Supersonic 101: A Deep Dive Into Aviation
Don’t you guys think that Charles Darwin popularised the term ‘Survival of the Fittest’ specifically for long haul flights? It’s essentially an endurance test that lasts an eternity. No book, no business class seat, no binge watching or no enchanted neck pillow can make the flight feel any shorter.
Recently, I flew from Mumbai to Detroit and I swear to god, I walked off the plane feeling like I had finished a full year’s sabbatical. And yet, somehow, we live in an age where AI can replace human jobs, cars can drive themselves, and humanoids can do parkour… but we’re still flying as slowly as we did in the 1960s?
If you are tall guy who folds himself like an origami project to fit in, there’s good news for y’all—our aviation messiah, Blake Scholl, has arrived. Boom Supersonic has officially built an aircraft that recorded a top speed of Mach 1.18, breaking the sound barrier, and obviously, the whole tech twitter lost it’s rockers. If you’re thinking, “Didn’t the Concorde try this and crash” Kudos to you. I’ll break that down too, so buckle up !
1) A Historical Perspective on Supersonic Travel
Many countries like the United States, India and Russia possess advanced supersonic planes that can hit Mach 2 (twice the speed of sound). These advancements at the start were led by cold war flexing with nations trying to prove their technological supremacy. However, it quickly evolved into strategic necessity, forming a strong pillar of the modern day defence systems.
But here’s the catch - All these supersonic planes are fighter jets that are used for defence. Meanwhile, every commercial aircraft today, from your ‘most trusted’ and the ‘most secure’ Boeing 737 - the one whose doors are so well engineered that not even Hulk could rip it off - to the Airbus A320, are still flying at subsonic speeds. Was this always the case? Oh, not at all. Once upon a time, we actually had supersonic commercial planes that weren’t just sci-fi concepts. They were known as ‘ The Concorde’ and ‘The Tupolev Tu-144’.
1.1) The Concorde
(Source: NNehring via Getty Images)
The Concorde was collectively built by the French and the British. Honestly, I wasn’t less than an engineering masterpiece back in the 1970s. It cruised at Mach 2.04 and could have gotten you from New York to London in just 3.5 hours. It’s luxury cabin offered an experience that no other commercial plan could match. Naturally, it became a status symbol of billionaires and celebrities who treated it as their personal Uber. But despite of it being a status symbol and it’s crazy speed , the project was a financial fiasco.
It was absurdly expensive to operate. It drank a lot of fuel, burning twice as much as a Boeing 747 while carrying only 100 passengers. Due to this, the airline had no choice but to charge extravagant prices to the customer. And when I say extravagant, I truly mean it. It was a $12k round trip back in the 90s or $30k round trip from London to NYC today. Bro, I could literally recreate ‘Around the World in 80 days part 2’ with that sum of money.
1.2) The Tupolev Tu-144
(Source: Jim Ross | Wikimedia Commons)
Meanwhile, the Soviets weren’t about to let the west have all the fun, so they built their own supersonic commercial aircraft -the Tupolev Tu-144. If you’ve even got the slightest pattern recognition skills, you would’ve noticed that these aircrafts look suspiciously similar. There’s a conspiracy theory that the KGB (Soviet Union’s Foreign Intelligence) ran an operation to steal highly classified data related to aerodynamics, engines, and materials from the French and the British.
And you know what’s hilarious?? If the conspiracy theory upholds, the Tu-144 was still launched before the Concorde despite taking a significant chunk of the Concorde’s design. Like, how can a copy come out before the original ? Torrenting didn’t exist back then. But the answer to this is quite simple - political pressure. The Soviets had already taken a massive L on the moon race and were desperate to prove their dominance. It was more of a PR stunt than an aviation milestone in my opinion.
But let’s not get distracted. The Tu-144 had some noticeable changes like the additional canards (small forward wings) to handle stability. And credit where it’s due: it actually outpaced the Concorde, reaching Mach 2.15 thanks to changes made by the engineers. However, it had some safety issues which were overlooked in the process to ship faster. The passengers complained about loud noise in the cabin which was unbearable. Additionally, the Tu-144 burned more fuel. Why ? because it relied on afterburners to increase thrust for sustaining supersonic speeds. Great for defence aircrafts, not so good for a commercial airlines trying to make money.
1.3) Catastrophic Setbacks
While both these aircrafts pushed the boundaries of aviation through innovation and experimentation, their stories took a significant tragic pivot when both jets suffered catastrophic crashes. In 2000, an Air France Concorde struck a piece of metal on the runway, puncturing a fuel tank and igniting a massive fire that killed all 113 people on board. Sometimes, all it just takes is a piece of metal to shatter a billion dollar engineering marvel.
