Bringing Supersonic Flight To The People

0:00 So today on the social radars, we're back with Blake Schol of Boom. I am so excited to be talking to you today because last season we talked to you about all of your exciting news in the supersonic airliner world. but we left off on a bit of a cliffhanger. We left off where a Rolls-Royce had shrived you >> and shift you. >> You remember that analogy? That was in in Blake's first podcast episode. So I want to I want to hear more about what happened there.

0:34 >> Yeah. So, so, one of the most disastrous decisions I ever made was to try and outsource, development of a, at least semi-custom supersonic engine to a big established company. And, you know, with the, looking at it now with clear eyes, like it's just so colossally stupid. Like, can you imagine SpaceX succeeding had Elon given the engine to some legacy rocket company and decided to build only the rocket? But so so this I think this was never going to work really.

1:04 >> Why did you do it? >> So my my original thought when the company was founded I was planning not to do it. and we actually our first first employee was an engine designer and like week two into his joining. the the company's tiny at this point. We're like four or five people. And he's like, "Oh, the ROS's engines are more easily adaptable than than anybody else's engines for supersonic." And this could save us an entire engine development if we could just work with them. And then we sort of got drunk on that. And then, you know, everybody in the industry would ask like, "Who's doing your engine?" And it was like, "You're supposed to say one of the big three."

1:39 And so, I think we sort of fell into that trap. and and things were going well enough with Rolls-Royce that it seemed like it it was a strategy that could work. >> And had this actually worked, I would have all these stories I could tell about the like clever things we did to like get rolls to like work with us. And the the in some sense the most insane thing is it almost did work. It got all the way to a board meeting at Rolls >> in early 2022. and and like basically the execs we had convinced the ROS execs we had convinced to work with us were taking it to the board for approval to actually negotiate a contract and then so I'm waiting for the phone call after the board meeting and I get the phone call and it's like kind of wishy-washy like we're not sure it's going to work like you know I and what it turned out what had actually happened at the board meeting was the CEO got fired >> oh my >> right the roles board fires the CEO but leaves him in seat until they hire a replacement in an undefined time So I I I don't >> So he didn't want to make any decisions.

2:37 >> So he couldn't make any decisions and everybody else wants to be the next CEO. >> Yeah. >> And so they're like, you know, trying to figure out like, you know, what they would do politically to ingratiate themselves with the board and and like boom became this thing that was out >> in that context, right? And so so like I was going through all the stages of grief, you know, denial, bargaining, duh, trying to figure out what kind of alternative we might have. and it gets to the point like middle, this is 2022.

3:06 >> And so, so the rolls relationship is kind of falling apart behind the scenes and I have a handshake deal with the president of North America for rolls that we will keep the relationship alive through the end of the year so that so that we might find what we're going to do instead for engines and you know and and like we we announce a transition you know and maybe rolls we license something from them. It's you know everybody looks good.

3:29 >> Gave you a cover story basically. >> Yeah. Right. And they was like, "Okay, we'll do that." And so we went to July. July is the Farmborough Air Show. We have an incredible air show. like we signed up a whole bunch of other partners, by the way, also bad ideas. We we undid all those partnerships later, but it looked so good to the traditional industry. Y >> and so that was July. Then August, American Airlines followed United by placing a pre-order.

3:51 >> And it was like, >> wow. >> Well, it's like one airline might be crazy, but two airlines, this must be real. And and in the back of my mind, you know, I was still sort of hoping that this would like convince Rolls and but then the exact opposite thing happened. >> Well, I was just going to say really quick, sorry to interrupt you, but you didn't have to disclose to American that the Rolls-Royce deal wasn't real because they've given you permission to use a cover story and you were allowed to hang your hat on that.

4:16 >> I don't know how explicit all of that was. >> Okay. So, it's enough of a wishy-washy order that you didn't have to address that. >> Yeah, I think so. and like we were you know you know we we told them that we've been working with Rolls on an engine and you know but but we didn't represent it as a more of a done deal than it actually was. >> Okay. >> So so anyhow so the the American announcement comes out and my expectation is that this will actually help with the engine situation in terms of getting a third party to do it but had the exact opposite effect and rolls freaked out and they ran to the press without warning me and broke up with us publicly. Oh, why?

