Boom is a Denver-Colorado-based startup founded in 2014 that seeks to build what it calls the world’s fastest supersonic airliner as more companies seek to revive supersonic commercial flight nearly 20 years after the grounding of the Concorde, history’s only successful supersonic airliner.

What is Boom building?

Boom is currently developing its XB-1 supersonic demonstrator and Overture, a 65-88 passenger, Mach 1.7 supersonic airliner. (Concorde boasted a cruise speed above Mach 2.)

The XB-1 shares key technologies with Overture, such as advanced carbon fiber composites and a refined delta wing. Boom will use lessons learned from XB-1 flight testing to help optimize Overture and to prove that in-flight key technologies are safe for efficient travel at supersonic speeds.

The XB-1 was formally revealed to the public in October 2020.

When will you be able to fly in the Overture?

Overture, with an estimated $200 million price tag (plus options and interior)—and a cruising altitude of 60,000 feet—is slated to roll out in 2025, fly in 2026, and carry passengers by 2029, according to Boom.

While the company says final ticket prices will be set by airlines, Overture is being designed “to allow airlines to offer fares comparable to today’s business class. Our long-term vision is that the fastest flight is also the most affordable,” according to its website. 

Boom’s founder, Blake Scholl, told The New York Times that the goal is to deliver passengers anywhere in the world within four hours for $100. In comparison, tickets from New York to London aboard Concorde cost thousands of dollars.

Can Boom fly supersonic in the U.S.?

Like the iconic Concorde, the supersonic Overture will only exceed the speed of sound during overwater routes such as New York to London and San Francisco to Tokyo. Decades ago, the FAA banned supersonic flight over the continental U.S. because of the effects that sonic booms can generate.

In January, the FAA announced final rules for supersonic test flights in the U.S. meant to streamline the approval process, which is a key step in ultimately getting a product to market. 

While the FAA still prohibits unlimited supersonic flight over U.S. soil, it does provide exemptions for testing, which is good news for Boom. 

Who are Boom’s supporters?

In June, United Airlines became the first U.S. airline to sign a commercial agreement with Boom, announcing it plans to buy 15 of the supersonic airliners, contingent on Boom hitting certain milestones. 

Japan Airlines has also pitched in $10 million for the development of the airliner and with an option to purchase 20.

Boom is also working with the United States Air Force for government applications of Overture. 

Its partners include Collins Aerospace, which is collaborating on the nacelle technology development; Rolls-Royce, which is developing a custom propulsion system; and Amazon Web Services for high-powered computer cloud storage and security.

So far, the company has raised $270 million as of May; its investors include American Express, Bessemer Ventures, Prime Movers Lab, Emerson Collective, and Celesta Capital.

The post Curious About Boom Supersonic? Here Are Five Things to Know appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The Business Aviation Commitment on Climate Change, a collaboration of organizations representing manufacturers, operators, fuelers, and service providers, credited its success to improvements in alternative fuel, technology, infrastructure and operations, and carbon offsets.

Between 2010 and 2020, the business aviation sector improved its fuel efficiency by 2 percent per year, achieving one of its main objectives across its fleet of about 38,000 aircraft. The group is now renewing that same goal through 2030.

A large part of the success took place between 2015 and 2020, when the sector emitted 2.4 million tons less CO2 than expected, the group reported. Those numbers included a drastic 26 percent drop in aviation activity across the fleet in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

An existing goal for 2050—to cut CO2 emissions to 50 percent of 2005 levels—remains on track, but members have set a new aspirational goal for business aviation, across turbine, electric, and hybrid platforms, to reach net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050.

“This hinges heavily on technology improvements being introduced by our industry and a significant adoption of sustainable aviation fuel [SAF],” said Thomas Fissellier, Bombardier Business Aircraft head of strategy and analytics, who presented the data at Wednesday’s press briefing.

Burning SAF emits significantly less greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fossil-based aviation fuel. It’s made by mixing conventional fuel with various renewable materials including cooking oil, plant oils, agricultural residues, and municipal waste.

Relying on SAF and improvements in technology and infrastructure alone will not get the business sector to net-zero by 2050, Fissellier said. To reach the goal, Fissellier said purchasing carbon offsets will be necessary.

Carbon offsets are investments in activities that reduce carbon emissions.

“It’s really up to our operator community to offset this,” he said. “The good news is that there’s actually really strong interest across operators and across all the associations to go in that direction…to help us get there.”

