It's still a supersonic jet, just not the one you want. What is essentially a privately-built supersonic fighter jet is still impressive, but how much more investment will they need for the full size passenger version?
I trust Boom has smart people working on these things, but... model aviation doesn't scale up[1].
It's interesting they're going with a scaled-down model instead of a full-scale testbed. The article seems to incidate they're wanting to go from the scaled-down model as a PoC, then onto an actual airline that JAL want's to fly. I'd think they'd need a full-sized PoC first...
> “They want to enjoy a first-mover advantage in supersonic and have invested 10 million dollars.”
That's chump change for an airline. Doesn't really signal strong support or anything - more of a curiosity I think. A Boeing 737-800 costs around $100 million, for comparison.
Ballistic flights make no sense at all. Consider how finicky rocket launches are about weather. So you need to go to the spaceport for your launch, hope that you don't get scrubbed by the weather and save a few hours? Hard to see how that makes any sort of business sense.
Some of the wind sensitivity comes from the hulls being long and narrow. SpaceX's Starship design will be much wider and thus more robust compared to their Falcon 9 rocket.
