◼ TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek October 12, 202023PHOTOGRAPH
BY
BENJAMIN
RASMUSSEN
FOR
BLOOMBERG
BUSINESSWEEK
THE BOTTOM LINE Boom Technology is building a jetliner that
could shave hours off flight times, but it’s still years away from
paying customers.for the wings, but the nose stays in place. Pilots
use cameras affixed to the bottom of the plane
to see the runway, and software to guide them.
While this all sounds highly sophisticated, the
truth is that building a private supersonic plane
comes with its share of mundane challenges. With
the XB-1, Boom wanted to acquire three J85-15
engines, which were older machines used on mili-
tary planes and would give the plane enough mus-
cle to go supersonic without costing a fortune. The
engines had been widely used on the F-5A fighter
jet that the U.S. military sold to other countries.
Used versions turned up in places like Brazil and
Taiwan. Boom, however, struggled to get clearance
to import the engines. Scholl’s team thought it was
going to have to give up and possibly redesign the
plane. Thankfully, however, a guy knew a guy who
knew a guy who had four J85-15s sitting in a ware-
house in Florida. Boom sent a couple of people to
the collector, who had never-used engines that had
been stored dutifully for 30 years with nitrogen
inside to prevent decay. “I think we got the set of
four for about $1 million,” Scholl says. “It felt way
too much like trying to conduct a drug deal.”
With the unveiling completed, the XB-1 will now
be put through a series of ground tests. The plane
will gradually be pushed harder and faster, and
data will be gathered and analyzed. Eventually,
the moment of truth will arrive, and someone will
have to put it in the air. In this case, that someoneis Boom’s chief test pilot, Bill “Doc” Shoemaker,
who has a doctorate in aeronautics and astronau-
tics from Stanford and years of flying fighter jets
for the U.S. Navy behind him. “You reach a point
of belief,” he says. “You fundamentally believe you
know what the outcome will be. Ultimately, the air-
plane just wants to fly.”
Like many a test pilot, Shoemaker was casual
when describing the risk involved and the pro-
cess of flying the plane. During a visit in January
to Boom’s new and expanded factory, still right at
Centennial Airport, Shoemaker hopped into a flight
simulator to show me how the camera system will
be used to see the runway. He took off, flew for a
bit, and then came in for a landing, lining up a cross
and other objects on the screen with targets super-
imposed on the runway. “You put the thing on the
thing,” he explained.
Some of Boom’s earliest hires have left the com-
pany and been replaced by veterans of heavy indus-
try. Julie Valk, vice president for programs and
operations, spent a decade at General Electric Co.
Part of her job has been to make sure Boom gets
better at sticking to schedules, which has meant
creating a software model that tracks 30,000 line
items. Boom also hired Brian Durrence, who spent
the previous 30 years at Gulfstream Aerospace
Corp., as its senior vice president in charge of
Overture’s development. “I felt like I had one more
big program left in me and wanted to do something
special with it,” he says. “I do believe Overture is
the next supersonic aircraft.”
Overture isn’t expected to be ready for test
flights until 2026 at the earliest. It will then take
about four years to make tweaks to the aircraft
and prove it’s safe enough to carry people, accord-
ing to the company’s work plan. “At Stripe we had
our first customers within three months of writing
code, and you get that quick validation that things
are making progress,” says investor Collison, pres-
ident of Stripe. “Here, Boom is already five years
in. I don’t know if I could do it.”
Scholl is aware that perceptions of air travel seem
to be changing because of Covid in the short term
and climate change in the longer term. To the latter
point, he’s pledged to make Boom’s flights carbon
neutral. Mostly, though, he thinks people will always
want to fly—the faster, the better—and we all benefit
from the experience of making the world a smaller
place. “We have not had a world war since the jet
age,” he says. “When you meet people face to face,
their humanity comes through.” �Ashlee Vance“I do believe
Overture
is the next
supersonic
aircraft”For more on supersonic
technologies, visit
http://www.bloomberg.com/
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