

Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images



Boom, an aerospace startup that hopes to usher in a new age of affordable supersonic civilian air travel, has unveiled the first scale prototype of the Boom Passenger Jet. Dubbed the XB-1 or "Baby Boom," the one-third-scale prototype has three jet engines that will apparently propel the aircraft to Mach 2.2—10 percent faster than the Concorde—with a range of over 1000 nautical miles.

Boom was founded in 2014. Current investors include Y Combinator and Sam Altman, and with a press release yesterday it seems that Richard Branson's Spaceship Company is now a major partner in the project, assisting with manufacturing and engineering. Honeywell provided the avionics for the XB-1 prototype, and it's powered by three tweaked General Electric J85-21 jet engines. Composite materials are being provided by Tencate, and they're being formed into structures by Blue Force.

The Boom Passenger Jet, if it's eventually built, will be virtually identical to the XB-1—just three times larger. From a distance, the full-scale Boom jet will look rather like a smaller Concorde (52 metres vs. 62 metres). Up close, you'll see that both aircraft have a similar delta wing shape, but the Boom wing has a chined forebody that starts at the nose of the fuselage, perhaps evoking memories of the SR-71 or A-12, and with swept rather than straight trailing edges.

The full-size craft will be powered by three jet engines—presumably larger versions of those used in the prototype—though not much is known about them right now, except that they will be non-afterburning. Afterburning (injecting more jet fuel after the turbine) increases thrust, but it massively decreases overall efficiency and increases fuel consumption. The Concorde used afterburning to get up to speed, burning tons of fuel in the process. Boom believes that it can hit Mach 2.2 (~1,451mph) without afterburners due to improvements in aerodynamics, materials, and propulsion. Concorde was limited to Mach 2 because it was made from aluminium, which couldn't handle the higher temperatures caused by friction with air (it started to soften).





The specified max range of the Boom Passenger Jet is 4,500 nautical miles (slightly more than the Concorde) at a cruising altitude of 60,000 feet (~18,200m), or 9,000 nautical miles with in-flight refuelling. Passenger capacity is much lower than the Concorde (45 vs. ~100), with just one seat on either side of the central aisle. Back in March Boom's founder said they are targeting a London-New York round-trip cost of just $5,000 (~£4,000)—roughly half the price of travelling by Concorde, or about the same price that you'll currently pay for a first-class round-trip across the Atlantic in a Boeing 777. The Boom jet would do London-New York in about 3 hours and 24 minutes, San Francisco-Tokyo in five hours, and Los Angeles-Sydney in six hours. Both of those longer trips would most likely require mid-air refuelling.

For now, though, the scale XB-1 only has two seats: one for the pilot, an an optional seat for an engineer or passenger. The XB-1 is just 21 metres long with a wingspan of 5 metres. The aircraft, currently located at Boom's hangar at Denver's Centennial Airport, is due to make its first subsonic flight in "late 2017." The first supersonic flight will take place afterwards at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Boom, if the company gets that far, is hoping to have the full-scale aircraft ready to go by 2023. Richard Branson has confirmed that Virgin Atlantic would like to buy 10 Boom Passenger Jets, and Boom says that another unnamed European carrier is on the line for 15 craft.

Civilian supersonic air travel is a fairly hot topic currently: Aerion (working with Airbus) hopes to have a Mach 1.5 supersonic jet in operation by 2023; Spike Aerospace has a windowless, 18-passenger Mach 1.8 design that is targeting the 2020s; and HyperMach is apparently working on a Mach 4.4 machine called the SonicStar—though much of the tech required for that aircraft doesn't yet exist.

Finally, as an added bonus, here is a random drone-captured photo that I stumbled across this morning of the Russian Tu-144 supersonic passenger jet. Apparently this jet resides in a courtyard outside the Kazan National Research Technical University. The Tu-144 was the first civilian supersonic aircraft, just beating out the Concorde, but the fleet was grounded after just 55 scheduled flights in 1978. Concorde managed to eke out a respectable 27 years of service, finally being retired in 2003.