On the other hand, the Tu-144 had an even more dramatic exit. During a Paris Air Show in 1973, a Tu-144 attempted a dangerous maneuver, totally lost control, and exploded mid-air. This tragic accident resulted in several casualties on the ground while killing all the six crew members
For all their flaws, both the Concorde and Tu-144 were groundbreaking feats of engineering. The Concorde set the gold standard for high-speed luxury, while the Tu-144, set the grounds for lightning fast travel. But with their mind-blowing speed came an equally brutal downside—one so thunderous that governments banned these aircrafts from flying over land. Even corporate behemoths like Lockheed Martin & Boeing, having billions of dollars in the bag, couldn’t make it work. Boeing’s 2707, a project that was awarded a $1 billion government contract, never made it past the prototype phase, and Lockheed Martin’s quiet supersonic transport concepts just remained on paper. No matter how fast or sleek or how well funded these projects were, they all had hit the same roadblock- the sonic boom.
2)The Sonic Boom
Have you guys watched Man of Steel? Say whatever you want about Zack Snyder, but that scene where Superman flies for the first time, breaking the sound barrier, was peak cinematography. And with Hans Zimmer’s music blasting in the background? Absolute goosebumps.
Coming back from realm of movies, the sudden boom that you hear when something moves faster than the speed of sound ? That’s a sonic boom. If you’ve never heard one before, here’s a link so you can just go and check it out first.
But, here’s a caveat - the recording doesn’t fully capture the sonic boom. This is because the cameras and the phones only pick up sound waves whereas a sonic boom is a pressure disturbance, not merely noise. When an aircraft moves faster than sound, it compresses air molecules in front of it, creating energetic shockwaves that moves outward in all directions. It’s a sudden release of built-up energy, like a balloon popping when you poke it with a toothpick but scaled up a million times.
(Source: Official U.S. Navy Page)
The problem with sonic booms is not just the eardrum shattering noise- it’s the mind bending physics that complements it. When a jet goes supersonic, it not just pushing through air now, it’s plowing through the densely packed air particles that resist it’s movement. Think of it like stretching a rubber band. The more you pull, the more resistance it will give, making you work harder for the same task. In a similar way, the faster an aircraft moves, the more resistance it faces, forcing the engines to burn shit loads of fuel to sustain movement.
Even if airlines were willing to manage the high operating costs, government regulations posed a significant hurdle, curtailing it’s expansion. Sonic booms generated by flights cause considerable disruption on the ground— shattering windows, shaking buildings, and prompting widespread noise complaints. As a result, most countries implemented bans on supersonic flights over land to prevent these disturbances. This restriction severely limited the flying routes, confining it primarily to transoceanic flights, which further reduced its commercial feasibility.
These challenges—limited routes, high fuel consumption, expensive maintenance, and a very niche customer base—ultimately prevented supersonic commercial travel from going mainstream. While the technology was revolutionary, it was economically unsustainable. For supersonic travel to succeed today, efficiency, noise reduction, and cost-effectiveness are essential.
3)Boom Supersonic: Reviving Supersonic Travel
In 2014, Blake Scholl, a former Amazon and Groupon executive, founded Boom Supersonic with a vision so bold it makes most of contrarians out there look like they’re playing it safe. I mean, while everyone back in 2016 was was busy building apps to solve first-world problems like “What should I eat tonight?” this guy looked at the sky and thought, “Yeah, let’s break the sound barrier.” An absolute madman.
I was listening to the MFM pod(here’s the link if you wanna check it out), and Shaan was telling a really wild story: at Y Combinator’s demo day—where everyone was pitching apps—Blake basically rolled up with a $5 billion LOI (Letter of Intent- a promise that if the product succeeds, the airlines will buy it) in pre-orders. While most founders were showing off their prototypes and pitch decks, this dude secured billions from airlines before even having a finished product. Just GOATED stuff.
Fast forward a decade, and Boom Supersonic has raised over $700 million from the silicon valley giants like Paul Graham, Sam Altman and Reid Hoffmann. I mean, when people like that are backing you, you’re clearly not just another startup. And I can sense the vision - to rewrite the aviation industry. Once we move on to discussing the potential implications, that’s when you’ll share the excitement.
