Boom Supersonic's Blake Scholl on breaking the sound barrier twice and a bipartisan bill that could end the 1973 supersonic flight ban

here. We're not scooping anybody. Uh we have Blake from Boom Supersonic in the studio. Welcome to the show, Blake. It's been too long. We've been wanting to do this for a while. Yeah, ideally from a supersonic plane. We're we're we're aviation afficionados. We like traveling.

Uh but the hard thing with the show is that it takes us six hours to get across the country. We podcast for three hours a day. The math just doesn't make sense. So, we're happy that you're working on a solution for us. Indeed. Well, thank you for Thank you for having me.

Yeah, it will be fun to do the first ever Supersonic webcast. Maybe we should just agree to do that. I'm 100% on board. Let's do it. count me in. Uh can you give us just the general update? Obviously explain like what you're building, but what's uh what's the latest news in the world of Boom Supersonic? Yeah.

Well, I think for anybody who's not been following the story, you the goal is to really pick up where Concord left off, fermented supersonic renaissance, ultimately deliver uh faser travel for everybody from the president on down to every family.

And so it's a it's a decadesl long uh mission, you know, ultimately to replace subsonic with supersonic for every passenger on every route. Uh but uh but building building companies like Boom is it's like building an iceberg from the bottom up.

And I feel like this year is the year that the iceberg is like really emerged from the the surface of the water. In January, we broke the sound barrier uh with our test airplane, the XV1. Breaking the sound barrier. We love to see it, right?

And then and then in February we did it again and arguably we broke it permanently. Double kill. Fantastic. That's great news. I don't know. You said you broke it permanently. Is that what you said? Yes. Because we proved we could do it reliably with no audible sonic boom. Oh, there you go. Okay.

They said it couldn't be done. They said it couldn't be done. Yeah. People People, by the way, it turns out that like people have been telling me this for decades and mostly the claims are it's like really hard and you have to like change the aerodynamics of the airplane and D it. No, it's a software fix. Really? How?

Well, explain that. Everything is computer, John. That's it. Everything is computer. If you fly the airplane at the right altitude, at the right speed for the current atmosphere, the boom makes a Uturn in the sky and never touches the ground. No way. But you need to be able to calculate that in real time.

You need like decently good weather data and and and ironically algorithms that were developed for computer gaming. Wow. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. So, it's a it's a physics simulation. It's it's it's ray tracing. You're running Unreal Engine almost. I'm sure you have proprietary system.

Um what uh does that need to go through FAA approval to use that or is that separate from the rest of the aircraft uh authentic what's it called qualification or like approval? Yeah. So you need to certify an airplane carry passengers. You know basically you got to prove you meet all the safety standards. Yeah.

Uh and this is this is separate because we we have um one of the dumbest regulations ever created. In 1973 we banned supersonic flight in the US. Like literally there's a regulation that says thou shalt not exceed Mach 1. Yeah. And it's speed limit, not sound limit. Right. Right. It's really stupid. It's really stupid.

And um uh and so no, you know, we could like make it play Mozart when it flies over and you're still not allowed to do it. And that's why that's why those coast to coast flights are still stuck at six hours. That's why no one's done this already. And uh and so we we're working really hard to get that uh changed.

We had it feels like something that like the EO would just drop and it would be like, "Oh my god, he just tweeted it out or put it on Truth Social and it happened. " Like, love him or hate him, but like the guy definitely like likes to rip a crazy idea on short notice for everyone.

Uh, are you optimistic that there will be change? Does this need to go through the House and Senate or is this something that could just happen in EO? So, we've had good conversations at FAA uh this week. a bipartisan bill dropped in the House and the Senate. Uh that does it. Cool. And uh Elon endorsed it.

Uh Jared Isaacman endorsed it. Uh we've got bipartisan support. Great. Uh some people think this could get through the Senate unanimously. Uh I think that's probably a little ambitious. But uh but even even the idea that that's possible, I think is pretty cool. Yeah.

Some lawmakers like traveling slower because it inspires them to grind harder. more time on the plane, more time to prep their filibusters. They don't want to go fast. I guess, you know, the bare case for supersonic I get so much email done. I do get a lot of email done on a six hour flight.

If I got there faster, I'd do less email. I was texting Jordy when we were flying to DC. I was like, "This is incredible. I've never been more productive. " Uh, but I think faster flights will just force us all to be more efficient with our time. Right. That's right. Yeah.

