Replies

“The company says it will use aviation fuel produced in a CO2-neutral way”

They plan to fail already. Any startup that announces something so stupid is run by people looking for sucker investors. I’m a recovering aircraft engineer. I’ve seen it a hundred times.

I’ll second that. I actually worked with Aerion in the early 2000’s doing some design and rendering work (cover of Aviation Week). It’s been almost 20 years and no full sized flights.

I also know the founder of Boom through Y-Combinator. He’s a software guy that got his pilot’s license in 2013 or something and decided that it would be cool to fly supersonic. No engineering background, and a very pie in the sky (as it were) attitude. They’ve raised a ton of money from Silicon Valley types, hired some good engineers, but ultimately are likely to be bested by physics and economics.

Don’t tell that to the Navy. They have already turned seawater into jet fuel and flew a mini with it. They are scaling up as we speak why? Because they have nukes and it’s cheaper to brew fuel onboard then tanker it half way around the planet with an AOR steaming 25 knots next to you. The cost can be $400 a gallon for fuel delivered to an FOB and easily $25 for an underway replenishment. The point is the technology is well proven to make liquid hydrocarbons from CO2,CO, and H2 gasses the Germans did it by the millions of gallons in WWII the South Africa’s do it by the 50,000 bbl a day every day at market prices from gassified coal. AUDI is making synthetic diesel from wind and solar and also synthetic natural gas you can buy an AUDI in Europe and fuel it 100% on wind power they add in to the national gas grid and then the CNG stations pull out an equivalent amount for the AUDI to use. It’s just chemistry not all that difficult chemistry at that it’s 1930s technology. Cost has always been the issue. Germany had plenty of coal and little oil, same for South Africa. AUDI is going after the greens who are willing to pay a premium for designer fuels. The Navy has a cost and tactical advantage to using synthetic kerosene. These airlines also are going after the rich greens who won’t even blink at spending an extra $500 or $1000 for designer fuels when the ticket prices will be like Concorde which in inflation adjusted money got as high as $13000 one way fares like that are not for the plebs so it doesn’t matter if they add 15% to the fuel cost for “green” fuels it’s a selling point that has more value to their target clientele which is not anyone on this board very few here can afford a 20,000 dollar trip which is what a mach 4 trip would cost if not more.