America's aerospace rebirth

Summary

In this episode, Blake Scholl lays out Boom Supersonic’s strategy for rebuilding aerospace around speed, software, and vertical integration. He describes XB-1 as a deliberately risk-managed learning vehicle that helped the team validate supersonic flight and boomless cruise, while also revealing how fragmented aerospace manufacturing can be: multi-state supply chains, months-long lead times, and massive friction for even simple parts. Scholl says Boom responded by bringing hard-to-source components in-house, using 3D printing, CNC, custom CAD, and real-time simulation tools to compress iteration cycles from months to days. He argues AI is not just helping code faster but is shrinking hardware teams by turning spreadsheet work into software and automating regulatory paperwork. The conversation also covers Boom’s ground-first power strategy, where the engine becomes a stationary gas-turbine product to fund the airplane, and broader themes like reindustrialization, certification reform, and why the biggest bottleneck is America’s ability to build.

Notes

• Boom’s core thesis is not to resurrect old supersonic aviation, but to build the next generation in the U.S.
• Scholl links product architecture to engine ownership: building the engine changed the airplane’s seat layout.
• XB-1 was a learning platform, not a replica of Overture.
• The XB-1 program ran 13 flights with roughly 50 full-time people and about $1.4 million per month to keep alive.
• Scholl says every experimental flight carries safety risk, so the team only did what was necessary.
• Traditional aerospace suppliers quoted nine months for a 3D-printed turbine blade.
• The aerospace supply chain is fragmented across multiple factories and states, with the part often spending more time on a truck than on a machine.
• The low-pressure turbine shaft was quoted at 88 weeks for inertial welding in the traditional supply chain.
• Boom is bringing engine work in-house to avoid waiting months for external suppliers.
• Boom manufactures compressor stator vanes, variable guide vanes, and high-pressure turbine blades itself.
• A compressor stator vane needs about thousandth-inch accuracy on the leading profile.
• The stage-two variable guide vanes sit between compressor stages and pivot to redirect airflow.
• The high-pressure turbine blade operates right after the combustor and must survive extreme heat.
• The turbine blade uses hollow internal cooling and 248 individually cut holes to avoid melting.
• Boom can print one engine’s worth of those blades in about three days.
• Boom uses digital tools to let a small number of engineers iterate blades quickly.
• If parts come from the old supply chain, engineers have to get it right on the first try or lose nine months.
• Scholl says 3D-printed blades are not enough for production life and strength.
• He says single-crystal turbine capability is held by only about three companies in the world.
• Scholl says culture-building is harder than engineering or financing.
• He says the last entrepreneurial commercial aircraft startup before Boom was Douglas Aircraft in 1921.
• Scholl says senior hires from legacy aerospace largely failed, including some cases of cooked engineering data.
• Boom’s “talent distillery” pairs young hires with experienced advisors.
• If someone has done it before, Scholl says you must at least call them.
• Boomless Cruise works via Mach cutoff, where altitude and speed make the boom refract upward and miss the ground.
• The key altitude threshold for boomless cruise is above 30,000 feet.
• The first supersonic flight produced no audible ground boom, validating Boomless Cruise.
• The team reran the Boomless Cruise math in about 90 minutes.
• Boom built Blade Runner in about three weeks using Claude code.
• Blade Runner includes custom CAD, real-time structural simulation, and real-time aerodynamics simulation on GPUs.
• AI and software are shrinking hardware team sizes by converting spreadsheet workflows into software.
• Spreadsheets lack testing and CI, so Boom treats them as software to automate them.
• A company-wide AI week surfaced useful tools even from nontechnical employees.
• The shipping-and-receiving employee built an internal tool with Claude.
• MakeBoom turns aircraft design into configuration-file-driven software.
• MakeBoom can evaluate an airplane in moments and run higher-fidelity simulations overnight.
• Boom used MakeBoom to test a cabin redesign that initially cut range from 4,000 miles to 3,000 miles.