But yeah, its journey from fiction to reality began with the XB-1. You can also refer to it as ‘Baby Boom’. So, the Baby Boom…. was designed to corroborate the technologies and aerodynamics planned for their commercial aircraft, Overture. It’s development was diligent and tedious, with its rollout in October 2020 followed by a number of rigorous ground and flight tests which laid the foundations of an historic achievement.
Finally, On January 28, 2025, the XB-1 successfully broke the sound barrier during a test flight, reaching speeds of Mach 1.1. This milestone marked the first time an independently developed civil supersonic jet achieved such a feat, laying a robust foundation for the forthcoming Overture aircraft.
4)Boom’s Secret Sauce
Boom Supersonic’s progress with the XB-1 is honestly quite remarkable. While the Overture—the company’s flagship passenger aircraft—is still in development, the Baby Boom serves as a proving ground. So it’s actually worth knowing about how it just proved all the so called aviation gurus wrong. How was this jaw dropping feat achieved? Let’s break it down.
4.1) The Material
Back in the day the Concorde and the Tu-144 were constructed out of aluminium. While aluminium is lightweight, it has a major downside- it expands significantly when heated. When the flight goes supersonic, the skin temperature can easily soar above 150°C, risking structural issues. To tackle this, Boom opted for Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP), the same material used in F1 cars to ensure sturdiness while preserving the speed. It offers superior thermal stability, preventing expansion issues while reducing the aircraft’s weight, increasing fuel efficiency. On top of that, it can be manufactured faster through out-of-autoclave processing, ensuring scalability for future.
4.2) The Symphony
Additionally, if you realised, lightning fast speed isn’t really worth much when your engines chug fuel like there’s no tomorrow. To address this, Boom decided to partner up with Florida Turbine Technologies to build it’s own custom engine. Unlike the Concorde’s engines—which needed afterburner—Symphony (it’s own engine) just relies on a medium-bypass turbofan design. This architecture delivers impressive thrust without sacrificing efficiency. Additional manufacturing was undertaken which further enhances the engine’s performance, with combustors that precisely manage fuel injection and reduce nitrogen oxide emissions.
4.3) 3D Printed Manufacturing
But having top-tier materials doesn’t mean everything’s done if manufacturing is a bottleneck. So, Boom went ahead with 3D printing, not the mini action figures build with average desk sized box sized printer. It partnered with Velo3D to print titanium components for the XB-1, targeting critical spots like engine mounts and environmental control ducts. These machines craft complex designs that slash weight without sacrificing strength. The imagination goes wild with the built-in cooling channels as they eliminate the need for extra parts which aids to reduce the failure rate.
4.4) Mach Cutoff
Now, let’s talk about the real magic trick—How did they mitigate the sonic boom? I wrote heaps of words explaining it to highlight it’s importance. So, here’s how it works: Instead of brute-forcing their way through the air like Concorde, Boom designed Overture to take advantage of a physics principle called ‘Mach Cutoff’. Essentially, at certain altitudes and speeds, the shockwaves refract upwards due to atmospheric conditions, meaning the sonic boom doesn’t actually reach the ground.
Think of it like shouting in a tunnel—if you yell straight ahead, the sound travels forward and echoes. But if you perfectly angle your voice, the sound waves bounce upward and dissipate before reaching anyone’s ears. Boom’s aircraft constantly adjusts its altitude and speed based on real-time atmospheric data to stay within the Mach Cutoff range, effectively dodging the sonic boom problem entirely. In January 2025, Boom tested this principle with the XB-1, confirming that it could fly at supersonic speeds without any noticeable boom at ground level.
5) The Future - What Happens if ‘We’ Win ?
Okay, imagine a world where air travel isn’t an endurance test but a catalyst for global transformation—where every minute saved in the air becomes an extra minute of productivity. The supersonic aviation isn’t just about breaking speed limits; it’s about dissolving the boundaries that have supressed our economic and creative potential for ages. And I purposely use the word “we” because it doesn’t really matter….. if Boom figures this out or another visionary company outpaces it—these brainstorming powerhouses are collectively raising the bar and driving the future. So, let’s dive into how winning the supersonic game could eventually reshape everything.
5.1) Economic Productivity Gains: Time is Money
Currently, a flight between New York and London takes more or less 7 hours. With supersonic jets like Boom’s Overture on the horizon, that could drop to around 3.5 hours. Now, if we extrapolate this into the global context, we can cut the time significantly. And hey, let’s be a bit more optimistic—even push for MACH 3 or MACH 4, because you never know what breakthroughs we might witness. Think of it like cracking the toughest part of a humongous jigsaw puzzle: once you get those crucial corner pieces in place, everything else starts to click into position.
