HIBT Lab! Boom Supersonic: Blake Scholl

Hey, welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So imagine getting on a jet in New York and arriving in Paris just three hours later. Well, for a long time that was possible. From the mid-70s to the early 2000s, the Concor made the dream of supersonic commercial flight a reality. It would whisk passengers across oceans in half the time it takes today. The problem was it was really, really expensive. It takes a ton of fuel to fly that fast. And the planes had to be so skinny and aerodynamic that they couldn't carry as many passengers as a typical airliner. And so the Concor just didn't make economic sense. Now, it's been 20 years since the last commercial supersonic flight happened in 2003. But today's guest, Blake Shoal,

Hopes to change that. His company, Boom Supersonic, is designing a new generation of supersonic airplanes. for commercial flight. and they've announced partnerships with several major airlines. who hope to have those planes fly with passengers.

by the end of this decade. Growing up in Ohio, Blake was one of those kids who was obsessed with airplanes. He loved to draw pictures of them, he loved to watch them fly. and he would dream about building them. As a teenager, that fascination gave way to an interest in computers and other technologies. leading to an early career as a software engine.

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