Boom Supersonic is Finally Supersonic!Boom Supersonic is Finally Supersonic!

The experimental Boom XB-1 jet broke the sound barrier at Edwards AFB, where Chuck Yeager first went supersonic.

Dan Carney, Senior Editor

January 29, 2025

6 Min Read
The Boom XB-1 tears through the California skies faster than the speed of sound.
The Boom XB-1 tears through the California skies faster than the speed of sound.Boom Supersonic

At a Glance

  • Boom Supersonic was founded in 2014 to develop an affordable, environmentally responsible supersonic airliner.
  • XB-1 is Boom's proof-of-concept prototype whose technology will be applied to the airliner.
  • The Boom Overture supersonic airliner could go into production as soon as 2029 with orders for 130 planes.

Recent high-speed jet stream winds have pushed eastbound airliners to new speed records for planes not named “Concorde” while making westbound flight even agonizingly longer. Aboard one of these westbound planes, the desire for faster flights is inescapable.

Boom Supersonic founder and CEO, Blake Scholl says that his company could have an Overture supersonic airliner in the sky in four years, so the solution may not be imminent, but it is becoming increasingly realistic that these planes will be on the flight line in the time it takes to earn a college degree.
That’s thanks to the successful test of Boom’s XB-1 experimental plane that tested the company’s designs, systems, and procedures with a flight that exceeded the speed of sound by 10 percent, hitting Mach 1.1.

The XB-1 is not an airliner, nor is it airliner-sized. At 62.6 feet in length, the single-seat test plane is about one-third the size of Boom’s planned 64-80-passenger Overture airliner that has been ordered by American, United, and Japan Airlines.

A Sonic Boom

The XB-1 is the first “independently developed” supersonic jet, according to Boom. The Concorde was a civilian airliner, but it was developed with the support of the British and French governments and was powered by military aircraft engines. XB-1 was developed by Boom using money from private investors and it is powered by a trio of off-the-shelf General Electric J85-15 turbofan engines that combine to produce 12,300 lbs. of thrust.

Related:Supersonic Flight is Back

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The Overture airliner will stretch 201 feet in length with a 106-foot span of its delta wings. Its quartet of purpose-built Symphony engines each produce 35,000 lbs. of thrust. The engine is a medium-bypass design employing 3D-printed parts and hollow-core fan blades.

The plane will be built at Boom’s new factory at the Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, North Carolina, which is also home to the Honda Aircraft Company’s HondaJet manufacturing plant. The plant will have the capacity to build 33 supersonic Overture airliners per year when production starts and the facility has the ability to double that capacity if needed.

The feasibility of these plans rested on Boom’s ability to demonstrate that it can design and fly a supersonic plane that uses key systems that the Overture airliner will employ. So when test pilot Tristan Brandenburg (call sign “Geppetto”) pushed XB-1’s throttles forward with the aim of breaking the sound barrier, there was a lot on the line for the company.

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Safety wasn’t one of those things, Brandenburg insisted during a Q&A following the flight. While the plane had never flown faster than Mach 1.0 before, Geppetto said he was confident in XB-1’s engineering. “Our models and our data had indicated that it was going to be safe, it was going to be predictable, and it was going to be easy,” he said. “But you don’t really know until you push the throttles up and you go for it.”

Related:Blue Origin Blasts New Glenn Rocket Into Orbit on the First Try

The Test Program

With a live video stream from the Northrop T-38 chase plane streamed via a Starlink internet connection, XB-1 looked smooth and stable as it accelerated faster than the speed of sound. The flight looked serene from the outside, but in the cockpit, Brandenburg was busy going through a test program dictated by flight controllers.

“It looks like we’re just flying straight and level but I can tell you there is a flurry of activity happening in the control room right now,” commented chief flight test engineer Nick Sheryka during the flight. In reality, Brandenburg had tests to run. “We just activated what we call the flutter excitation system and the loads and dynamics team in the control room are looking at the data about how the aircraft’s structure, when it is vibrated, how it interacts with the airflow on condition supersonic, Mach 1.12,” he said. “They are actively monitoring, we call it aeroservoelasticity, that’s the dynamic of the aircraft’s structure.”

