alt Hacker NewsIt’s already booked 130 orders.
I really don't believe this. Even the Boom website says that most of these are "options" to purchase, but I'm guessing the "firm" orders are basically just non-binding letters of intent that effectively say "Sure, if you build it with these specs, we'll buy some at price X. Unless we change our mind."
And I'm further guessing that the terms include dates that Boom has zero chance of hitting. The author estimates that these won't be in commercial service before 2033, but I think that's still optimistic. My understanding (could be wrong, not an expert) is that new regular airliners take many billions and 10+ years to design, build, and certify, and that's without the complications of supersonic and brand new engine designs.
The Boom stories have been circulating on HN for a decade now [1], and they originally were claiming two years to have a manned prototype, which was obviously untrue. I guess they are like the Tesla of the sky in that regard.
tbf United and JAL did put in a non-trivial deposit, but yeah, the orders won't be binding on them (I remember having an exchange on here with one of their investors on here about that). Frankly I think they've done well to get where they are, but where they are is a basic demonstration of their supersonic boom suppresion technology on a small testbed aircraft (a few years behind schedule!), and having to design their own engine because they can't get one of the major OEMs to work with them.