Potential Challenges to Reaching Net-Zero

However, there are hurdles to achieving the 2050 goals, including limited access to SAF. “It’s just not out there and available,” said International Business Aviation Council Director General Kurt Edwards. “We need a whole lot of it as soon as possible.”

The argument to that view, he said, is that the demand for SAF is not evident. As Edwards pointed out during the presentation, airlines are showing demand signals by making long-term commitments to use SAF. “But they can’t get the fuel right now, or…they get it in dribs and drabs.” Also, the general aviation community has been pushing lawmakers to make SAF more available.

Getting SAF “produced, scaled up, and available to the fleet is important,” Edwards said. “SAF is going to be probably among the most critical of the tools to get us to the goal of net-zero carbon by 2050.”

General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) President and CEO Pete Bunce expressed concern during the presentation that a proposed tax regime in Europe would threaten the group’s 2050 goals.

“For the business aviation sector to be able to avoid taxes, we have to be able to use sustainable aviation fuel,” Bunce said. “But if you can only get it in their deployment structure at large hub airports and you don’t recognize a ‘book and claim’ system…this tax is very debilitative on the industry and I am extremely concerned about it.”

A book and claim system allows SAF carbon reductions to be documented and fully traceable throughout the fuel’s supply chain.

How Aviation Contributes to Overall Emissions

According to GAMA, business aviation’s global CO2 emissions amount to about 2 percent of all aviation and 0.04 percent of total man-made carbon emissions worldwide. Civil aviation as a whole contributes about 2 percent of global CO2 and 3 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

The business aviation sector has improved fuel efficiency of its products 40 percent during the past 40 years, according to GAMA. Business aircraft built in 2050, GAMA predicts, will be 45 percent more fuel efficient than those built in 2005.

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Adapting to the Pandemic

Just as animals in the wild adapt to their environment, so did LightHawk as the pandemic hit home for the group. They lost 10 friends, leaders, and pilots, including board chair Brigadier General Lawrence “Bud” Sittig. Despite this, they moved ahead with their mission to protect the environment.

“We spent a lot of time on video calls,” said Jim Becker, LightHawk board of directors chair. “LightHawk moved to a totally distributed organization model with staff in nine different states. Despite these obstacles, LightHawk continued to prove that aviation can advance conservation in many ways. Our team developed new techniques for video monitoring and improving endangered species transport, just to mention a few. We also added new senior staff, pilots, and board members.”

LightHawk By the Numbers

According to the annual report, LightHawk flew 219 missions, added 32 new volunteer pilots, and transported 17,488 animals.

Flights along the Colorado River and images of the critically low water levels at Lake Mead were gathered by LightHawk pilots. The lake provides water for much of the population in the Western U.S. Some of the photographs gathered on these flights were jarring enough to inspire local media to write stories reflecting the impact of the drought on local communities.

Endangered species relocation was also a key mission for LightHawk pilots. Air transport is often less stressful to the animals than ground transport, leading to higher survival rate.

At one point there were more white abalone in the sky than in the ocean as 16,402 of the endangered shellfish were transported to Southern California for release in restored kelp forests and rocky reefs where they will contribute to the recovery of their species.

The transport was completed in five flights done in partnership with The Bay Foundation and University of California Davis Bodega Marine Lab.

“If it wasn’t for LightHawk, we would have had to drive the animals, which can result in higher mortality due to the long duration of the drive,” stated Kathy Swiney, of the NOAA SW Fisheries Science Center.

Because field biologists’ activities were significantly limited because of COVID-19 restrictions, LightHawk aircraft were also used to locate endangered species of birds, including the California condor. The LightHawk pilots used aerial telemetry to determine the location of the birds. The aircraft were also used to transport juvenile birds from Idaho to the wilderness of California for re-population.

In one instance a LightHawk aircraft was used to transport a condor with a broken leg to a veterinary specialist several hundred miles away for emergency surgery.

Birds and shellfish were not the only animals LightHawk transported, as several captive born Mexican red wolf pups were flown for placement into wild dens. Mexican wolves had been considered extinct in the wild until reintroduction in 1998 in Arizona and New Mexico. The release of the pups into wild dens is called cross-fostering, and is done to increase the population and maintain genetic diversity of the recovering species.

“LightHawk flights made impactful ‘just in time’ differences in endangered species transports, filling a critical gap created when other options were not available,” states LightHawk CEO Michele Rutledge. “We are fiscally sound and entering into a thoughtful strategic planning process to propel our next 40-year-plus years to sustainability.”

