Boom! Supersonic Aircraft Built by The Spaceship Company Get Serious Backing

Lets Go Fly
Credit: Boom

Its hard to feel like your’re living in the space age during those increasingly unpleasant hours you spend flying the “friendly skies.” That it happens at speeds which are no faster than they were when the commercial jet age got underway, and only begin after an excruciating journey to and through the airport, only add insult to injury. For some at least, relief may be on the way. Richard Branson’s Virgin group has placed an option on the first 10 airframes to be built for Denver based startup Boom Technology’s proposed 40 passenger supersonic jet.

Virgin has a good reason to exercise those options, given the fact that the all-composite airframes are to be built by Virgin Galactic’s manufacturing subsidiary, The SpaceShip Company.

Drawing obvious comparisons to the Concorde, Boom Technology believes it can offer a supersonic jet which travels faster and higher than its predecessor, while offering New York to London round trip tickets for $5000.

The company’s founder and CEO, Blake Scholl, says  in an interview in Bloomberg, “The idea is for a plane that goes faster than any other passenger plane built before, but for the same price as business class.” .

“According to the simulations, Boom’s design is quieter and 30 percent more efficient than the Concorde was. Its 40 seats will be split into two single-seat rows, so everybody has a window and an aisle. To reduce weight, the seats are of the standard domestic first-class variety, so no laydown beds. To cut flight time, Boom’s plane will cruise at 60,000 feet, where passengers will be able to see the curvature of the earth, while going 2.6 times faster than other passenger planes. Scholl says about 500 routes fit the craft’s market, including a five-hour trip from San Francisco to Tokyo and a six-hour flight from Los Angeles to Sydney.”

A little higher, a little faster, a lot cheaper, and a bit more curvature of the Earth, and perhaps we can all say we’re space tourists.