I also know nothing about the subject, but just to play devil's advocate here, doesn't SpaceX show that a startup could potentially solve hard physical engineering problems more effectively than established incumbents?
It does, but a supersonic personal jet is a much bigger feat of engineering than a rocket that lands. Most people don't appreciate that. We had landing rockets in the 80's, but Boom was trying to do several things that are completely new. SpaceX's real technology is about launching the rockets cheaply, not re-using them (which is only part of the problem).
And SpaceX started with engineers who knew a lot about the domain of the actual problem (rocket engines). Boom has never designed an engine.
Starlink satellites are a great example of SpaceX solving engineering problems that an incumbent couldn't, but SpaceX was a pretty large company at the time the effort started.
Boom isn’t trying to do something completely new. Concord was in commercial services for many years. Benefits and shortcomings are well known.
OTOTH, there was never a rocket that could land, only suborbital prototypes. Shuttle doesn’t count since it’s reusable in name only, as it still cost substantial amount of money and time for refurbishing. In fact there are still no other reusable rockets, seven years after SpaceX did it for the 1st time.
I didn't realize that the Concorde was a private jet. Also, I'm not so sure that SpaceX has managed to achieve reusability (launch turnaround cost) better than end-of-life space shuttle yet. The space shuttle did take a lot longer to work out the kinks than falcon 9, but it was also a much more complicated vehicle.
> We had landing rockets in the 80's, but Boom was trying to do several things that are completely new. SpaceX's real technology is about launching the rockets cheaply, not re-using them (which is only part of the problem).
And we had supersonic passenger jets in the 60's. But they weren't economically viable. I'd argue that Boom is trying to do exactly what SpaceX is doing for rockets, which is to make supersonic air travel make economic sense. Any engineering that they need to do is really towards that goal.
Yes, definitely. BUT - there is a very wide and thinly-populated gulf between the folks who only talk about doing that, and those who actually deliver viable, working systems.
SpaceX went from founding the company to their first orbital launch attempt in 4 years, was obviously d*mn close to successful orbit 1 year later, and actually made orbit another 18 months after that.
Vs. Boom Supersonic, not having had to design nor build its own jet engines, is already 5+ years behind on their 1/3-scale, zero-passenger technology demonstrator even trying to taxi down the runway.
