Supersonic flights are coming back. Boom Supersonic's XB-1 prototype has broken the sound barrier

Over the years, in these pages, we have written over and over again about Boom Supersonic. For those who have never heard of it, it is a U.S.-based company whose goal is to bring back the supersonic flights: to do this, Boom is developing an aircraft, theOverture, referred to by many as the "modern Concorde". 

We return to this topic because a few days ago, on January 28, Boom took a very important, perhaps decisive step: the demonstration aircraft XB-1 (from which, later, the Overture would be derived, ed.) passed the sound barrier. It is, in fact, the first supersonic flight (piloted by a civilian, of course) from the Concorde retreat, which occurred in 2003.

The flight, which took off from the Mojave Air & Space Port in California, was conducted by Tristan "Geppetto" Brandenburg, a former U.S. Navy pilot and now chief test pilot for Boom Supersonic. Geppetto, once he reached an altitude of 35,290 feet, accelerated to Mach 1,122. The choice of location, let me be clear, was not accidental: here, back in 1947, Chuck Yeager - at the controls of his Bell X-1 - became the first pilot to break the wall of sound. 

"XB-1's supersonic flight proves that the technology for supersonic passenger flight has arrived"-said Boom founder and CEO Blake Scholl - "A small group of talented engineers and accomplished what has previously required governments and billions of dollars."

This flight was also critical because many of the technologies in the XB-1 demonstrator will also be present in Overture. These include the augmented reality vision (thanks to which pilots will have perfect visibility from the cockpit, without the need to engineer a movable nose like that of Concorde), the optimized aerodynamics digitally (engineers used computational fluid dynamics simulations), the use of carbon fiber composite materials and of turbofan thrusters.

In short, the return of supersonic flights seems to be getting closer and closer. Of course, we still don't know for sure if and when we will see the Overture plying the world's skies (estimates speak of 2029); at the moment, however, Boom Supersonic has already received approx. 130 pre-orders by several companies, among which we find American Airlines, United Airlines e Japan Airlines. 

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