XB-1 Test Flight: Boom Supersonic Jet Breaks Sound Barrier

Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg, the Chief Test Pilot for Boom Supersonic, successfully piloted the XB-1 jet to break the sound barrier for the first time on Jan. 28. The jet is a one-third-scale trijet supersonic demonstrator for Boom’s future airliner Overture, designed to maintain Mach 2.2, with over 1,000 nautical miles of range, and is powered by three General Electric CJ610 engines.

The XB-1 jet took off from the storied Mojave Air & Space Port in California under mostly clear skies Tuesday. Some 11.5 minutes into the flight — the 12th overall for the XB-1 — at an altitude of around 10,668 meters, the test plane achieved speeds of Mach 1.1 during the flight, marking the first time a civil aircraft has gone supersonic over the continental United States.

The jet went supersonic two additional times during the flight, at about 17 and 22 minutes after takeoff, to allow pilots to test the jet's handling performance during supersonic flight. The size of the experimental airspace for today's flight limited how long the jet was able to fly above Mach 1.

"This is such a huge step, building the first civil supersonic jet, you know, right here in America," said Boom advisor and former Chief Engineer Greg Krauland during the company's livestream on X. "This jet really does have much of the enabling technologies that are going to enable us to go ahead and to build a commercial supersonic airliner that is available to the masses."

The XB-1 landed roughly 30 minutes after liftoff on its bespoke landing gear, designed specifically for the aircraft.

"I'm just to-the-moon excited about how well that went," Krauland said.

The XB-1 is a technology demonstrator, meaning Boom Supersonic is testing it in order to validate the design and subsystems of the jet to pave the way for the company's Overture passenger aircraft.

Tuesday's milestone marks a significant step towards the return of supersonic commercial travel, which has not been seen since the retirement of the Concorde over two decades ago.

Overture is a planned 64-to-80 seat supersonic aircraft that Boom Supersonic hopes can become the first passenger jet to fly faster than the speed of sound since the British-French Concorde, which made its last flight in 2003.

Colorado-based Boom Supersonic already has over 100 orders for Overture from major airliners worldwide. The company hopes to help return supersonic airliners to service, potentially cutting flight times in half.

Tuesday's flight was filmed and monitored by two different chase planes, a Dassault Mirage F1 fighter jet, and a Northrop T-38 Talon, the same aircraft NASA uses to train its astronauts.

The test flight was livestreamed using broadband internet beamed to Earth from SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation. A Starlink Mini unit was installed in the T-38 chase plane, enabling unprecedented live video of the aviation milestone.

"We're getting broadband speeds, you know, at point eight Mach [at] 31,000 feet ... The capability that is brought to the game of flight test has been pretty incredible, actually — very surprised by the capability," Boom Supersonic Chief Flight Test Engineer Nick Sheryka said during the company's livestream.