- [Lady] Half a century ago,
the Concorde jet was flying at twice the speed of sound.
More than double the speed
of your average passenger plane today.
But despite its wow factor, the plane made for bad business.
From its exorbitant costs to disastrous PR.
(crashing machine with siren wailing nearby)
Today, nearly 20 years since the Concorde last took flight,
technology has changed the world of aviation.
And one intrepid company is hopeful,
about bringing back supersonic travel for good.
- [Man] What we need to do now,
is almost go back to the future.
We're at the intersection of what technology is available
and what the market is ready for.
And that puts us in a place to have a renaissance in speed.
(heightening fast beats)
- [Lady] At the dawn of the flight age,
the idea of air travel was thrilling,
glamorous and vastly inaccessible.
But over time, planes became more economical.
And the world of flying opened up to the masses.
Not much else about flying has changed though.
And jet setting is now less of a luxury
than a function of the 21st century.
In other words, air travel is well overdue for an upgrade.
And new technology has paved the way
to make a new kind of flight not just possible,
but increasingly inevitable.
- [Man] New York to London, today,
will take about six and a half hours
and that's typically flown as a red eye flight.
But with supersonic,
that flight will shrink to three and a half hours.
Our goal is to make the planet dramatically more accessible
through travel that is significantly faster,
ultimately cheaper and less hassle,
so that we can live on the planet
the way today we would live in the city.
- [Lady] Boom Supersonic is a startup aviation company
based in Denver, Colorado.
Few might realize it passing by,
but inside this hangar,
dozens of designers, engineers and technicians
are working up the future of commercial flight.
Starting with this test plane.
- [Man] XB-1 is history's first
independently developed supersonic jet.
Previously, supersonic aviation
has been confined to governments and militaries.
And it's never been done
by an independent private company before.
- [Lady] Traveling at supersonic speeds means
barreling through the air faster than the speed of sound.
And no passenger plane has broken the sound barrier
since Concorde's early retirement in 2003.
- [Lady 2] Now it's Concorde's last flight
ending one of the most glittering achievements
in aviation history, supersonic passenger travel.
At the airports there were cheers, tears
and of course that familiar deafening roar.
(plane engine roaring)
- [Man] We jumped into the high speed age
before we had the technology to do it in a sustainable way.
So in the 1960s, aircraft were made out of aluminum,
all your aerodynamic development
would have to happen in wind tunnels,
where every iteration would take months
and cost millions of dollars.
We had these super loud, inefficient, afterburning turbojets
with like a flame coming out of the back of the engine.
And it would guzzle gas and as a result,
it was available to a tiny number of people,
a ticket on Concorde will set you back $20,000.
Well, Concorde was all of those things.
But supersonic doesn't have to be those things.
We've gone from aluminum to carbon fiber composites,
which means you can build a strong lightweight airframe.
We've gone from using wind tunnels
to using computer simulation for aerodynamic development.
Instead of waiting months to test an idea,
you can wait hours or even minutes.
And then lastly, we've gone from those
loud, inefficient, afterburning turbojets
to something called a turbo fan.
So what we're looking at here
is the center engine intake.
So air flows in here, goes down this whole tube.
You can see it, and then the engines on the other side.
This shape is basically a really fancy
supersonic air compressor.
- [Man] And that means we're now at the tipping point
we're ready for a revolution.
(soft music)
- [Lady] XB1 is the first step
to getting to Boom's true vision, Overture.
- [Man] Our little team has put together XB 1,
which is a technology demonstrator
for our Overture passenger airliner.
So it has all the key technologies for mainstream safe,
reliable, efficient, sustainable supersonic flight.
- [Lady] This first proof of concept,
is a major landmark for Boom.
Between a public already skeptical
of the viability of supersonic commercial flight,
and an ongoing pandemic,
that has forced air travel to its lowest figures in years,
nothing can afford to go amiss.
- [Man] It's natural for the team to get excited
when they discover opportunities to do things faster
or better.
As a pilot who's gonna fly the first flight,
you kind of have to take on a bit of a skeptical role.
That you always want to question and challenge.
"Hey, does this really make sense
that the thing that we're doing?"
And really understanding the risk that you're taking.
As you get closer to that first flight,
you kind of need to leave that skepticism behind.
But you you need to have gotten to a place
where you really believe that the flight is going to go
as you have expected and we've rehearsed it to go.
(soft music)
- [Lady] With flight tests for XB1 on the horizon,
airlines have taken notice.
Virgin Atlantic and Japan Airlines are major investors
and already have jets pre ordered.
While the initial price of a ticket won't come cheap,
the cost will be comparable to flying business class.
Around $5,000.
(soft music)
Boom isn't the only outfit working on supersonic travel.
But to Scholl, rising competition
just means that more people are starting to agree
that widespread supersonic flight is not just a possibility,
but the undeniable future.
And one that will eventually become more affordable
and more accessible just as we've seen in aviation's past.
- [Man] So in the dawn of the jet age,
the ability to go be part of a jet set
was incredibly exciting.
I think back to Concorde,
and whenever they would break the sound barrier,
there would be a celebration
and they would serve everyone champagne and caviar.
That will come back with Overture.
But that's actually not the moment I'm most excited about.
I'm excited about the moment
when the flight attendants get out champagne
to celebrate being supersonic.
The passengers are like,
"I just want to get back to my movie or my book."
Because this is normal now.
(soft music)
- Thanks for watching.
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