Uh but but I mean uh break down the actual uh scope of the problem here. How much is engineering? How much is regulatory? How are you staffing against that?

Do you have a massive government affairs team and lobbyists or I imagine there's still a ton of engineers at the on the you're not just taking some like white labeled plane and then doing a bunch of lobbying and that's the endgame, right? Yeah.

I mean, the most surprising thing is that we don't have to invent anything fundamentally new. This is not a science project. It's not a technology project. It's really just an engineering project.

In fact, we're taking 20-year-old 787 technology, basically reshaping the airplane, making it long and skinny, putting twice as many engines. And so, there's a lot of engineering and testing that goes into that. But there's no science and there's no new technology. And there's only one regulation that needs to change.

Mhm. Um, so, uh, so we've got small numbers of great engineers. I'm a big believer in like tiny teams. Uh, that are very focused. Like we did, we we built XB1, our test supersonic jet, which is 50 people. 50 people. Wow. And the overall company's not that much bigger. Right. Right. We're like 115 now.

And like we're growing very slowly. Like if a team does not complain about being understaffed, I know they're overstaffed. Yeah. Yeah. Uh I mean we we were joking about like white labeling a plane.

Obviously you are standing on the shoulders of giants using some uh off-the-shelf technology using some technology licensed from other firms. Can you take me through the journey of engine development the decisions that you made? Have you changed course on any of those decisions?

Uh what would you recommend to the next generation of aircraft builders? Yeah. Um well I'll go broader than that. Like if if you're thinking about doing hardware at all, my my my advice, frankly, any startup, any startup, all startups are hard. I don't think any are easy.

F I think the difficulty level is set by founders because we tend to run at our own red line. And if somehow it gets easier, we'll just make the job harder again like like like Bri, you like Brian just decided to like, you know, double what Airbnb is, you know, because I guess the old thing got too easy. Yeah.

Um and and so and so what I what I've found along the way is I'm far more successful if I pick a mission that deeply inspires me and makes it worth being at my red line. So I never get up in the morning and think is it worth it? Okay, great.

So now now probably building supersonic jets is like you know the ultimate hard mode. Um and but what I have found along the way is uh people around the company from the legacy industry will have all these stories about all these things that are impossible to do. you know, you can't build your own jet engine.

Like, only a big company can do that. There's tons of proprietary technology, blah blah blah blah blah blah. It's all [ __ ] It's all [ __ ] Like, I'll tell you one story.

Like, we were trying to get um high temperature super alloys for our engine and you know, we thought we needed to go license it from one of the big three. We get into this licensing conversation and they're like, "Oh, we can't give you this thing because there's a trade secret.

" I'm like, "Don't tell me the trade secret. I'll give you the part. just make me the part and hand me the parts back and don't tell me the secret. And they said, "No, no, no, no. You'll find the secret. " So, we can't do that. And for for like two weeks, we're like, "Oh, shit.

" Like, "How do we ever get this engine built? " But eventually, we just went into the supply chain and we found the trade secret. We found it. And I'll tell you the trade secret. Okay. There is no trade secret. Oh, interesting.

The thing that was theoretically proprietary is an open- source material developed by NASA where all the specs are public. Well, the trade secret is that they're using open source. That was the trade secret. That's the trade secret. The trade secret was there is no trade secret.

Trade secret because there's all this fake proprietary and you know everybody's telling you why you have to work with them, why you have to use their stuff, why you couldn't create it yourself. And you know, and it just nine times out of 10 it's just not true.

And so we we we found you know we've probably heard Elon talk about the idiot index which is like how much a finished part cost uh is divided by the raw materials cost. We found a thing that's more important. It's called the slacker index.

Slacker index is how long it takes to get something divided by how long it takes to actually make it. Mhm. Wow. And and so we've got these turbine blades. We're 3D printing turbine blades for our engine. And we go quote it out of the traditional aerospace supply chain.

It's going to cost a million dollars for one engine's worth of parts and it's going to take six months. I was like, well, how long does it take to print a blade? Well, it's like actually about 24 hours. So, why does it take six months to get one?

Well, they were like printing them like one at a time and then you got to wait for your turn on the machine. All this not okay. What's the machine cost? $2 million. How long does it take to get a machine? Oh, actually they've got them in inventory. You get them in a couple weeks.

So, so for the price of two engines worth of blades, we got the 3D printers and the blades and we can and and we beat the lead time of just outsourcing it and that and that pattern exists everywhere in this business. Uh, can you talk about the current fundraising market for hard tech companies?