Consider this: in July 2024, the average passenger flight time (excluding cargo) was approximately 7 million hours (Williams, 2024). Speaking conservatively, that translates to about 70 million hours annually. While I couldn’t nail down on a proper estimate for the global productivity rate( $/hr), the OECD averages around $67 per hour (OECD, 2024). So based on my rough calculations, we’re talking about a global productivity loss of approx. $4.7 billion. Now, if we cut that flight time by half, that’s an on-paper productivity saving of about $2.35 billion every year.
Of course, this is a very rough estimate—some travelers bill at $300 an hour while others in Asia might be billed at a lower rate. Plus, not everyone flying is headed to a meeting room; many are off for chilling with their families. But just imagine the cumulative savings if you factor in the benefits in perpetuity. This was merely an example to highlight it’s effectiveness. I’m in now way telling you that my guesstimate is in the ballpark range. Furthermore, shorter flights also mean more flights can be scheduled, further catalyzing economic activity.
Additionally, acute jet lag—experienced within a few hours to one day after long travel—is associated with transient disruptions in brain connectivity, which may underlie short-term cognitive difficulties such as fatigue and poor concentration (Zhang et al., 2019).
Let’s be honest—no one is operating at 100% after clocking in endless hours in the air. A study conducted showed that companies based in the UK lost $300 mil+ due to jetlag(Business Traveller, 2016). By slashing these flight durations, we’re not just saving time—we’re revitalizing minds. Less fatigue means sharper decision-making and more creative brainstorming. But that is just from the business/economics point of view.
5.2) Cost Savings on the Ground
Shorter flights would reduce many indirect costs. For instance, eliminating the need for overnight hotel stays on transatlantic routes could cut accommodation expenses. Companies that require constant travel might just save millions annually in labor costs simply because employees spend less paid time in transit.
5.3) Tourism
For leisure travelers, it’s a dream come true. A Tokyo to Honolulu flight could shrink from 8 hours to just 4, altering weekend getaways and potentially increasing international trip frequencies. Data suggests that even a small reduction in travel time tends to increase the demand (Litmann, 2024). So now, imagine the tourism revenue ripple effect—potentially adding billions.
5.4) Trade
Faster air cargo services could change the dynamics of industries that depend on timely delivery. Think pharmaceuticals that require same-day delivery, or high-tech components where every hour counts. We are talking about vaccines and other drugs that could be delivered on time to change lives. This enhanced connectivity can tighten the global fabric of economic trade, accelerating globalisation.
6) Navigating the Hurdles
6.1) The Fuel Factor
As we had already discussed these jets currently consume 2–3 times more fuel per seat than their subsonic traditional counterparts. So it’s worth considering that till the time we don’t have a sustainable outcome, the chances of this luxury getting democratised will be slimmer than the chances of RCB winning the IPL.
The advancements in sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and engine efficiency improvements are already on the canvas. However, the SAF just accounts for 0.3% of global jet fuel production (IATA, 2024) and its high cost remains a major obstacle. Nevertheless, I believe that, with time, we'll find an appropriate solution—as we always have.
6.2) The Regulatory Environment
One of the biggest roadblocks for supersonic commercial aviation isn’t just technical—it’s legal. Currently, a major hurdle preventing these jets from taking off over land is the long-standing ban on supersonic flights, specifically outlined in ‘14 CFR 91.817’, a regulation passed in the 1970s that strictly prohibits civil aircraft from flying at speeds that create a sonic boom over U.S. land.
However, as technology evolves, so does the conversation around these regulations. Unlike the Concorde era—where the sonic boom was an unavoidable side effect—today’s advancements like ‘Mach Cutoff’ allows for quiet supersonic travel.
(Source: Elon’s Twitter)
And as you can see in this tweet, the big man has decided to jump in. Musk is leading the Department of Government Efficiency, which has recently been slashing regulations. His influence plays a pivotal role here and could pave the way for supersonic jets to be tested and eventually flown over land without facing immediate legal shutdowns.
7)A Global Leap Forward
At its heart, supersonic aviation is more than a technological marvel—it’s a catalyst for reimagining global connectivity. It’s about transforming every flight into an opportunity and every journey into a leap forward for innovation.
I believe that as we stand on the brink of this new era, one thing is clear: winning the supersonic race isn’t just about speed. It’s about efficiently increasing our capacity to connect, innovate, and thrive. With the right balance of technology, sustainability, and government intervention, the future not only looks faster but also brighter.