4:55 >> so it took me a while to get my head around it. I think it was Boom was this crazy little random American company that was obviously no one in the industry really believed was going to succeed. And so Rolls could use us for like R&D contracts that would like keep their engineers busy and we'd pay for it. We would like quietly go off into the night and fail >> and and but wait a minute, there are two airlines backing Boom now. This might actually work. But now they knew it's not going to be a Rolls engine. M why couldn't it be a rules engine like couldn't they reverse their own decision >> so I think there were multiple layers to that decision and part of it was the engine that they had been proposing to us was based on their next generation engine platform >> which for other reasons they had stopped developing but hadn't told us >> okay >> so so effectively like it assumed that they would have some technology that they actually didn't have so I I think that I think part of what had happened was they had realized that they had promised is something that couldn't actually deliver. Now it's not going to be a Rolls engine. but maybe Boom will have just enough momentum that it will be somebody else's engine. Now this is embarrassing to rolls. So if you are an executive who wants to be the next CEO of Rolls-Royce and then you fumble the boom thing and the boom thing actually looks good now you don't get to be the next CEO.

6:12 >> Okay. >> So I think we got caught up in all this politics. So they just run to the press and break up with us without any warning. >> Okay. And instantly it instantly boom became like unfundable. Like no partner no partner would like talk to us. No airline would talk to us. Like I had the most weird press experiences. I would go give like a talk at a conference >> and I'd like be getting off stage. It's like the paparazzi would show up and they'd like jam a microphone in my face.

6:36 They'd be like, "So what are you doing with the engines? I called every engine company and everyone says they're not working with you." >> Oh. >> Oh my gosh. >> Right. Like this would, you know, this was it was it was intense. And so that was happening like August, September, you know, but this really had been unfolding behind the scenes since like February. >> I can't believe the press like glombmed on to it that much. >> This was like high drama in aerospace trade press.

7:00 >> Okay. >> They loved it. Press loves to tear. >> By the way, Rolls's engine was not supersonic. Correct. >> What they were going to do is take one of their subsonic engines and like tweak it a little bit so that it so that it could be. And it it didn't it didn't do everything we wanted it to do. For example, it was not capable of boomless cruise. So there were a lot of compromises had we gone with this this engine.

7:23 >> Okay. >> And I think in reality the most likely outcome is that they never actually would have delivered it. >> Yeah. >> Even even if they'd tried to. >> So now everyone thinks you're a huge loser, >> right? >> And no one wants to talk to you. What happened? As these things were sort of unwinding, we were like kind of going down all paths in parallel to try and solve the problem. And one path was let's just figure out how to do this ourselves. You which is like secretly the path that like appealed to me. Mhm.

7:52 >> And we found some we found like a contract engineering team that was basically Pratt's Pratt and Whitney's former supersonic team that had basically so Pratt and Whitney had this West Palm Beach, Florida office and the Bean Counters took over at Pratt and they're like we have a headquarters in Hartford and we have a West Palm Beach office. This is two offices. We could save money if we only had one office. So let's close the Florida office and tell everybody to move to Hartford. But it turns out nobody who lives in West Palm Beach wants to live in Hartford. So So all the all the engineers quit.

8:27 >> Okay. >> And they like ended up forming this consulting company that would like do engine related engine or turbine related projects for on on contract. And so they they' done some work for Seammens on power turbines. They' done some random other consulting things. And we're like, "Okay, well, I I want to own and control all of this ultimately, but maybe this maybe teaming up there is a good way to like basically get an entire engine team with like one contract." And so we were exploring that along with other things. and it wasn't done yet. And I went to a I went to a talk that Brian Chesy gave >> where >> I think this was at Reed Hoffman's like masters of scale conference.

9:05 >> He was telling the story he tells about having led Airbnb through COVID, but with like a slightly different twist. The twist in this talk was when you're managing through a crisis, what you think you have to do is compromise in order to survive. He's like, you actually have to do the exact opposite. You have to look within yourself and say, what were we always supposed to be and become more of that? And I remember hearing that talk and thinking it was as if Chesky had stood on stage and said, "Boom should just build a jet engine themselves." Like that's what I heard.

