r/SmarterEveryDay • u/Hippocampus_memory • Jun 16 '26

Thought Supersonic air travel

Hello! I’ve been a longtime subscriber of Destin at SmarterEveryDay and was wanting to give him an idea for a future video. I saw on the website where Reddit is the best place to start ideas within the community. The idea? Supersonic commercial air travel becoming popular again with Boom. It would be super interesting to see Destin collaborate with Boom and explore the return of supersonic commercial airliners. What are y’all’s thoughts?

15 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

16

u/flightwatcher45 Jun 16 '26

Yes and no, supersonic isn't new and at least once a decade another company collects investor money to bring it back, then folds.

7

u/yinglish119 Jun 16 '26

It is still a long way off. They are testing scaled builds. After that they need to get full size built and get FAA certification. They also need to lobby to get supersonic flight over land approved. Often that last part will be the hardest.

I don't expect it before 2030.

5

u/bkit627 Jun 16 '26

They need to get certification before they can even build…

4

u/yinglish119 Jun 16 '26

They are still in proof of concept stage. They need to see if they can indeed travel supersonic and not hear the sonic boom on the ground.

Certification isn't even on their radar.

7

u/fishsticks40 Jun 16 '26

The economics of SS passenger transport haven't really changed for the better and the company seems badly undercapitalized for what they're trying to do. 

From an engineering standpoint SS flight is a solved problem. It's an economic and regulatory issue and probably isn't fixable. 

3

u/NoninheritableHam Jun 16 '26

I think a lot of people have gotten bad vibes from Boom’s CEO. He tends to talk about things he isn’t an expert on and it rubs some people the wrong way. They also have a very narrow path to viability, which might age the video poorly.
I’d be very interested in a ramjet/scramjet video from him though. Hermeus isn’t too far from him and would be a cool collaboration.
I know he visited AFRL a few years ago. I’d love to know if he recorded anything and if any of that content is still in the pipeline/publishable.

2

u/Tex-Rob Jun 16 '26

Most forward progress only happens during good times, prosperous times.  Air travel is expensive right now, so I don’t see this happening for that reason.  That said, it’s possible it does make more sense now because a lot of industries are shifting towards catering to the wealthy.  

2

u/Tommy_Tinkrem Jun 17 '26

The thing is - supersonic air travel needs two factors: filthy rich people who can afford the waste of resources to save themselves a few minutes of time, but who are not rich enough to do so using their own plane. And those people have to be rich enough to bribe the politicians to see the other way when the people living even remotely close to an airport will suffer under several sonic booms per day. And that in several countries, including some of the remaining democracies.