Aircraft

Boom Supersonic teams with Rolls-Royce on world's fastest civil aircraft

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The Overture is Boom's flagship model, and is hoped to become the world's fastest civilian aircraft
Boom
The Overture is Boom's flagship model, and is hoped to become the world's fastest civilian aircraft
Boom
Boom Supersonic's X-B1 demonstrator under development
Boom

While work continues on its XB-1 prototype supersonic plane ahead of a planned unveiling later in the year, aviation startup Boom Supersonic is pressing ahead with the development of its flagship model, the Overture. These efforts have today received a significant shot in the arm, with the company announcing a new partnership with Rolls-Royce to collaborate on the propulsion systems for what may become the world’s fastest civil aircraft.

Boom emerged back in 2016 with grand plans for supersonic commercial travel offered at business class prices. The XB-1 demonstrator was announced in the same year, with the one-third scale prototype being designed and built to fly at cruising speeds of Mach 2.2 (1,451 mph or 2,335 km/h).

The Overture is the vehicle by which Boom hopes to translate these developments into a commercial service. The company has actually collaborated with Rolls-Royce at different points of its journey so far, but today has announced a new deal that formalizes these arrangements and will explore how the engine maker's expertise could be leveraged to pair an advanced propulsion system with the airframe of a supersonic passenger aircraft.

Boom Supersonic's X-B1 demonstrator under development
Boom

“We’ve had a series of valuable collaborations and co-locations with Rolls-Royce over the past years to lay the groundwork for this next phase of development,” says Blake Scholl, Boom founder and CEO. “We look forward to building on the progress and rapport that we’ve already built with our collaboration as we work to refine Overture’s design and bring sustainable supersonic transport to passenger travel.”

Boom says that sustainability will be a key consideration as it moves ahead with development of Overture, and the two teams will also investigate the possibility of adapting existing engine architecture for supersonic flight.

“We share a strong interest in supersonic flight and in sustainability strategies for aviation with Boom,” says Simon Carlisle, Director of Strategy, Rolls-Royce. “We’re now building on our valuable experience in this space as well as our previous work together to further match and refine our engine technology for Boom’s Overture.”

Boom has scheduled an October 7 unveiling of the fully assembled XB-1 demonstrator.

Source: Boom Supersonic

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12 comments
Thud
I wonder how they deal with the high angle of attack on landing?
MemoriaTechnica
Please tell me that demonstrator half scale. From the looks of it, there's only room in the cockpit for a single pilot, in a fighter jet stile position, which means ingress and egress would have to be via a raisable canopy. Same goes for the passengers too. While that may be fine for the pilot, it looks incredibly claustrophobic for the passengers. Not to mention, no inflight service or bathroom breaks.
windykites
Good name: Boom. I guess there is still the same problem: Boom.
Alastair
To MemoriaTechnica
If you read the text again you should see that this a one third scale model.
BlueOak
Yawn. Talk is cheap. Doesn’t appear any real new benchmarks have been met.
MikeDalton
I'm not an aerospace engineer, but something about the square engine boxes bothers me. Seems like a heavily rounded triangular shape would work better. You would get a somewhat flat surface to mate with the wing, and you could put a generous radius on the circumference of the air inlet. The intake turbulence from those corners must be incredible.
dugnology
There can be only one engine manufacturer for this small market. You have Boom, Aerion and maybe another. Only one will make it.
Cryptonoetic
Another toy for the T-Men.
Nelson Hyde Chick
Another toy for the wealthy as the rest of humanity is allowed to rot. And are we in such a hurry we need to use the much greater increased energy it takes to taken anything supersonic?
bhtooefr
@MemoriaTechnica: You can see here: https://newatlas.com/boom-xb-1-prototype/46452/ that the prototype is just a 2-seater, fighter-jet style.

Looks like they're going to try things out on the smaller craft, and then scale them up.