Blake Scholl on Supersonic Flight and Fixing Broken Infrastructure - Live at the Progress Conference

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• Airport infrastructure could be radically improved by placing terminals underground and redesigning runway flow based on a crossbar switch model, but this requires privatizing infrastructure and inventing new revenue models beyond current regulatory limits.  Copied to clipboard!
• The regulatory environment, especially concerning safety, creates a one-way door where rules are rarely rolled back, leading to inefficient security theater (like airport screening) because bureaucrats are incentivized to avoid risk rather than optimize outcomes.  Copied to clipboard!
• Aerospace manufacturing is severely hampered by a fragmented, politically optimized supply chain where parts spend more time in transit than being processed, a problem Boom Supersonic is tackling by vertically integrating all manufacturing steps under one roof to drastically reduce iteration time.  Copied to clipboard!

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Radical Airport Redesign

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(00:01:04)

• Key Takeaway: Optimal airport design involves placing terminals underground, utilizing escalators for jetway access, and eliminating unnecessary surface infrastructure.
• Summary: Blake Scholl proposes putting airport terminals underground with airside operations above ground, connected by escalators from below. This design, modeled on a crossbar switch, aims to radically increase efficiency by deleting claptrap infrastructure like tugs. The main obstacle to building such designs is the lack of a viable business model due to socialized airports with limited revenue per passenger.

Security Theater Critique

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(00:03:35)

• Key Takeaway: Current airport security measures are largely ineffective theater, with reinforced cockpit doors and passenger willingness to fight back being the only meaningful safety improvements since 9/11.
• Summary: The process of moving through security, including PreCheck and Clear, is described as a farce that does not effectively stop threats, evidenced by a box cutter passing through multiple checkpoints. The fundamental problem is a regulatory structure where bureaucrats avoid risk-on actions, making security measures difficult to reverse even when they are known to be ineffective. True safety improvements are limited to reinforced cockpit doors and passenger awareness.

International Security Harmonization

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(00:05:50)

• Key Takeaway: International harmonization of security rules forces global adoption of the most obtuse security standards to facilitate seamless connecting passenger transfers.
• Summary: Security systems tend to copy the US model globally due to explicit international harmonization agreements. This harmonization exists primarily to allow connecting passengers to avoid re-clearing security at every stop. Consequently, the most obtuse security rules tend to spread worldwide.

Fixing Traffic Congestion

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(00:07:23)

• Key Takeaway: Traffic congestion persists because road access is effectively given away at zero variable cost, and implementing a universal toll system is the necessary solution.
• Summary: The average American spends over a working month per year sitting in traffic, which is accepted because roads are not priced. The concept of induced demand suggests building more roads is futile without a price system. Every road should be a toll road to solve traffic, and the logistical challenges of collecting tolls are minor compared to the benefits.

Improving Boarding and Baggage

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(00:10:28)

• Key Takeaway: Airplane boarding speed is bottlenecked by the need to fix unreliable checked baggage systems, which currently force passengers to carry on items unnecessarily.
• Summary: Airplane interiors need more doors, but the biggest win for faster boarding comes from fixing checked baggage reliability. If baggage check were fast and reliable, passengers would not carry on items, allowing for much faster deplaning and boarding. The ideal customer experience involves bags teleporting from the origin car trunk to the destination car trunk.

Aviation Design Philosophy

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(00:11:54)

• Key Takeaway: Optimal aircraft interior design requires engineers and designers to collaborate from the start, leading to novel solutions like eliminating head-bump grime spots.
• Summary: The best results in aircraft design come from integrating interior and airplane design, requiring engineers to think like designers and vice versa. A key observation is the dark spot above window seats caused by head grime, which is never cleaned, illustrating a failure of design that integrated thinking could solve. Boom is developing a striking interior only possible through this integrated design process.

Amazon vs. Groupon Culture

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(00:14:07)

• Key Takeaway: Amazon excels at making long-term decisions while maintaining extreme short-term operational vigilance, contrasting sharply with Groupon’s short-term focus on quarterly metrics.
• Summary: Amazon consistently made decisions based on long-term discounted cash flow analysis, even if it negatively impacted short-term quarterly profits, using customer centricity as a cultural trump card in debates. Groupon, conversely, prioritized immediate quarterly results, leading to unsustainable practices like over-mailing customers to fix soft quarters.

Concorde and Apollo as Tech Demos

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(00:18:20)

• Key Takeaway: Concorde and Apollo were impressive government-specced tech demos, not commercially viable products, which ultimately convinced the world that supersonic flight was impractical.
• Summary: Concorde flew half empty even on its most popular route because its $20,000 inflation-adjusted fare targeted a non-existent premium market, meaning it never made economic sense. Supersonic progress was stalled for half a century because the initial approach was government-led rather than commercially led. A commercially led private jet MVP would have initiated a better innovation S-curve.

Aerospace Manufacturing Dysfunction

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(00:28:52)

• Key Takeaway: US aerospace manufacturing supply chains are optimized for political distribution across congressional districts, resulting in massive delays where parts spend more time on trucks than on machines.
• Summary: A quote for 3D-printed turbine blades showed a six-month lead time and million-dollar cost due to parts moving between multiple factories across states. The inefficiency stems from a ‘congressionally optimized supply chain’ designed to maximize votes by placing process steps in various districts. Boom is fixing this by building a factory where raw materials enter one side and jet engines exit the other, reducing iteration time from months to 24 hours.

Mastering Technical Domains

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(00:32:58)

• Key Takeaway: Switching domains quickly offers a massive advantage by forcing a focus on first principles, and learning to identify personal confusion is a critical skill for rapid mastery.
• Summary: Becoming a deep expert in one domain often leads to being steeped in the status quo, making domain switching beneficial for innovation. Scholl maintained a ‘confusion list’ to develop an internal sense of when he was clear versus confused, allowing him to study only the necessary concepts until understood.

LLMs Revolutionizing Paperwork

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(00:34:04)

• Key Takeaway: LLMs are a potent tool for drastically reducing the cost and time associated with generating complex regulatory paperwork, such as aircraft test plans.
• Summary: Documents like 100-page lightning strike test plans, which previously required months of work by specialized engineers, can now be generated in minutes using an LLM with regulatory guidance via RAG. This makes change inexpensive, shifting teams from ’turn the crank’ talent to small teams of creative talent, accelerating iteration.

Supersonic Progress Update (Oct 2025)

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(00:35:51)

• Key Takeaway: The regulatory environment for supersonic flight has been completely cleared, with the ban on overland supersonic flight repealed by executive order in June 2025.
• Summary: The last six to nine months have seen massive progress, including Boom breaking the sound barrier and announcing Boomless Cruise in February. This led to an invitation to the West Wing, and the model was displayed in the Oval Office. The ban on supersonic flight over land was repealed via executive order 115 days later, removing all regulatory barriers.