Related:Up Close and Personal with the Supersonic Bell X-1 Rocket Plane

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That was only one of three tests planned for the flight. The trouble is that the supersonic flight range isn’t very big when flying at these speeds, so Brandenburg had to slow the XB-1 and turn for home after completing only that one test. The plane could have returned to base at that point, but the team activated plan B and had Brandenburg relight the afterburners and go supersonic again on the return to perform additional tests.

“We’re going to enter a phase we call a flying qualities/handling qualities bloc,” explained Sheryka. “That’s evaluating how XB-1 is to fly. The flying qualities portion relates to the hands-off behavior of the aircraft. ‘Geppetto’ will actually disturb the airplane in roll, pitch, and yaw,” he said.

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Again, Brandenburg ran out of space, but after making another U-turn to line up with the runway, he squeezed in a third blast to Mach speed to complete the handling qualities test bloc to evaluate what the XB-1 is like to maneuver. It only looked exactly like a happy pilot hot-dogging around in a shiny new plane!

Forward-Looking Vision System

During the flight, Brandenburg’s forward view was limited by the XB-1’s pointy, supersonic nose cone, which largely obstructs the view ahead. This issue becomes critical during landing because, well, the pilot would like to have a good view of the runway when landing. What’s worse is that the runway is below the plane, so the nose blocks the view even more than it does of things ahead.

Compounding this problem is that the supersonic-spec delta wing design dictates a very high pitch on approach, so the plane comes in nose-high in comparison to other planes. This is why the Concorde had a heavy moveable nose section that could angle downward for landing, giving that plane its distinctive bird’s-beak appearance.

Boom uses a camera system with a high-resolution cockpit display to give the pilot a virtual view of the ground. One of XB-1’s main objectives was to prove the viability of this system for the Overture airliner. Boom plans one more test of XB-1 in a flight for NASA that will provide interesting images, promised Scholl.

Then, XB-1 will retire and Boom will focus all of its attention on completing the design for Overture. That won’t take long, because of the company’s use of existing commercial technology, according to Scholl. “It is a supersonic jet made out of airliner technology,” he said. “It is 20-year-old [Boeing] 787-level technology.”

Once the last details are settled in the near future, the design will be frozen so Boom can move to the assembly phase. “It will be time to break the engineers' pencils and take it to production,” he said. Airline passengers of the world rejoice!

About the Author

Dan Carney

Senior Editor, Design News

Dan’s coverage of the auto industry over three decades has taken him to the racetracks, automotive engineering centers, vehicle simulators, wind tunnels, and crash-test labs of the world.

A member of the North American Car, Truck, and Utility of the Year jury, Dan also contributes car reviews to Popular Science magazine, serves on the International Engine of the Year jury, and has judged the collegiate Formula SAE competition.

Dan is a winner of the International Motor Press Association's Ken Purdy Award for automotive writing, as well as the National Motorsports Press Association's award for magazine writing and the Washington Automotive Press Association's Golden Quill award.

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He has held a Sports Car Club of America racing license since 1991, is an SCCA National race winner, two-time SCCA Runoffs competitor in Formula F, and an Old Dominion Region Driver of the Year award winner. Co-drove a Ford Focus 1.0-liter EcoBoost to 16 Federation Internationale de l’Automobile-accredited world speed records over distances from just under 1km to over 4,104km at the CERAM test circuit in Mortefontaine, France.

He was also a longtime contributor to the Society of Automotive Engineers' Automotive Engineering International magazine.

He specializes in analyzing technical developments, particularly in the areas of motorsports, efficiency, and safety.

He has been published in The New York Times, NBC News, Motor Trend, Popular Mechanics, The Washington Post, Hagerty, AutoTrader.com, Maxim, RaceCar Engineering, AutoWeek, Virginia Living, and others.

Dan has authored books on the Honda S2000 and Dodge Viper sports cars and contributed automotive content to the consumer finance book, Fight For Your Money.

He is a member and past president of the Washington Automotive Press Association and is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers

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