A civilian jet broke the sound barrier three times during a test flight in California’s Mojave Desert on Tuesday, the first time a privately developed and built aircraft has accomplished such a feat.
The test flight was a milestone for Boom Supersonic, the small jet’s builder that is hoping to eventually bring supersonic air travel to the masses.
“And she’s airborne,” said Mike Bannister, a former British Airways Concorde pilot, during the livestream broadcast of the demonstrator aircraft’s test flight from the Mojave Air and Space Port.
About 12 minutes later, Boom’s chief test pilot, Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg, reached an altitude of 35,290 feet and accelerated the plane, called the XB-1, to Mach 1.122, the company said.
Brandenburg would break the sound barrier twice more during his roughly 20 minutes in the air — his journey monitored by more than two dozen engineers in a control room on the ground. Data from Tuesday’s test and other previous flights, including how the jet handles at supersonic speed, will be analyzed by the company as it moves to its ultimate goal of building Overture, its supersonic passenger jet.
“Let’s wrap it up and head home,” the control center instructed Brandenburg.
Tuesday’s flight took place in the same airspace where Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in 1947. The company received a special waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration to be able to conduct the test flight over land.
“XB-1’s supersonic flight demonstrates that the technology for passenger supersonic flight has arrived,” Blake Scholl, Boom’s CEO, said in a statement.
It’s been more than two decades since the Concorde, the last commercial supersonic jet, whisked people across the Atlantic. The jet, a joint venture between the British and French governments, tapped into the desire for faster travel, but its high ticket price put it out of reach for most travelers. A crash in France in 2000, caused by runway debris, killed 113 people. It stopped flying in 2003.
Boom is convinced it can overcome the barriers that grounded the Concorde and make supersonic travel affordable and greener. The company’s Overture aircraft will be designed to use sustainable aviation fuel.
Overture is planned to be a passenger jet that will carry 64 to 80 passengers. It will travel at Mach 1.7, or 1.7 times the speed of sound, more than twice as fast as a regular passenger airplane. In June, the company completed construction of an Overture factory in Greensboro, North Carolina. It eventually will have the ability to produce 66 Overture aircraft a year there, the company said.
Bob van der Linden, curator of air transportation and special purpose aircraft at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, said Tuesday’s successful test flight bodes well for Boom, one of the few companies competing in the supersonic passenger jet space. But he cautions that the company will face the same challenges that the Concorde encountered.
“There’s a long, long, long way to go between this test flight and building that supersonic passenger jet,” he said. “And then the other question about the supersonic transport is: Is there a market for it? Have they solved the problems that the Concorde couldn’t? That’s still up in the air.”
Still, van der Linden said, the idea endures, in part because when it comes to travel, “everyone wants to go faster, faster, faster.”
At his confirmation hearing this month, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy expressed support for the concept, saying that there need to be corridors where supersonic planes can do test flights and rules in place that allow for “continued innovation in this space.”