9:31 >> Okay. >> and it it kind of helped give me a little bit of the confidence to go back to my, you know, my own team and be like, "Guys, we're just going to do this." >> Yeah. And so we we cobbled it together and we we told the press we will announce an engine strategy by the end of the year. This is how we were like dealing with the firestorm. >> Okay. Just and so we we we ended up landing the partnership with the guys in Florida. And we remarkably we got GE to come on in a very small way >> with some additive manufacturing that that ended up never going anywhere. And then we got a maintenance shop to sign on to be a maintenance partner. really try to cobble together like a few of these things to have some semblance of credibility that maybe we could pull this off, >> okay, >> without without one of the big three engine companies. And we had one of the big three on there, but they were going to like license some 3D printers and stuff like that. So, but it turns out to be the best thing we ever did.

10:22 >> Why? >> so if one hand, I think I think had we gone to a big three engine company, they actually just never would have delivered even if they'd signed a contract. like these these like they basically don't build engines anymore. They don't build new engines. All they do is tweak stuff. They're incredibly slow. They're incredibly expensive. They have this multi-layered supply chain. Like one of the things that gave me the confidence to do this is most of the people at Rolls-Royce that were working on our engine didn't actually work at Rolls-Royce. They were like contractor SAB because I'm like, well, why don't I just go get those people? Like, why do I need the middleman here? Right.

10:55 >> Right. And but yeah so so one the first major thing that really happened was was boomless supersonic flight. And so the I think we talked about this in the last episode. One of the discoveries along the way was if you fly at a sufficiently high altitude that the boom will come off the airplane make a big U-turn in the sky and never touch the ground. >> but to do this you have to fly in what's called transonic like relatively close to the speed of sound. in order for the the geometry to to work out and and so that is a so the airplane and the engine have to have what's called good transic performance and we had ran we had run the math on it with the rolls engine and it it just didn't work >> like the physics were there but the engineering was not and we're like yeah we'd be lucky to get rolls to make us any engine let alone the one we want.

11:44 >> Yeah. So we just had shelved the whole boomless thing and but as we start you know when we had our own engine now we could optimize it and and so that the team is just like working to make the airplane engine combination better and I was going to these like engineering meetings you know we'd status update it's like well what's the transonic acceleration altitude and and it would just keep kind of going up right and and so in the leadup to actually breaking the sound barrier on XP1 our test airplane. I was like, "Okay, guys, we got to get a sonic boom forecast." And they're like, "No, man.

12:19 The test airplane, this great transic, it's going to be boomless." And and eventually I was like, "We have to rerun the math on the big the production airplane with our own engine." And so we came in on a Saturday, we reran the simulations in about 90 minutes. And the answer was, actually, we had solved Sonic Boom like six months earlier without realizing it by just optimizing the engine. >> Wow. >> And what's the what's the timeline for that? like when did that that meeting?

12:46 >> Yeah. Oh, this this takes place this takes place over like a a period of years. So like the Rolls-Royce breakup is 2022, >> right? >> we started working on our own engine kind of middle of 22. >> Like there was the first Back of the olive sketch in like June of 22 or so and we we unveiled it publicly the end of 22. XP1 didn't fly supersonic until early 2025. That's how long that that took. And it was part of it like you know we didn't have the financial resources to like walk and chew gum at the same time. So we're constantly choosing like do we walk or do we chew gum? But yes, so so so it turned out there would be no boomless passenger supersonic flight had we not done our own engine.

13:22 >> That is so amazing. >> It is amazing. >> But in the first episode that we did with you, it said it actually solved one of the biggest problems we had, but I can't tell you what that was. >> Right. So let's let's paint the problem. >> Yes. The problem is how in the world do you finance a supersonic airliner development as a startup with no revenue product >> and and so it's I spent basically the last dozen years of my life trying to solve that problem with with great difficulty and like no durable success.

13:54 So I mentioned earlier that the the engineers that we had working on the engine had done some power turbine work. And so I remember going to a a technical review in 2022 >> and we were going over like the sketch of the engine design. They're like, "By the way, a supersonic engine looks much more like a power turbine than any other jet engine because it's about continuous full power operation in like demanding high temperature environments. And so if you ever wanted to have a power turbine, you would have the best power turbine in the world." And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, next slide. That's not relevant."

