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Boom Technology

A Denver startup called Boom Technology plans to bring supersonic passenger travel back, and to bring it to the masses. Boom unveil its design for a 40-seat plane that can fly 1,451 mph, that’s over twice the speed of sound. At that speed, a New York-to-London flight would take about 3 hours and 24 minutes. Blake Scholl, Boom’s founder and chief executive officer, says round-trip tickets will cost $5,000. “The idea is for a plane that goes faster than any other passenger plane built before, but for the same price as business class,” he says.

 Boom plans on testing their first planes by the end of 2017, and the reason they can test them so fast is because while several other companies, including Boeing and Lockheed Martin, are developing new supersonic jets, Boom’s planes do not require any new technology that would need approval by regulators, Booms team of experienced aerospace engineers will design the planes in a way that makes them meet the goals the company sets out the meet.

Boom has a prominent list of aerospace employees, hailing from the likes of NASA, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, as well as being backed by some of Silicon Valley elites from Y- Combinator, Sam Altman, Seraph Group, 8VC, as well as finishing up deals for the option to buy their planes from Virgin Group (Richard Branson) in a deal valued at $2 billion dollars, and also from an European carrier that declined to be named in a deal valued at $3 billion. While this does not mean that Virgin nor the European carrier bought the plane, it means that they signed a letter of intent in which stating that they intend to buy the planes if everything comes together as planned.

It also seems that Virgin Galactic’s space division is assisting in building and testing the planes, as a Virgin Group spokeswoman confirmed to The Guardian:

“We can confirm that The Spaceship Company will provide engineering, design, and manufacturing services, flight tests and operations and that we have an option on the first 10 airframes. It is still early days and just the start of what you’ll hear about our shared ambitions and efforts”

While they are still in the building and test phase, as a startup it is refreshing that we might be soon getting a product that’s not an app the deletes your pictures after a few seconds, or another new social network, but one that will provide an actual change in our lifestyles and world.