Boom: A plane faster than Concorde with fares a quarter of the price? | CNN

Boom

If realized, the Boom concept plane could fly New York to London in 3.4 hours or Los Angeles to Sydney in six.

Boom

The Virgin Group has optioned 10 Boom planes, in a deal reported to be worth $2 billion.

NASA/ Lillian Gipson

The race to build the aircraft of the future is on. Designs like these NASA concept planes developed with Boeing are on the drawing board, so when will they become a reality?

Getty Images

Many of today's designs wouldn't look out of place in the 1960s. Though packed with vastly improved technology, the new Boeing 737 MAX is similar in appearance to the 737-700 of 50 years ago.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Concorde, to date still the world's only supersonic scheduled passenger aircraft, was retired in 2003. No viable replacement is currently scheduled for service.

Courtesy Aerion Supersonic

The Aerion Corporation's supersonic private jet is expected to enter service early in the next decade. It'll be able to carry up to 12 passengers at speeds of Mach 1.6.

NASA/LOCKHEED MARTIN

If realized, NASA's Low Boom Flight Demonstration Quiet Supersonic Transport (QueSST) X-plane design will be part of a new generation of more efficient, quieter supersonic airliners. These could revive commercial supersonic air travel as a viable proposition.

Courtesy Boeing

The SUGAR program -- Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research -- has come up with innovative aerodynamic and propulsion solutions. These include an aircraft with eye-catching truss-braced wings and a hybrid gas-electric propulsion system.

Courtesy Airbus

Airbus has created a depiction of what would be possible if all of the futuristic technologies envisaged by Airbus could be combined to create the ideal airliner.

Reaction Engines

Some researchers are working on aircraft concepts capable of Mach 5 to 8 -- five to eight times faster than sound. Realistically these revolutionary concept aircraft are several decades away.

Courtesy of the German Aerospace Center (DLR)

The German Aerospace Center's ambitious SpaceLiner concept would work by reaching speeds of up to Mach 25, enough to travel from London to Australia in under 90 minutes.

Ray Mattison/Courtesy Charles Bombardier

Other wilder creations have also been envisioned. These include the Skreemr -- a jet launched from a magnetic rail gun at speeds of up to Mach 4.

Abhishek Roy/Imaginactive

Another Charles Bombardier concept, the Antipode would use rocket boosters, a scramjet and advanced aerodynamics to enable it to fly between London and New York in 11 minutes.

Story highlights

Boom concept plane could fly from New York to London in 3.4 hours

A New York to London round trip would cost $5,000

Virgin Group has optioned 10 planes in deal worth $2 billion

CNN —

A Colorado startup wants to build supersonic passenger planes faster than Concorde but with fares a quarter of the price – and Virgin Galactic has just got on board.

The Boom airplane would travel at Mach 2.2 – more than twice the speed of sound and 2.6 times faster than any other airliner – and fly from New York to London in 3.4 hours.

That’s San Francisco to Tokyo in 4.7 hours or Los Angeles to Sydney in six.

That transatlantic trip cuts the standard seven-hour journey by more than half.

With a round-trip price tag of $5,000 it’s not exactly “affordable” travel, but for the world’s business elite, it’s a steal.

Virgin options 10 planes

It’s certainly piqued British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s interest: On Wednesday, his Virgin Group optioned 10 planes.

The deal, if it’s followed through, could be worth a reported $2 billion.

Boom has also optioned 15 additional planes to an unnamed European carrier, the firm told TechCrunch, racking up a potential income of $5 billion.

Despite the big figures, the reality of a supersonic passenger jet remains small.

Denver-based Boom is still working on a third-scale prototype that isn’t slated to fly until 2017.

CEO and founder Blake Scholl recently told Fortune he couldn’t say when full-size planes would be ready for commercial flights.

So right now it’s just one of many new supersonic and hypersonic plane concepts promising shorter and shorter flight times, with none yet to see a runway.

Boom

Come fly with me? Boom at London's Heathrow Airport.

How will they do it?

So how does Boom plan to do it?

And how will it avoid the pitfalls encountered by its glamorous, doomed predecessor Concorde?

Modern aerodynamics, carbon fiber composites, the latest engine technology and a smarter business strategy, it says.

To reduce weight, the plane will be made of a carbon-fiber composite instead of aluminum.

Seats will be similar to standard domestic first-class – so no fancy laydown beds or hefty fripperies.

There’ll be just 40 of those seats too, making it a lot easier to fill than the 100-seater Concorde – a strategy, says Boom, that cost Concorde dear.

They’ll be split into two single-seat rows, so everyone has an aisle seat AND a window seat – and no turf wars over armrest space.

Then there’s the view from the windows: Boom plans to cut flight-time by flying at 60,000 feet, meaning passengers will be able to see the curvature of the Earth.

Team has worked on 30 aircraft

Former Amazon exec Scholl, 35, has recruited ex-employees of NASA, Boeing and Lockheed, while U.S. astronaut Mark Kelly is an adviser.

A Virgin Group spokeswoman confirmed to the Guardian that Virgin Galactic’s space division, The Space Company, “will provide engineering, design and manufacturing services, flight tests and operations,”

“Concorde was just too expensive to fly, and to fill 100 seats at $20,000 each,” Scholl told the Guardian.

“You have to bring the ticket price down, and make the aeroplane the right size so you can fill the seats.”