It’s been years since the Concorde jet zipped passengers around the world in practically no time at all, but now, it has a successor. Boom has some admittedly large shoes to fill, but nonetheless, some pretty lofty goals of its own. In fact, founder and CEO Blake Scholl hopes that his company can help flyers break the sound barrier, and perhaps, make a same-day round-trip journey between London and New York a possibility.
“60 years after the dawn of the jet age we’re still living in the jet age,” Scholl told Engadget in an interview. “We haven’t improved travel for like half a century.” And while technology for our mobile devices, our computers, and our automobiles continues to push forward, it seems that the aviation industry has, to some extent, stagnated. “Sure our airplanes have gotten safer and they’ve gotten more efficient, but they haven’t gotten any better at their basic job of making the world an easier place to access,” Scholl said.
And that’s where Boom comes in. Scholl claims that his company is “taking that last 50 years of fundamental progress with aerodynamics, materials, and propulsion and building an aircraft that’s more efficient than Concorde so that supersonic travel can become routine for a lot more people.” That’s quite a promise.
Moreover, Boom says that it will avoid Concorde’s mistakes by using fuel more efficiently. Rather than using afterburners as its predecessor did, Boom wants to use a turbofan, which is “significantly more fuel efficient and also quieter.” The firm is also going to build with materials that weigh less, and make a plane that is ultimately more aerodynamic. All of this, Scholl says, will make his planes more fuel efficient, and consequently allow for cheaper ticket prices.
The first passenger aircraft is slated to be a 45-seat airplane that goes mach 2.2, which is to say, 2.2 times the speed of sound, and 2.5 times faster than any other plane on the market today. But don’t get too excited just yet. The plane won’t be ready for a few more years, so if you’re looking for a way out of the country, you’ll have to settle for more traditional methods for the time being. But hopefully, by 2020, you’ll be able to come back very quickly indeed.
