Blake Scholl: Why Plane Speed Stalled, Supersonic Commercial Flight, & Revolutionizing the Engine

Summary

• The presentation introduces Boom as set to fly at Mach 1.7 with 130 orders from major airlines. XB-1 became the first privately developed jet to break the sound barrier in 2025, built by “just 50 really dedicated men and women,” and demonstrated “boomless cruise”: atmospheric refraction redirects the sonic boom upward so it never reaches the ground. Scholl said the U.S. supersonic-flight ban began in 1973 and ended by executive order on June 6 of last year; the Supersonic Legalization Act passed the House unanimously.
• The most tradeable reveal: Boom’s supersonic engine core, with the fan removed and a generator attached, becomes a 42 MW behind-the-meter data-center power-generation setup that “doesn’t need any water” because it is designed to run hot at Mach 1.7. Scholl calls it “an incredible money-printing business,” claiming “tens of gigawatts of demand in my inbox”; the first engine is due to run next month, after which Boom plans to auction it all off.
• The Rolls-Royce breakup—“one of the dumbest things I ever did was try to outsource our engine development”—that led people to declare Boom dead is now, in a “bizarre twist of history,” what Scholl says makes the startup financially valuable. Boom is vertically integrating from raw materials through turbine blades and assembly, with a factory whose first parts were made last week, scaling to multiple gigawatts per year and targeting 10-plus GW added to the grid over five years.
• Overture economics: a three-hour round trip across the Atlantic at Mach 1.7, with a break-even fare of about $3,500 round trip—“any dollar above that, United’s making some good money.” Scholl’s goal is four years; Calacanis floated 2030 as a rough possibility. Scholl hedges that the actual date is uncertain and says it is more important to be fast than predictable.
• Boomless cruise works to about Mach 1.3, or roughly 50% faster than current flight, over land; over water, Boom can fly at full speed—twice as fast—with no one on the ground to hear the boom. Scholl says that could mean leaving New York at 9:00 a.m. and landing in San Francisco around 9:30 a.m.; the boom makes a “big U-turn in the sky and never touches the ground.”
• Regulatory velocity as a thesis input: Boom broke the sound barrier Monday, Elon reposted the tweet, Scholl received a West Wing invitation by Tuesday, and a Boom model reached the Oval Office by Thursday. The executive order took 115 days, which Scholl said felt slow but likely would have taken longer under another administration; he emphasizes that supersonic flight is not partisan, citing unanimous votes so far.

Deep dive

1. Fifty people built what Bezos said a garage startup could not

• The presentation opens by positioning Boom as set to fly at Mach 1.7 with 130 orders from major airlines. Scholl’s origin story: he was a software engineer and ads guy from Amazon and Groupon when, in 2015, he pitched his former boss Jeff Bezos on Boom’s seed round. Bezos passed and wrote in the Amazon shareholder letter that an entrepreneur could not build an all-composite airliner in a garage startup. Scholl “took that a little personally”; the pitch deck showed a supersonic-airliner mockup made from cardboard, plywood, and Office Depot seats.
• The payoff: XB-1 became the first privately developed jet to break the sound barrier, with “something the big companies would have put thousands of people on” built by just 50 people. Its flight included the first supersonic Starlink installation, with video filmed on an iPhone and streamed via Starlink. Scholl highlighted classrooms where children tuned in rather than tuning out; he expects some of them to become future engineers.
• The industry indictment: Scholl says Boeing’s latest airliner is a literal carbon-fiber copy of its first, while the presentation says Boeing has not launched a new airplane since 2004—long enough for Boom to have interns born afterward.

2. Boomless cruise killed the ground-level boom—and then the ban

• The technique, which Scholl says the “nerds” call “mock cutoff,” uses the atmosphere’s natural refractive power to redirect the boom upward. The boom comes off the airplane at roughly normal strength, makes a “big U-turn in the sky,” and never touches the ground.
• It works up to about Mach 1.3, roughly 50% faster than current flight over land. Over water, Boom can fly at full speed—Mach 1.7, or twice as fast—with no one there to hear the boom.
• Scholl said the U.S. ban, which began in 1973, ended by executive order on June 6 of last year after the president agreed that no sonic boom should mean no ban. The Supersonic Legalization Act passed the House unanimously. Scholl also described unanimous Senate-side progress while saying the rest of the Senate still had to act; the transcript does not identify the Senate stage.

3. The Rolls-Royce disaster became the crown jewel

• Scholl’s confession: “one of the dumbest things I ever did was try to outsource our engine development to a big old company.” After the public breakup with Rolls-Royce, people said Boom was doomed, so the company built its own engine from scratch—including its own parts, down to turbine blades.
• His reindustrialization philosophy is the “exact opposite” of legacy aerospace’s outsourcing and return-on-net-assets approach, which he says causes companies to spin out their crown jewels. Boom wants to invent the next generation of manufacturing in America rather than simply try to bring back what was lost to China.
• Boom’s first vertically integrated engine core is being assembled for a test stand next month. The factory moves from raw materials to parts—including difficult components such as blades and veins—to assembly and testing in-house. It made its first parts last week, is intended to scale to multiple gigawatts per year, and targets adding more than 10 GW to the grid over five years.

4. The engine’s first job is powering data centers, not planes

• Remove the fan from the front of Boom’s supersonic engine core, attach a generator at the back, package it in “a couple trailers,” and the result is 42 MW of behind-the-meter power generation. Because the core is designed to run at high power for the full duration in a hot environment, Scholl says it does not need water.
• Under Calacanis’s questioning on dollars, Scholl calls it “an incredible money-printing business,” says there are “tens of gigawatts of demand in my inbox,” and says Boom will run the first engine next month and then auction it all off.
• When asked whether Elon wants it for Colossus, Scholl says, “You should ask Elon”; Calacanis treats that as a yes.
• For aviation, Scholl says the engine should become “the most tested new jet engine ever made” because it will be proven on the ground first.

5. Date, price, and the definition of winning

• Calacanis demands “a date and a number.” Scholl gives three hours for a round trip across the Atlantic at Mach 1.7 and a break-even fare of about $3,500 round trip. He says Boom’s goal is four years, but that the actual timing is uncertain: it is more important to be fast than predictable. Calacanis raises 2030 as a rough possibility.
• Scholl contrasts Boom’s target of safe, comfortable, and affordable flight—three out of three—with Concord, which he characterizes as zero out of three.
• The victory condition comes through Calacanis’s story about his daughter expecting a model rocket to return to its pad. Boom will have won when children need to be told that crossing the country once took six hours and respond, “Who would even do that?” Scholl imagines supersonic Air Force One, private jets, and commercial flights available to every class of passenger, across many generations of airplanes.

6. Washington speed and a 12-year company

• When Calacanis calls the company close to 10 years old, Scholl corrects him: “12, in fact.”
• Scholl says Boom broke the sound barrier on Monday, Elon reposted the tweet, Scholl flew to Washington that night, and a West Wing invitation was waiting by Tuesday. By Thursday, a Boom airplane model was in the Oval Office and, he says, remained there—“one of the greatest product placements of all time.”
• The executive order took 115 days. Scholl says that felt slow, though it probably would have taken longer under a different administration. He also stresses that supersonic flight is not a partisan issue, pointing to unanimous votes so far.

Verification Notes

• The transcript says the act “got out of Senate Congress unanimously” while the rest of the Senate remained; this digest avoids guessing that the vote was specifically in a committee.