There's a bunch of companies raising a ton of money. There's other, it's feast and famine out there. Uh, yeah, the F-35 cost a trillion dollars somehow. I feel like trillion dollar raise is on the table soon based on the current market. Uh, yeah, we'd like we'd personally like to see you do one T on 5T.

I'd love to see that. I'd love to see that on 5T. That should be the new the new goal. But but I mean there is there is a world where a plane company comes out and raises just massive money and just dumps it all into subcontractors and takes a very different approach. Why wouldn't that work?

Uh and and and what advice would you give to the next generation of hard techch founders in aviation or otherwise? Yeah.

So the the key difference so there's this mythology that hardware companies are more capital intensive and if you go look at like how much money did Uber raise, how much did Lyft raise, how much did Stripe raise, how much did Airbnb raise, like these like theoretically capital-like businesses consumed billions in venture capital.

Yep. Before IPO. So wait what? And if you go look at like SpaceX or Andril like the you know the theoretically hard techch companies like oftentimes they raise less money. Mhm.

So, you know, WTF and I I think that the difference is uh if you are building say Uber or Airbnb, you have an idea that sounds really counterintuitive like invite strangers from the internet to sleep on your couch. Mhm. Right. It doesn't sound like a good idea, but it's actually really cheap to test. Yeah.

And um and and so what happens in most internet businesses is for very small amounts of capital allow you to test whether you have product market fit and and you and you test it by means of building and shipping the product.

Uh we can't build a supersonic airliner as a means to testing whether anybody wants a supersonic airliner, right? Uh so so what you have to do in a hardware business is is find a capital light way to demonstrate that you're a product market fit. And the answer can't be shipping the product.

So, so, so you know, our strategy was pre-orders. Yeah. Um, so we, you know, we got United American to make like deposits, like non-refundable deposits on airplanes against a specific design. So, it's not just like, okay, here's, you know, here's a dollar that says, you know, supersonic is cool.

It's like, nope, here's a significant multi-million dollar deposit, a whole further deposit schedule against a very specific airplane with very specific specs. And and then so we can go to investors and say, um, if we build this, there's obviously a gigantic market and this is going to be like a getting paid for it.

You guys are already getting paid for it. That's right. Yeah. So, all you all you have to all you have to believe is we actually ship the product. Mhm. What was the uh I want to ask you what was the worst week building boom and what was the best week? I'm guessing the best week was this year.

Yeah, I think the uh I I give you the best moment. Um the best moment was the day that we broke the sound barrier for the first time, but it was it wasn't actually the moment of breaking the sound barrier because we' done so much testing at that point.

I knew if we flew that day, we were going to break the sound barrier. Uh what I didn't know is whether we'd have the weather to do it and uh and like I'd gotten up that morning and it was extra cloudy and like we can't you know we can't do it on a cloudy day.

Um and uh and so the team was kind of debriefing checking the weather da da and uh and one of our safety culture rules is like no top management are in the safety briefs.

It's the team making an independent go no-go decision with no nobody senior putting their thumb in the scale and telling them they need to go and pressurizing it. Uh but so the team so I'm like in the hanger waiting and the the team the team walks out and I could just tell from the energy like it was go time.

Like no no nobody had to say anything. It just like I see him walking over the airplane. They're like hooking up hooking it up to the to hooking the toe bars up like we're going to go. And at that moment I I really teared up uh because I I knew I knew it was going to happen.

And then then we were then like when it actually happened and everybody was jumping up and down and screaming and I was sort of like, "Yeah, of course. " So that was uh I think that was the best moment. The worst moment um we have near-death experiences like basically every year.

Um and at this point I just expected I'm like, "Okay, uh you know, every year we're going to get the equivalent of a cancer diagnosis. " And you know, if I'm lucky it's stage two, not stage four. Um, but you know, we we we've had like some like we like survived stage four startup cancer.

Uh, uh, we had an extremely difficult fund raise. I think we got down to a week of cash. Wow. Uh, like the lawyers had a plan to shut the company down. I remember calling one of our investors when we were sort of three weeks away.

Um, and he's like, "Usually when people tell me you're three weeks away, you're telling me you're going to shut the company down. " And I was like, "Of course we're not shutting the company down. We're talking about how we're get through this little knot hole here.

