids in reducing the urge to eat, which reduces/eliminates the need for scrutiny over intake. It's "diet autopilot", which is why it's so powerful.
I don't think bringing up keto is terribly on-topic, but my experience with low-carb wasn't like that at all. Most low-carb isn't about miserly “calorie-counting” and willpower. It's about establishing a routine where you can comfortably just not-eat for those windows, which turned out to be easier for me than to stick to my previous eating schedule but eating (say) 20% less.
The ends are the same and the means are different. The metabolic actions between the two are similar. It's not an unfair comparison. One might have adverse longterm side effects and the other might not. This is something further study could help answer.
I mean that the reason you'd need semaglutide is that you can't keep to a diet. If you could keep to keto IF, you wouldn't need the drug in the first place. It's not option A or option B. It's "if A fails, fall back to B".
Not everyone knows of the potential metabolic benefits of keto IF including many practicing doctors. Some people might just opt for semaglutide if they hear of that first, which seems likely since Ozempic is trending in popular culture. What would be wrong with a study comparing the two exactly?
3rd hand anecdote, but a friend who used Ozempic spoke to the psychological impact of seeing the cravings for food vanish that went beyond just the timeframe of the dose. A drug that effectively shuts off the compulsion helps demonstrate the disconnect between the desire and the need for food. She specifically called out that experiencing the absence of craving helped with willpower after the Ozempic dose was withdrawn.
1st hand anecdote: fasting one day per week has noticeably reduced any late-night cravings or my endless appetite for chocolate.
The experience of going through one whole day with only water/tea/coffee, feeling a hole in your stomach by early afternoon and seeing the hunger subside by bed time and lasting until the next afternoon also "demonstrate the disconnect between the desire and the need for food".
It's hugely encouraging that we're starting to see frontline medical practice step out of the frame of mind that this is a "willpower" issue. If GLP-1 analogs work against both food compulsions and alcohol/drug compulsions [1], this re-contextualizes metabolic disorders as another form of addiction.
People might want to wait at least a few years before the “large scale study” is completed. Tens of millions of people are about to begin
“ most common Ozempic side effects are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain and constipation. Serious Ozempic side effects include allergic reactions, changes in vision and pancreatitis. Ozempic has an FDA boxed warning for the risk of thyroid C-cell tumors.”
I think most people should wait, yes. There's a HUGE amount of pressure to get these things approved for weightloss. So most people can just wait and watch a year or two.
But to be clear, these drugs are already approved by the FDA for diabetes, so they've been studied heavily already for safety. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe diabetic people were intended to take this medication long-term. So it would have been studied and assessed for safety in that regime.
Really we're just waiting for studies specifically designed to measure efficacy on weight loss, and for the FDA to assess the specific risk-benefit balance of prescribing this medicine for weightloss. Seeing as how obesity is one of the leading causes of death in modern society, I wouldn't be surprised if the FDA is already leaning towards approving it if it passes efficacy. Which it most likely will; the diabetes studies reported something like 9 in 10 people losing something like 10-20% of their bodyweight? The signal was huge.
yup, I got most of those side effects causing me to give up on Ozempic. I might have been willing to eat like an anorexic[1] if my BG dropped to normal range but it didn't.
[1] not making light of anorexia. I mindfully chose that description because that drug will induce disordered eating patterns. I still have days where I refuse to eat because to my BG level and suppress hunger then binge because the hunger is overwhelming.
While this is a great first step to get populations help immediately, it creates a chronic need for these drugs. Gene therapy must come next to fix root cause.
