Flying from, say, London to New York in three hours would
allow airlines to make twice as many flights each day and
pack them with high-revenue business-class passengers.
He sees even greater appeal in crossing the Pacific in six
hours. His argument convinced Japan Airlines to invest
$10 million in Boom and preorder 20 planes, bringing the
order sheet to five airlines and 76 jets.
Boom’s internal studies suggest a demand for as many as
1,800 commercial supersonic aircraft by 2035. But aviation
analyst Richard Aboulafia, who follows the three super-
sonic startups closely, questions whether any of them will
raise enough money to reach market. “That $6 billion for
Boom to reach certification is an honest, good-faith num-
ber, but I think they will have a lot of trouble securing it,” he
says. Even with investments and preorders, it’s impossible
to predict whether that interest will persist or if the plane
will meet its performance goals, he says.
Then there are the environmental concerns. The
new generation of supersonic aircraft could burn five to
seven times as much fuel as conventional jets, exceed-
ing their CO2 emission limits by 70 percent, according
to a study the International Council on Clean Trans-
portation released in July 2018. To be fair, the report
used fuel- consumption estimates gleaned from pub-
licly available data on Boom’s airliner, which hasn’t even
flown yet. Scholl argues that the report underestimated
the fuel burn of conventional jets while overestimating
that of supersonic ones. He believes Boom’s airplane will
be at least as efficient in cost per available seat-mile—a
common fuel-economy metric in the airline industry—
as conventional business-class service.
Still, supersonic travel remains glamorous, and carriers
might see that as a way of attracting affluent customers.
“If airlines or business-jet providers want to differentiate
themselves, supersonic sure will do it,” Aboulafia says.
Boom is definitely going for glamorous. With its needle-
like fuselage, pinpoint-sharp nose, and triangular delta
wing, the Overture is one cool-looking craft. The planned
interior is no less impressive. A virtual- reality demo offers
a glimpse of what crossing the sky at 1,400 mph could be
like. No one gets stuck in the middle because there’s just
one passenger on either side of the aisle. There’s lots of
leather, gleaming surfaces, and polished wood. Every one
if its 55 seats faces a giant screen, and customers watch
the scenery through large round windows. Scholl says the
cabin will be so insulated that you won’t hear the engines.
“Our goal is to exude tranquility,” he says.
And maybe that’s the real sell: “Tranquility” is not a
word anyone uses to describe air travel these days. Neither
is “lucrative,” at least when it comes to supersonic trans-
port. The engineers and entrepreneurs working on a new
generation of high-speed civilian airplanes aim to change
that, with models that could make traveling beyond the
speed of sound quieter, cleaner, more glamorous, and, yes,
more profitable than the iconic jet that started it all.if everything works as expected, will start building its
S-512 jet that should see test flights in 2021. Spike hopes
its airplane will hit the market three years later, in 2024.
Its aircraft is notable for having just two engines and
no weight-adding windows; its 18 or so passengers will
instead view the outside world through enormous, high-
resolution digital displays. Aerion’s timeline is only
slightly less ambitious: It plans to fly a prototype of its
8-to-12-passenger AS2 in 2023, get it certified by 2025, and
deliver airplanes to its customers the year after that.
ONE IMPEDIMENT TO
bringing back supersonic air
travel is solving the technologi-
cal riddles. The bigger challenge
is making it pay. Although the
Concorde remains an engineer-
ing marvel, it was a commercial
failure. British Airways and Air
France couldn’t make it profitable.
Scholl is convinced he can. His pitch goes like this:
Boom’s airliner will be smaller, lighter, and more fuel effi-
cient than the Concorde, and therefore cheaper to operate.
POPSCI.COM•SPRING 2019 93THE SECOND WAVETesting,
Testing
(1) Boom’s
flight-
simulator rig;
(2) A future
flyer?O