Note that SpaceX did this. They developed their own engines (altho initial 5 flights did get a 3rd party built turbopump, analogous to XB-1, I suppose), developed their own highly vertically integrated rocket, and offered launch services. Now, RocketLab does the same and they’re being joined by Firefly, Blue Origin, and Relativity, all being at least F9-level reusable eventually.
Everyone takes for granted launch vehicles being “easier” than airliners now, but go back to the 1990s and the attitude would’ve been switched (PARTICULARLY high-rate and economic reusable launch vehicles, which were considered virtually unattainable).
I think it’s totally doable to make both an airliner and an engine, and the main reason we don’t think so is successful PR by old aerospace primes.
Lets say they are really good and they are ready to test fly in 3 years to meet that 5 year goal (which I'll tell you right now is not happening), they still need engines. 3 years to design, develop, and build a clean sheet engine. It took GE and Safran (CFM) 10 years between the announcement of the LEAP and its certification:
So no, it is quite unlikely that a company with no experience in commercial jet engines (Florida Turbines, subsidiary of Kratos) will be able to field the equivalent of a modern day concord engine in 3 years. I would say the main reason people think it could be is successful PR from new startups.
Projections for these projects are always very optimistic. Why are you focusing so heavily on their runway being tied to some ideal date in 2 early contracts they signed?
It's not optimistic, it's not an ideal date, it's marketing fluff with no bases in reality. Maybe I'm the odd one out here but does that not bother you?
Flying an engine once before a quick refurbish without risking human life isn’t the same as flying an engine for weeks before any significant downtime/maintenance.
SpaceX did it but nowhere like on the timelines they have anticipated. They also expected 4 years from start to Falcon 5 flight - which was cancelled and replaced by Falcon 9 eventually - but it took 8 years and then another 3 years before regular flights and another 5 before reusability started to really work.
Lack of an industrial base and native experience in doing so. Once one company does it, the experience gained can spread to other companies via employees moving around and forming suppliers for those same companies. For India it also has the issue of brain drain as any of the people working on India's engines could easily jump ship and move to the UK or the US and get pretty good jobs in our aerospace industries and get paid a whole lot more.
Also China does have it's own engines used in its military aircraft.
Designing very efficient engines that are also cost efficient is the focus of a lot of those big primes in the US/UK/Europe so competing with them may be difficult, however there is currently no one trying to make very efficient _supersonic_ engines. All supersonic engines are destined for military jets which care a lot more about peak performance as the primary design parameter. In other words there is no one operating in the segment Boom is trying to develop an engine and they can hire a lot of people from the rest of the US industry who already have a lot of experience designing engines or people who were trained by said people.
Ironically it may be SpaceX who kills off Boom if they're successful in implementing suborbital long distance passenger travel with Starship, though that's still very much an open question if it's possible. Such travel would, if successful, most likely be way faster and cheaper than supersonic long distance travel because of the reduced losses from drag.
If it happens, it'll have to happen dozens of miles out to sea.
This video is outdated (and a surface ferry like shown would be too slow... probably would have to be some sort of aircraft, or the time on the ferry would make the rocket trip not worth it), but this shows the idea: https://youtu.be/zqE-ultsWt0
in the case of India, their engine development project for the HAL Tejas started out with ~50 million USD in 1989 and had a target goal of 5 years.
Given that (even after a 650% cost overrun and 30 years) the total engine development cost is still about $400 million USD, that buys about one and a half F-35Bs.
Even when picking good and cheap, there’s cheap and then there’s shoestring.
>and the main reason we don’t think so is successful PR by old aerospace primes.
It's partly that, and also partly that making engines successful is a different business. For capital intensive industries, it's natural that they separate and consolidate into specialties, which is why you see things work they way they do today. SpaceX is probably the exception that prove the rule, at least for space access. It would be nice to see Boom become that same exception for passenger jet aircraft. For obvious reasons, given the ongoings with Boeing.
Everyone takes for granted launch vehicles being “easier” than airliners now, but go back to the 1990s and the attitude would’ve been switched (PARTICULARLY high-rate and economic reusable launch vehicles, which were considered virtually unattainable).
I think it’s totally doable to make both an airliner and an engine, and the main reason we don’t think so is successful PR by old aerospace primes.