• Boom recovered most of the lost range by searching a dozen engine configurations.
• AI is being used to automate FAA regulatory paperwork, including lightning-strike test plans.
• A RAG over regulatory documents can generate a roughly 90% correct lightning-strike test plan.
• Updating the airplane design could automatically update the certification prompt and regenerate the plan.
• Scholl says certification should be iterative and should reduce proof costs, not lower the safety bar.
• Boom says its goal is to increase, not lower, the safety bar.
• Boom claims zero incidents, zero mishaps, no major injuries, and no OSHA reportables on the program.
• Scholl says ground infrastructure permitting can be slower and less safe than airworthiness work.
• He wants building rules to work like roads: license first, then enforced rules.
• Boom’s Superpower product extension is meant to fund the airplane and address AI data-center power demand.
• Scholl says the supersonic engine resembles a power turbine more than a subsonic engine.
• The supersonic engine runs at full power for the whole supersonic flight segment.
• Most jet-engine makers already have a ground power business, according to Scholl.
• Boom says it got a billion-dollar LOI for a launch customer about 90 days after the initial power-turbine text exchanges.
• The ground-first strategy lets Boom test the engine where failures are less dangerous.
• About 90% of Boom’s team is focused on the engine.
• Boom is speedrunning power-production deployment.
• Scholl says America should invent the next generation of manufacturing, not recreate old supply chains.
• He says the traditional single-crystal investment-cast blade takes 12 months plus, with tooling as the longest step.
• Scholl says the American tool-and-die industry largely died and moved to Asia.
• Boom’s first instinct was to delete tooling and use additive methods.
• Apollo and Concorde are framed as impressive demos, not good products.
• Scholl says Apollo was centrally planned, non-commercial, and a bad idea.
• Concorde had about 100 seats, roughly $20,000 inflation-adjusted fares, and often half-empty New York–London flights.
• Boom says it has removed about three quarters of the cost from supersonic flight.
• The starting point for Overture is business-class economics.
• Scholl says utilization can create a “speed dividend” where faster flights become cheapest.
• He thinks supersonic may converge toward economy or economy-plus pricing.
• Scholl says the goal is a future so normal that kids won’t need flight times explained to them.
• It took 115 days from the boomless-cruise announcement to an executive order legalizing supersonic flight.
• The House later passed codifying legislation unanimously.
• Scholl uses values-oriented messaging instead of partisan tribalism.
• Scholl says the supersonic ban was originally an environmental victory on the left.
• Scholl says airlines want supersonic if it can make money.
• He says Boom now has enough cash to reach engine delivery.
• Scholl worries most about unknown mistakes and wants a culture where problems are surfaced early.
• He says grit can be engineered by choosing work you never stop believing in.
• Boom once got down to seven days of cash.
• The biggest XB-1 mistake was making the first vehicle too hard and planning to build only one.
• Scholl says future hardware startups should build a series of simpler, disposable units.
• He says hardware startups must get to integrated hardware quickly and expect to throw some units away.
• Scholl argues hardware startups are not necessarily more capital-intensive than software startups.
• Boom used deposits and preorders as its hardware version of product-market fit.
• The jet age created unexpected downstream businesses, including Nike’s origins.
• Airplanes are platform innovations because they increase global mobility and create downstream benefits.
• Scholl imagines a future where anywhere in the world is four hours away for $100.
• Scholl still thinks the industry is skeptical, but he believes the future flight model will happen.
• Scholl predicts AI will drive more entrepreneurship, not a job apocalypse.
• He thinks the future is probably better than the present.
• Scholl identifies the bystander effect in innovation as a reason important problems remain unsolved.
• He says people wrongly assume a team is already working on every good idea.
• Scholl says traffic has no teams working on the root cause, yet could be a huge business.
• He argues cultural change and entrepreneurship can unlock currently unrecognized problems.