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August 27, 2020 02:02 am

Boom Supersonic Hopes To Test-Fly Its Supersonic Plane In 2021

Colorado startup Boom Supersonic is planning to show off its XB-1 supersonic plane on October 7th, with flights planned for next year. Engadget reports: [Boom Supersonic founder Blake Scholl] describes himself as an Objectivist (a follower of the teachings of Ayn Rand) and previously worked for both Groupon and Amazon. He freely admits that, beyond his private pilots license, he does not have an aerospace background. During our talk, Scholl referenced SpaceX a number of times, and it's clear that Elon Musk's private spaceflight company is the model Boom is striving to emulate. "You know, when SpaceX got started, it was a joke that a startup could build a rocket," he said "and not that many years later, they're landing rockets vertically on pads." Scholl's ambition is to do for supersonic travel what SpaceX did, and is doing, for the space industry. One of the things that Scholl and Boom are banking on is the advances in computer-aided design and materials science. The single-seat, 71-foot long XB-1 is designed to test if these advances will make building a supersonic plane far more efficient and cheap than it was in the '60s. XB-1 will use a variety of molded carbon fiber composites for its body that should hold up better against the heat and stresses caused by supersonic flight. The company says that the plane should be able to withstand temperatures exceeding 300 Fahrenheit (148C). [...] XB-1 will be piloted by Commander Bill 'Doc' Shoemaker, a 21-year US naval aviator who led combat missions in an F-18 on a number of occasions. He has also served as a flight test instructor at the US Navy test pilot school and previously worked for Zee.Aero, one of (Google co-founder) Larry Page's self-funded flying car startups. If XB-1 proves successful, then Boom will move to begin building its full-size supersonic plane, Overture. Overture is a craft designed to seat less than a hundred people at "business class" levels of comfort. And for "business class" prices, they'll be able to fly from, say, Tokyo to Seattle in four hours and thirty minutes. Boom also promises its planes will use less fuel through a combination of efficient materials and better engines. Scholl said that the planes are powered with a "quiet, efficient turbofan system [...] a similar engine architecture to what you'd see on any large Airbus or Boeing wide-body aircraft today, just adapted for supersonic flight." And recently, Boom announced that it was teaming up with Rolls Royce to build an engine for Overture. Scholl says that Overture is going to be expensive, but that Boom's lack of a legacy is as much of a benefit as it is a burden. "We don't have to think about the 737 Max, we don't have to think about how to keep the factories running for our last-generation airplanes," he said, claiming that Boom has the "luxury of focus." Scholl expects Overture to cost just $6 billion to develop -- by comparison, a 2011 Seattle Times report claimed that Boeing's 787 Dreamliner cost $32 billion to design. But Scholl is planning to sell 2,000 Overture aircraft for "$200 million a pop," which he says is a "$200 [billion] to $400 billion market opportunity."

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