That’s an interesting development. I haven’t looked much into what Boom is producing in terms of jets. Actually, never heard of them. But this seems like a modern-day reincarnation of the Concorde!
Apologies if this is in a wrong category, I am not sure where to share general aviation news, but I thought it may be interesting to some.
Neat! From what I’ve seen there’s a small number of aviation startups in this space and it’s cool to watch them get closer to commercial use…
They all seem to be concentrating on smaller aircraft than the Concorde which makes them a lot cheaper to operate, and focusing on the high-end passenger segment (eg, all business class) which makes sense, folks for whom money is no object are most likely to shell out extra for the faster flight. 
I’m not convinced that supersonic travel will be affordable to average Joe Schmoe for decades, if ever. Subsonic will likely be standard for a long time, with anything beyond Mach 1 being a premium option.
Still, I’d be very interested in the potential of the technology beyond just passenger transport. High priority cargo flights could be profitable, for example, especially if delivered for a customer for whom price is no object.
It’s an interesting story but I hope Boom can produce these aircraft considering the growing trend against carbon emissions, financing woes, and ever changing government regulations. A decade from now seems like an eternity with all those other factors changing so rapidly.
Take the Aerion AS2 private supersonic jet as an example. The project was shutdown due to financial troubles although they had $11B in commitments from NetJets and Flexjet. GE was creating the engines and shutdown the project and transferred all of the engineers to other projects.
So it will be interesting to see if Boom can make it happen. Committed orders for aircraft has proven not to be helpful in getting over the hurdles to making an aircraft.
Here are some articles
I think the power source will be the deal breaker. You need quite some juice to get the plane all the way to supersonic and to maintain it for hours. I don’t know if electric or hydrogen can bring enough to the table. At the end you need a new kerosene mixture and the ticket gets expensive.
So… to me, when you say things like “startup”, I genuinely don’t know how much scale they can have. Also, safety and quality are unknown factors without a pre-established record like Airbus or Boeing have. So there’s that. In terms of availability to “average Joe”? I don’t think that was the intent! I mean, how many “average Joes” had a privilege of flying on a Concorde? Or a Constellation back in its day? This was always gonna be a premium sector. A PMDG equivalent of real aircraft? 
That being said… it would be FUN as an idea of the machine itself. I imagine it would have the most sophisticated modern equipment. Concorde is an archaic pain in the butt by today’s standards.
Interesting choice to call the company “Boom”. Especially since under Europe’s stringent noise reduction laws the Concorde was banned to fly supersonic over land, and even the military doesn’t fly supersonic anymore in many countries unless it’s an emergency …
Agreed, however if you consider that several military jets now can attain supercruise (i.e. supersonic flight without afterburners) that could be the way to go. Using electricity for passenger aircraft in my book is not feasible in the near furture. The way to make an aircraft efficient is weight reduction, and you can’t do that if you cram half of it full of batteries. Also there’s currently no way to produce thrust directly with electricity. And you can’t fly supersonic with propellers. Hydrogen is currently used in fuel cells to produce electricity. So the same problem
Yeah… it’s a choice I wouldn’t have made. To call anything Boom when it comes to aviation can have… uhhhh… Beavis… NOT so pleasant associations.
The aircraft would only be a success if Boom can muffle the sonic boom. Otherwise it suffer the same failure as Concorde, possibly even worse.
How do you “muffle” it considering it’s a naturally-occurring phenomenon? Also, I don’t think the boom was the cause of Concorde’s demise. Operating costs and decreased demand due to 9/11 were.
Just had a video about this pop up in my YT feed… Very cool. Was gonna post about it here but you beat me to it😁
Watched some of the other vids, from Boom themselves. Awesome stuff.
For massive passenger flights it is indeed very far away… but 4-5 passengers could be feasable. Most recent development at SFInc is this small transport aicraft,
That video… cringe. Surely they could have done better.
Grew up (for a time) in the shadow of Cheyenne Mountain. We heard sonic booms daily in those days. My Dad (Air Force Reserve by then) used to call the booms the “Sound of Freedom.” 
Yeah same here.
When I was a little kid we had an Air Force base about 15km away. And another two about 70km away. They were all flying Phantoms and Starfighters. The sonic booms were just part of your life even if you didn’t even hear or see the planes themselves. Today all three bases are closed and the nearest ones is equipped with Typhoons. But I haven’t heard a sonic boom in years. If it happended today I guess most people wouldn’t know what it was.
The boom severely limited Concorde’s ability to succeed as many countries banned it from their airspace after citizens complained.
It is worth noting that Concorde flew in supercruise ie non-afterburner once it had accelerated. That was quite a feat back in the day. A lot has been said about supercruise in recent years as if it’s new technology, but it’s actually nothing new.
Interesting name for a plane manufacturer
Yes that’s right. AFAIK most fighters can remain at supersonic velocity without afterburners too. The difference being that today you can achieve supercruise completely without the need for afterburners.
Concorde took about 15min of afterburners to accelerate from Mach 0.9 to Mach 1.7. AND it needed afterburners for takeoff as well. So Concorde’s afterburners burned almost 2.5 times as much fuel for about 20 min in a 3.5 hour flight. That’s quite significant considering that todays engines are far more fuel efficient.
There was also Tu-144, basically a Russian version of the Concorde. That was was even less efficient and ultimately had to go bye-bye because of that.
