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posted by janrinok on Tuesday September 20 2022, @01:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the more-of-a-muffled-'pop' dept.

Boom's supersonic jet is facing a lack of interest from engine suppliers:

Boom recently lost its jet engine partner for the Overture supersonic jet, and other major engine manufacturers aren't interested in the project either, Insider has reported. After Boom signed an "engagement agreement" with Rolls-Royce for supersonic jet engines back in 2020, the latter announced last week that it had left the project. Now, other major jet engine manufacturers including Pratt & Whitney, GE Aviation, Honeywell and Safran Aircraft Engines have told FlightGlobal they're not currently interested in supersonic aircraft.

Boom said that the project is still on track, though, and that it will soon announce an engine partner. "We can reconfirm our intention to announce Boom's selected engine partner and transformational approach for reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable supersonic flight, later this year." Boom told Insider. The company has 20 airplanes on order from American Airlines and 15 from United. It plans to build build a factory in California and start flying passengers by 2029.

For its part, Rolls-Royce said that "after careful consideration... [we] have determined that the commercial aviation supersonic market is not currently a priority for us and, therefore, will not pursue further work on the program at this time."

Previously: Airlines are Trying to Resurrect the Concorde Era


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday September 20 2022, @09:47PM (3 children)

    by looorg (578) on Tuesday September 20 2022, @09:47PM (#1272639)

    That is a possibility. But I was under the impression that RR had some fairly decent engines around for the Concorde which could probably be updated since I just assume there have been great leaps in engine designs over the last couple of decades -- after all those design plans should now be about 50ish years old at least. I don't know if they were updated during the lifespan of the Concorde or not. But if there was an actual market they could or should just dust those off and update them. There shouldn't be any military secrets in those, or? At least non that half the world shouldn't have been able to recreate by now on their own. That said I guess those engines could have been redeveloped already and made part of other projects that are now under military purview.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by legont on Tuesday September 20 2022, @10:45PM (2 children)

    by legont (4179) on Tuesday September 20 2022, @10:45PM (#1272653)

    My guess is that supersonic engines went the same progress path as space rockets, namely nothing much since 50s.
    The field gets heavily invested by militaries all over the world, but requirements for civil ones are quite different. Probably only China can afford both as they have many companies working on it.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday September 21 2022, @11:15PM (1 child)

      by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday September 21 2022, @11:15PM (#1272913)

      This Pratt & Whitney J58 engine [wikipedia.org] is Mach 3.2 capable and was developed in the 1950s. List of aircraft it was used in is near the bottom, and also a list of comparable engines.

      So now my question for Boom is: it seems like there are a lot of great engines available. What do you need that they don't provide?

      (my guess: efficiency)