He's Building The Plane Everyone Said Was Impossible | Blake Scholl #487 | The Way I Heard It

I was seven years old when America made it to the moon. Too young to fully appreciate the significance of that accomplishment, but old enough to assume – logically, I think – that we would have surely ventured a whole lot farther by 2026. But we didn’t, and I think I understand why. We were in a space race, and we won. But, when the race was over, we had to reconsider our motivation in every category, including cost, risk, and so forth. In the end, I guess we had bigger fish to fry.

Later that same year, Concorde broke the sound barrier and proved that supersonic travel for non-astronauts was for real. The implications of that were a lot more impactful, potentially, to a lot more people, and the possibilities were intoxicating. In the early seventies, lots of smart people in the aerospace industry predicted extraordinary advancements in the coming decades, to the point where most everyone agreed that we’d be able to fly from Los Angeles to Paris in under two hours by 2000. But of course, we didn’t. We just kind of…slowed down. It was if someone, somewhere, decided that air travel should not exceed the speed of sound. That we were going fast enough, and that was that. Weird, right? Unlike every other form of technology, we simply gave up on going faster, and today’s guest is determined to change that.

His name is Blake Scholl, and he plans to bring commercial supersonic flight to the masses by 2029. His company is called Boom, and his airliner, Overture, aims to cruise at Mach 1.7 (twice the speed of today's jets), cutting flight times dramatically, such as London to New York in just 3.5 hours or New York to Rome in under 5 hours. Overture is designed to carry between 64 and 80 passengers and run on 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel. Major carriers, including United Airlines, American Airlines, and Japan Airlines, have already placed orders and pre-orders.

I find the whole endeavor to be utterly fascinating, as well as our conversation. The whole this is here, and worth your time. Especially if you've come to the conclusion that air travel is ripe for a massive upgrade.

#podcast #aviation #travel

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