“She’s actually flying faster than the Earth rotates. She’s going so fast the sun is actually going backwards in the sky.”
– Mike Bannister, Former Chief Pilot of the British Airways’ Concorde Fleet
Boom.
Literally.
That’s the sound made when an aircraft breaks the sound barrier.
And yesterday, at 8:31 AM Pacific Time, Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 aircraft broke through the speed of sound for the first time.
Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 | Source: Boom Supersonic
Shown above is a short clip of the XB-1, which is a prototype of the next generation of supersonic civilian aircraft, traveling at Mach 1.1. And it is now the first privately funded – and built – supersonic civilian aircraft in history.
What makes this latest development remarkable is not that it happened… It’s that it hadn’t already happened decades ago.
The first Concorde began to fly passengers commercially in January of 1976, almost 50 years ago.
The supersonic commercial aircraft was like magic, turning a painful seven-hour trip from New York to London into a trip that often took less than three hours.
Concorde｜Source: British Airways
The final flight of the Concorde happened on October 24, 2003. And since then, air transportation slowed down rather than speeding up.
Air transportation is an oddity in the world of high-tech. It’s one of the only sectors that has regressed rather than radically improved. We’re literally traveling slower than we were in the 1970s.
Yes, of course, safety has improved, as has fuel efficiency. But once the Concorde stopped flying, flight times doubled on the routes the Concorde used to fly. And it still takes an excruciating 14 hours to fly from New York to Tokyo.
The problem hasn’t been a technological problem. It’s just that no one stepped up to build a modern supersonic civilian transport aircraft.
I suspect that if Elon Musk hadn’t chosen to build SpaceX and Tesla, he would have probably gone this route, solving such a glaringly obvious hole in one of the largest industries on the planet. Someone had to do it!
Thankfully, that “someone” did.
It wasn’t a major aerospace company like Boeing.
It was a small, early-stage private company funded with a few million dollars in 2016 – Boom Supersonic.
Over the last decade, Boom has done nothing but spend money. It has been a bumpy road, as a small research and development company trying to build something so grand… and expensive.
Last year, the company had to recapitalize to raise critical capital to get the company to the next stage of development. In total, it has raised almost $400 million to date.
It’s a paltry amount compared to the $3.8 billion a company like Boeing spent on research and development in 2024 alone. And yet, Boom succeeded in not only manufacturing “Baby Boom” – its one-third-scale supersonic civilian jet – it also demonstrated supersonic flight speeds.
Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 | Source: Boom Supersonic
It’s a beauty. And it’s more than a proof of concept.
It’s the precursor to a modern version of the Concorde.
Here’s what it will look like when the full-scale version goes into service. Stunning.
Rendering of Overture | Source: Boom Supersonic
Just imagine traveling at Mach 1.7 in a supersonic jet capable of carrying 64–80 passengers with an interior cabin that looks like the picture shown below.
Overture’s Interior Cabin | Source: Boom Supersonic
Remarkably, from the passenger’s perspective, it’s quite a luxurious experience.
Mike Bannister – former Chief Pilot of the British Airways’ Concorde Fleet – described his own experience flying supersonically…
From my experience on Concorde… There’s absolutely no physical sensation once you’re supersonic. There’s also no physical sensation of going through the sound barrier. When a plane is traveling faster than the speed of the sound, it’s up around 770 miles per hour, and you really don’t realize it.
Bannister was invited by Boom to commentate during the momentous flight of Baby Boom…
It’s quite an amazing experience, and yet that’s the really clever thing that the aviation engineers succeed in doing, to make the experience so that an aircraft can do all of this, while the passengers are just sitting in comfort. And even sometimes they have to put indicators in the cabin so that the customers do know that the aircraft is flying supersonically.
Boom estimates that there are about 600 profitable routes around the world that could support Boom’s Overture supersonic aircraft. Initially, it will be focused on business class passengers due to the costs involved. But with scale, it is not unrealistic to imagine that it could expand to an economy-class offering.
Boom already has 130 orders and pre-orders from United Airlines, American Airlines, and Japan Airlines. And it has already built its factory in Greensboro, North Carolina, which will scale to manufacturing as many as 66 Overture a year.
Overture Superfactory | Source: Boom Supersonic
We’ll have to be a bit patient though. Test flights for the full-scale Overture are scheduled for 2027. And Overture’s flight certification is planned for 2029 – the earliest Overture could enter commercial flight operations.
It’s still hard to grok that we’re going to have to wait a few more years to be able to experience technology that was available in the 1970s, but at least there is a clear path towards commercialization.
Boom’s success with XB-1 yesterday now makes it a buyout target by a larger aerospace company. Whether it raises several more rounds of private equity, or it gets acquired, this is going to take at least a billion dollars to commercialize and make civilian supersonic flight a reality again.
And the most ironic part is that hypersonic air transportation is under development right now.
SpaceX, of course, envisions that its Starship will be used for hypersonic transport – launching and landing vertically, “caught” by the Mechazilla – and turned around quickly, just like commercial aircraft.
But there’s also a new breed of aerospace companies working on technology that hasn’t even existed before.
Rather than improving upon 1970s technology, this new breed of companies is developing the next generation of propulsion technology, capable of hypersonic speeds.
Venus Stargazer | Source: Venus Aerospace
Shown above is Venus Aerospace’s Stargazer, capable of cruising at Mach 4 and top speeds of Mach 9 with a range of 5,000 miles.
Or how about the beak-shaped Hermeus’s Halcyon, which is capable of cruising at Mach 5, resulting in just a 90-minute trip from New York to London?
Halcyon | Source: Hermeus
Presuming these companies get the funding they need to build the technology, we could see these aircraft in the first half of the 2030s, not far behind Boom’s supersonic Overture.
We have the technology and the capital to take a major leap forward. And industries like air transportation and rail transportation, which have long struggled to take major steps forward, are ripe for a wave of innovation.
It’s time to dream big.
Jeff
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
