(CNN) — A demonstration aircraft of what could be the new civilian supersonic aircraft, the first launched since the 1960s, took off in early March. It is a historic moment in the long-awaited new era of supersonic travel.
The XB-1, a technology demonstration aircraft built by Colorado-based Boom Supersonic, successfully completed its first test flight at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, it was announced on March 22.
The XB-1 program paves the way for the design and development of Boom’s Overture airliner, which promises to be the world‘s first independently developed supersonic aircraft.
Now, 10 years after the Boom Supersonic project began in 2014, CEO Blake Scholl tells CNN Travel via video call that there are some exciting months ahead.
“I’m a big believer in the return of supersonic air travel and ultimately bringing it to all passengers on all routes. And that’s not something that will happen overnight,” Scholl says. “The difficult part of building a supersonic aircraft is making something so sleek and so slippery take off and land safely.”
The first flight of the XB-1 saw it reach an altitude of about 5,000 feet at a speed of about 272 mph.
That’s well below the altitudes reached by commercial airliners, which fly between 31,000 and 42,000 feet.
As for Mach 1 (the speed of sound), it is approximately 1,223 km/h, depending on altitude and temperature. But the plan is for XB-1 to achieve that supersonic ambition fairly quickly.
“We’re going to do a whole series of flights (10 to 15 in total) over the next five to seven months to break the sound barrier for the first time,” says Scholl.
There have only been two civilian supersonic aircraft: the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 and the British-French Concorde, which last flew in October 2003, more than two decades ago.
Now, the industry is abuzz with supersonic and hypersonic projects, from NASA and Lockheed Martin’s X-59 “quiet” plane, which limits the sonic boom, to Atlanta-based Hermeus, which this week unveiled its first flying plane.
“The advent of digital engineering is a big enabler of why supersonic flight is coming back,” explains Scholl. “Aerodynamics, materials, propulsion: those are the three big areas in which we have made great progress compared to the Concorde.”
In the 1960s, Concorde was developed in wind tunnels, which meant building expensive physical models, testing them, and then repeating them.
“You can’t test many designs when each iteration costs millions and takes months,” explains Scholl. But Boom has refined the efficient aerodynamic design of its plane using computational fluid dynamics.
The XB-1 is made almost entirely of carbon fiber composites, selected for being strong and lightweight.
The Concorde famously reduced drag when reaching supersonic speeds by having a long, pointed nose on a hinge that tilted forward when taking off, landing, and taxiing so pilots could see the runway.
“Nowadays we have something amazing called a camera and display,” says a smiling Scholl, explaining the XB-1’s unique augmented reality vision system. Instead of requiring a complex moving nose and windshield views, the craft uses two nose-mounted cameras, digitally augmented with altitude and flight path indications.
So, with the aviation industry aiming to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, where does a supersonic aircraft that flies at twice the speed of modern conventional aircraft fit into all this?
The XB-1 is designed to run on conventional jet engines and run on up to 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
Scholl admits that “flying faster intrinsically requires more energy consumption,” but maintains: “We shouldn’t have to choose between being climate-friendly and passenger-friendly.
Scholl compares today’s transatlantic air travel to “driving across the Atlantic in a not-so-good SUV.” Aboard an Overture, crossing the Atlantic will be like crossing it in a Tesla.
Also, it defends other efficiencies that faster flights offer.
Boom aims to transport its first passengers on Overture (between 64 and 80, at speeds of Mach 1.7) before the end of the decade. It currently has an order book of 130 orders and pre-orders from customers such as American Airlines, United Airlines and Japan Airlines.
Scholl says: “2024 will be one of the most important years yet for supersonic flight. Later this year we will open the superfactory in Greensboro, North Carolina, where we will build Overture. And then we are ready for the races.”
Above all, he is proud to lead “a private company with a business model that scales,” he says. “The world needs an innovative new commercial aircraft manufacturer.”