Boom Supersonic Comes One Step Closer to Building World's Fastest Passenger Plane

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Boom Supersonic, the company that hopes to build the world's fastest passenger aircraft, has just secured $33 million in its Series A round — a hefty sum that will go toward building a 1/3-scale prototype of the supersonic jet that will eventually be sold to airlines.

The company hopes to dramatically cut down on travel times — it promises that the final product will be able to make the transatlantic flight between New York and London in only three hours and 15 minutes, which is less than half the time of a typical flight between the two cities.

The funding will support the build-out of the XB-1 Supersonic Demonstrator (known as the "Baby Boom"), which will be used to demonstrate that the jet is safe for flight. Once successful flights have been completed, the company will begin constructing full-size aircraft.

The Baby Boom is set to fly its first flight next year with passenger flights on full-size Boom aircraft scheduled to take take off in the 2020s. While this technology has been around since the 1960s (the Concorde was a supersonic jet that flew from the 1970s until 2003), the aircraft ultimately failed due to a number of reasons including the high price of a ticket, the cost of fueling the aircraft and even the sonic boom it created. Thanks to today's technology and further innovation from Boom, you could break the sound barrier for the cost of a typical business-class ticket.

H/T: Tech Crunch