Boom Supersonic's Blake Scholl on breaking the sound barrier twice and a bipartisan bill that could end the 1973 supersonic flight ban

Summary

Boom Supersonic's CEO Blake Scholl is building a commercial supersonic airliner, and for the first time the company has proof it works. In January 2025, Boom's test aircraft, the XB1, broke the sound barrier. In February, it did it again — this time with no audible sonic boom, which Scholl says validates the core technical thesis.

The silent boom is a software fix, not an aerodynamics overhaul. Flying at the right altitude and speed for the current atmosphere causes the sonic boom to curve back upward and never reach the ground. The real-time calculation draws on weather data and algorithms originally developed for computer gaming — essentially a physics simulation similar to ray tracing.

The one regulation blocking everything

The engineering is largely solved. The obstacle is a 1973 FAA regulation that bans exceeding Mach 1 over the United States — a speed limit, not a noise limit, which means a silent supersonic aircraft is still illegal. A bipartisan bill dropped in both the House and Senate this week to lift the ban. Elon Musk and Jared Isaacman have endorsed it. Scholl says some believe it could pass the Senate unanimously, though he thinks that is probably optimistic.

How Boom built the plane

The XB1 was built by a team of 50 people. Boom's total headcount is around 115. Scholl is deliberate about staying lean — if a team isn't complaining about being understaffed, he assumes they're overstaffed.

The engineering approach leans on existing technology: 20-year-old Boeing 787 components, reshaped into a longer, narrower airframe with twice as many engines. No new science required. Where Boom ran into apparent barriers — like sourcing high-temperature superalloys for the engine — the barriers mostly dissolved on inspection. The "trade secret" a major supplier refused to share turned out to be an open-source NASA material with fully public specs.

Scholl also developed what he calls the "slacker index" — lead time divided by actual production time. When Boom needed 3D-printed turbine blades, the traditional aerospace supply chain quoted $1 million per engine set and a six-month wait, despite each blade taking roughly 24 hours to print. Boom bought the printer for $2 million, got it in weeks, and beat both the cost and timeline.

Proving demand before building the product

Scholl argues the standard mythology that hardware startups are more capital-intensive than software companies is wrong. SpaceX and Anduril have often raised less than Uber or Airbnb before IPO. The difference is that internet businesses can test product-market fit cheaply by shipping. Boom can't build a supersonic airliner as a proof of concept.

The workaround was pre-orders. United and American Airlines made non-refundable, multi-million dollar deposits against a specific aircraft design with specific specs. That let Boom go to investors with a simpler pitch: the market is proven, all you have to believe is that we can ship.

Near-death and the survival instinct

Boom has come close to shutting down more than once. The worst stretch put the company within a week of running out of cash. Lawyers had a shutdown plan ready. Scholl's framing is that founders should choose a mission they care about enough that a stage-four diagnosis makes them fight harder, not fold. For him, that mission is supersonic flight.

EVtols and the broader aviation landscape

Scholl is skeptical that electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles — led by Joby and Archer — will hit their stated near-term timelines. He thinks the technology will be ready before the infrastructure and regulatory environment catch up. He puts Boom's own target at 2029 for the first passenger flight.

On the harder question of whether anyone could take a defense-first path to commercial supersonic — going unmanned, smaller, and overseas first, as Zipline did with delivery drones — Scholl is doubtful. He argues safety and noise are foundational to product architecture, not retrofittable afterthoughts. Commercial products regularly become defense products (the Boeing 707 became the KC-135; the 767 became the KC-46), but the reverse almost never happens. Building for defense first and then adding passengers later is, in his view, close to impossible.