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The FAA held the first of two virtual public hearings regarding the development of SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy launches in Boca Chica, Texas. Dozens of attendees spoke during the public comment session, many of whom displayed their support for Elon Musk’s ambitious projects.

The meeting focused on SpaceX’s Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA), a document overviewing the potential impact of launches and construction on habitats and wildlife in and around Boca Chica.

According to the Draft PEA, SpaceX has proposed a laundry list of construction projects for the site:

• Parking lots
• Liquid natural gas pretreatment system
• Methane liquefier
• Payload processing facility
• Trenches
• Launch pads
• Off-shore landing platforms
• Towers
• Desalination plant
• 250-megawatt power plant

SpaceX has already conducted multiple missions from Boca Chica, including five high-altitude launches of its latest Starship prototype. SpaceX has previously seen multiple Starship prototypes explode on the launch pad, recently in March when mission SN11 exploded during its landing approach.

FAA Environmental Protection Specialist Stacey Zee opened the meeting by talking about the proposed construction and activity for the launch site, saying “it would emit air pollutants. Most of the emissions would occur from SpaceX’s proposed power plant and natural gas pretreatment and liquefaction.”

Of the almost 100 attendees that spoke, a vast majority of the comments in favor of SpaceX operations were from those who did not live in either the Boca Chica area or in the state of Texas.

Zee’s presentation was then repeated in Spanish, but the PowerPoint slides remained in their original English translation. This was a point of concern for many Boca Chica residents, who predominantly speak Spanish.

Locals have noted that the Draft PEA was not offered in any other languages and that this may violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Residents previously questioned whether or not the Spanish-speaking community had been properly notified of language accommodations prior to the meeting.

Attendee Gilberto Estrella delivered her comments in Spanish, but the English translation was not played back during the hearing—despite there being a dedicated translator on the call.

One of the most notable comments came from Brownsville City Commissioner Jessica Tetreau Kalifa, who pleaded for the approval of the launch site.

“I don’t just ask you, I beg you to give them that permit,” she said. “There are so many people here in the Brownsville area who have benefited from this project coming to our area.”

Others also called in their support of SpaceX.

“I don’t live near Texas. I have no stake in this currently, but I would just like to say that SpaceX is doing an amazing job in Texas and that I would like to see this process move a bit faster,” said commenter Edward Lukowsky.

Throughout some of the supportive comments, there were several mentions of the human race becoming a “multiplanetary species.” One commenter even quoted the Bible during her time, speaking of humanity’s dominion over the Earth.

“We are not created for the Earth. The Earth is created for us human beings,” said commenter Pearl Smith. “I’m looking forward to us becoming multiplanetary. Thank you, Elon Musk. Thank you, SpaceX.”

Emma Guevara, a lifelong local resident, shared her apparent disgust for the preceding comments.

“I am appalled by the audacity of all these pro-SpaceX supporters spouting the exact same rhetoric, spotted by a billionaire with nothing but his own interest in mind so that he can make more money off of his apartheid emeralds,” Guevara said. “This has nothing to do with you. Listen to directly impacted voices. The FAA needs to, at the very least, do an environmental impact statement, but at the most, this entire project should be canceled.”

As some commenters noted, the Draft PEA differs from that of an environmental impact assessment (EIS). Mary Branch, a local resident and board member for Save RGV, spoke in opposition to the list of proposed construction projects.

“None of these are addressed sufficiently in the Draft PEA, nor were they addressed, analyzed, or even mentioned and elements of future design and implementation in the original 2014 Environmental Impact Statement, which renders this draft invalid,” Branch said. “In conclusion, we deem this Draft PEA insufficient, inadequate, and lacking scrutiny and ask it to be rejected on its face and request a full environmental impact statement be conducted instead.”

Sharon Almaguer, a local resident, claimed that the SpaceX launches that have already taken place have become a nuisance for her home.

“I don’t know how you could say that the noise is, in any way, acceptable, or that the vibrations are, in any way, acceptable,” Almaguer said. “My house shakes with little rockets and it sounds like the rocket is coming right over my head. … You need to do a complete and comprehensive assessment of this project.”

The FAA is scheduled to host another public hearing Wednesday at 6 p.m. EST. Registration for attendance can be found here. Follow @FlyingMagazine and @TheAfrikid on Twitter for live updates as the hearings are held.

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