" And uh, people who are like who have like 12 months of cash and they're like I'm out of this. I've been doing this for a year. I'm going to go be a PM in big tech. I've done the PM at big tech. I don't want to do that again. I'll never go back. You could never make me go back. I can't go back.

The the thing the thing with your with for you and your team and and I'm sure the entire cap table, it's like if we don't do this, we have to be if we're not successful here, we're going to be reminded multiple times a year. multiple times. Yeah. Like Yeah.

Every time you get on a plane, every time you you know, it like is is one of the very few companies on earth that can bend reality into into an, you know, bend time, right?

And I and I just think uh I feel like humanity is fortunate that you are running this company because so many people would have gotten the stage four diagnosis and just said, "All right, like we we took a good shot. We did our best and that's it. " Yeah.

I mean, it's my biggest wish for other founders is pick the startup where if you got the stage four diagnosis, you say screw it, we're beating this. And that and that's that, you know, for me that's supersonic flight. But every for every founder it's something different.

Uh but I think there's this founder market thing and if or founder mission thing and if you get that really in alignment then uh like like then then you can run through brick walls. Yeah. Um, in many ways I would run through brick walls for a notetaking app. I would too.

Um, the in in many ways you could think of Boom as being a very logical, obvious next step in commercial aviation, longhaul travel, that type of thing. Yeah. Um, what about the flying car market? I've often said we have flying cars. They're just helicopters.

But the problem with helicopters is that they're not evenly distributed. Not everyone has a helicopter. But if everyone had a helicopter on their house, they could fly to work. And yeah, you need air traffic control and stuff. We all need to be good pilots.

But if a company could drop the cost of a helicopter by 100x and make it 100x safer, uh, yeah, we'd probably basically say, "Yeah, we solve flying cars. " And yet that hasn't happened. So what is your take on the boom of helicopters whether or the boom of flying cars or anything else in aviation?

There are great people working on that actually and it's actually way harder than supersonic flight. Way harder.

But Jo uh- because um oh zillion reasons like one is you need a whole new set of regulations right because these the electric vertical takeoff and landing so Joby and Archer who are really the two leaders in this. Yeah. Uh it's not technically or regulatory a helicopter. So there's a whole new set of rules.

uh they need a whole new set of infrastructure because isn't that a mistake? Well, what I'm saying is like is like what if what if I started a flying car company that was perfectly regulated as a helicopter just like uh there these companies now that are regulated as sea gliders.

Billy Fowler and region are doing great work. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you love it. Right. It's like legally a boat but it's like a plane but he has but he's designated in one way.

So it's a lot easier and I feel like there's almost like this regulatory arbitrage or regulatory hack that the hard tech founders might need to think through. So it's this is if the regulations were done well, your idea would be exactly on point.

The problem is we have we have too many regulations that are prescriptive about exactly how something has to be done rather than setting a safety bar or a noise bar. Right. And so and so like if you look at the regulations for helicopters, they tell you how you must build your helicopter. Okay. Yeah.

So, if you want to build an electric helicopter with distributed rotors, well, it doesn't have the parts that the regulations tell you how to design. Um, uh, you know, or like how do you, you know, or that you're allowed to have like a wing on the thing, too.

So, so, so that like the better helicopter is that doesn't fit the regulations for helicopters. Yep. Yep. So, yeah, it' almost be better bug in the regulations. Yeah. almost just to regulate against like like if if flying things are crashing at a a rate above more than like one in a billion, it's no go.

Doesn't matter how you build it instead of saying you have to have this this screw in this place. That's that that that's right. And for actually for large transport aircraft, it's actually a bit better. Yeah. One one in a billion is actually the regulatory safety bar. Yeah.

And um there are and yet there also still some things that are like prescripted but there's a me there's a mechanism to get around the prescription uh called equivalent level of safety. So we can go to FAA and say um uh and say like you know you you say that our throttle has to be built in such and such and such a way.

Uh but the real thing is a reliable throttle. Let me show you my reliable throttle that's done differently and you can get an equivalent level of safety finding. You can go forwards.

Uh but the if you look at like going from a helicopter to an electric vertical takeoff and landing, you know, flying car, uh like like the whole thing is different. What's your what's your timeline to EV talls being in American skies? Who wins? Who goes first? Will I be on a boom supersonic or a or a EV tall?

Yeah, I mean just a just kind of a wild guess. Is it like before 2030? Seems unlikely to me. Is it um is it 2040? Is it I I I I don't I feel uncomfortable speaking for other people's timelines.

