Faster transportation design has been in the headlines recently, as Elon Musk unveiled his unsurprisingly not-a-joke Boring Company and stoked more Hyperloop fervor. But where this kind of futuristic tech might take another decade-plus to deliver, some plucky startups are seeing money in earlier engineering. As of this March, Boom Technology has landed an additional $33 million to build and test a supersonic jet for the mega wealthy set. Supersonic, a la the retired Concorde and '90s predictions of intercontinental luxury travel.
Apparently the past innovations in supersonic propulsion haven't been left to languish, and there's more meat on them bones. Boom's key project - creatively named Supersonic - hopes to take the old Concorde's styling and pare it down for faster and smoother use. The company formed in 2014 and unveiled a testable miniature model called the XB-1 (or more affectionately, the "Baby Boom") in early 2016, with hopes and math pitched at delivering a full sized prototype capable of running 2.2 times the speed of sound. That's a whalloping ~2.6 times faster than standard airliners.
Now that additional funding has been grabbed, the push to produce a viable prototype is on. As it stands, the plane body will be largely carbon fiber, and they've oomphed up (and added more) turbofan engines. The interior design has been lengthened to fit around 50 passengers and luxuriant accommodations.
Much of the heady coverage of the project's early stages talks about the ticket pricing and halved travel time between difficult regions like Australia and Los Angeles, or London and NYC. While it's flatly absurd to float a firm price between $2,000 and $4,000 each way when the first scale prototype hasn't been finished yet, this type of new-old tech is compelling. Enough so that good ol' Richie Branson's The Spaceship Company has signed on to back the R+D and add them to their fleet if they work.
While spending $5k to get your LDN --> NYC travel time down to 3 hours seems like the epitome of first world nonproblem solving, the larger transportation design question is interesting. We (in the U.S.) are spending a lot of hype and funding on visionary tech that's still solidly out of reach... and will likely stay cost prohibitive for the first several iterations. If the Boom talking points are true - and the Concorde's poor cost effectiveness can be fixed with modern materials recently OK'd by the FAA - maybe we should all be investing in an extra high flying class of super planes makes? The whole thing traps my cranky logic in a hyperloop.
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I still think 'BOOM' is an unfortunate name for an aircraft company...
...especially given the tragic history of concord!