I think I think the technology is going to be ready uh but before the infrastructure and the regulatory environment are laid flat. Yeah. Um and uh that the the stated timelines for EV toll are like super near-term. Yeah. And but I I suspect it's optimistic. I don't know. And uh I don't know.

Maybe we've been made the mistake of being more realistic and and now it just sounds worse, you know? So, our our timeline is 2029 for being ready for the first passenger. I mean, there's also like incredible things happening in EVOL that are unmanned. You look at what Zipline's doing.

We talked to the founder of Zipline and we were blown away by the progress there. And that was one of the things where they had to go to another country to get favorable regulatory treatment and kind of figure things out. Um, but then have really been able to accelerate. Yeah. I mean, Keller's crushing it.

Like, like I love Zipline. Uh, great amazing founder, amazing company, great success story for how you do these things. They're they're brilliant. Keller was brilliant at like finding the first market. Uh, that was like the the soft target. Y um the the the small and uncrrewed are radically easier than large and crude.

And the um and the re the reason for both is safety. If you go big, um, even if it's uncrrewed, you have a problem because if the thing crashes, it can hurt somebody on the ground. Y, right. And so there's a threshold, you know, somewhere around, I think, 55 pounds like above above which like it's radically harder.

Y um, and then if you put a human on board, like obviously, you know, you don't want to hurt anybody.

And so and so in building XB1 like the the the most surprising things were about um the sort of the second order effect of our our our choice uh to put a human on board from day one and and not to have an ejection seat like we we basically put everything on hard mode but we learned a lot more from that. Yeah.

Is there is there an easy mode version of the boom story where you go to some country with lax regulations? You say we're going uncrrewed, we're going smaller. Maybe it's like a ISR reconnaissance application.

You're only flying over the water counting on fish or whales or something and and it's just much easier to actually get flying on a routine start the flywheel like Zipline did. Have you thought? I mean, you could go, you know, like there are people doing kind of what you're describing that I think are smart like Hermes.

Hermes is smart. Yeah, totally. And you know, but what is what what is Hermes doing? They're they're basically building a hypersonic bomber. Uh and uh you know, and it's kind of okay if the trips are one way. Sure.

Um you know, and and yet and this I think they'll have a great business and they're great people working on that and I you know, I'm I'm cheering for them. They'll probably get to Mach Five long before I get to Mach Five. Yeah.

Um but the uh but doing that and then and then later putting a human on board is extremely difficult.

Like if you look at the history of development of aircraft platforms, you find that defense technology makes it into commercial technology, but there are basically zero cases of a defense product becoming a commercial product. But there but the reverse is not true.

There are many cases of commercial products becoming defense products. So the the Boeing 707 became the KC135. The 767 uh became the KC46. uh uh the the uh the 737 has turned into a whole bunch of command and control airplanes and anti-ubmarine airplanes.

Uh so uh uh the I and I think the reason is if when you're commercial you have to worry about safety and you have to worry about noise and and neither of those things is retrofittable. Mhm. They're actually foundational to product architecture.

And so technology can go in either direction, but products go in one direction because safety and noise are fundamental to product architecture. You mentioned AJ at Hermes. When are we going to see the foot race?

I want the two founders of the supersonic companies to race each other to see who's faster in the real world on the ground and then we'll race the planes in the sky. I mean, I think AJ AJ and I have been telling each other the other one's going to win the race. So, I don't know.

No, I I I think I think it'd be like the most at least for me, it would be like the most pathetic race ever. I'm like I I am like not a runner at all. Well, well, we'll do it as a pay-per-view. We'll raise some non-dilutive capital.

You guys can maybe split it based on Let's actually make it a little bit less about the running. Let's just do the Murf. We'll just do the Ander Murf together. Uh well, we're going to hold you to being the first people to podcast Supersonic.

And I would I would love to have you back on the show many times between now and then because this conversation has been extremely insightful and uh we are just grateful for the work that you and the team do. It's great. Thank you so much, Blake. That was so much fun. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers.

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Anyway, we got Tim Fist from IFP in the studio. Uh we remember he was here when we were under attack and all of Zoom uh that was devastating. That was devastating. Such an interesting conversation but we were technically Yeah. Yeah. It was awful. So he's at the Institute for Progress.

We'll bring him into the studio and talk uh to him. How you doing Tim? Welcome back. Good. Thanks for having me guys. We made it. We made it. Thank you so