14:28 but fast forward to March of 25. So, so XP XP1 has just broken the sound barrier. I'm like >> living half the time in DC to try to get supersonic flight legalized. >> Yep. >> And I'm also scrolling Twitter. >> I won't say where. And and so like BAM, I'm like seeing all these things about there being a massive energy shortage for AI. >> Yep. >> That you can't get power off the grid. that that the hyperscalers are resorting to building their own power plants and that now the the limiting reagents has actually become turbines for power generation and there's a multi-year backlog of turbines and so I thought huh I've been looking for 10 years for what a first revenue product could be that would not be a distraction but would be on path to the mission and like could this be it or you know so so I I sent I sent two texts one was to Sam Alman who had been an early like day one boom investor. Y >> and and one to my my head of engineering and the Sam text like hey is like Twitter right if I had a 40 megawatt net gas turbine for you like would you want it and Sam was like please as many as you could make as fast as you can make them >> affected here's the person on my team.

15:47 and I was like, "Huh?" And then that my chief engineer responds and he's like, "We actually had a plan for this, but we didn't think there was a market." >> Oh my gosh. >> And I'm like, "Are you kidding? I just felt >> collide, >> right? I just fell out of the lucky tree and hit like every branch." >> so, so we we looked a little bit more carefully for like two more months >> to just like really convince ourselves that the market thing was real and that what we thought was a technical plan was really going to work. And it all seemed very real. So we went all in.

16:20 >> Nice. >> And now you have this huge revenue stream. >> Yeah. Or at least we will next year. So So we So essentially the same engine if you take the fan off the front that's there to like blow air back to push the airplane forward like the the fan's there for thrust. If you take that fan off and instead you put a little bit extra turbine connected into electric generator, the engine that would make 40,000 lb of thrust on a supersonic jet makes 42 megaww which turns out again by luck is like the perfect size for kind of a a modular turbine that you can like put in a data center like bricks.

16:55 It's like oh you want you want like a gigawatt that's 24 units and you just gang them together >> because you don't want it too big or too small. >> That's right. Yeah. If it's if it's too small, it's like you can't manage that many engines. It's like it just it's too complicated and that you lose efficiency in the small end. If it's too big, it's very expensive to get enough redundancy. But if a medium-sized turbine, you can basically deploy them in N plus1 arrays.

17:19 It's got like everything you think about in in the computing world where you have blade servers like maps over this is like blade servers of energy. And and so it turned out we'd we were basically three years into the product development of exactly the right product for AI. >> It's amazing. >> as if we had a time machine. >> Did you basically have to you already probably knew what your whole production line was going to be because you were actually going to turn these engines into your your flying airplanes, but like did you have to call and be like, "Yeah, we're going to massively move up this timeline."

17:50 >> We did. I mean, we had we had not sold any of the manufacturing back then. it was is it was still we were still living in the supersonic world where the business was very hard to fund and we were like barely keeping the engine development alive like like almost like paycheck to paycheck kind of thing and but like okay this was going to be big and and yeah we had to go accelerate as much as we could and we were able to go raise a bunch of money on this strategy so that finally for once we weren't capitalally limited.

18:17 >> Yeah. >> Can you or will you talk a little bit about this paycheck to paycheck business? Why? Tell us about how hard the fundraising was. >> The lore on boom pre power business was it was always I want to be a passenger but I will never be an investor >> because it's too risky. Yeah, it's I mean look, so in a certain so there's now a whole wave of hard tech, right? And people have figured out that a hard- techch business is not necessarily more capital intensive, right? Like if you look at how much money was consumed by like, you know, Androll or SpaceX and you compare it to like Uber or Airbnb like Uber and Airbnb consumed way more venture capital than the hard tech companies did.

18:59 >> But why? the so I think there is one important difference which is the the way so I mean think think about how batch works and YC pre hard tech like the it's very easy to come up with like software ideas it's relatively easy to build the software it's very hard to tell whether you've got product market fit right so so the way you tell whether a software company has product market fit is to launch and grow and prove you have built something useful >> right but you can't prove that you've built a useful supersonic You can't you can't test whether anybody wants to fly supersonic by building a supersonic jet and putting it out there, >> right?

19:35 >> Like like I guess Concord did that, but they built the wrong supersonic jet, so it didn't work. So So you have to have a different way of proving product market fit in a hard- techch company and and the dollars invested before first revenue is actually higher. >> So it's it's not cap more capital intensive period, but it's more capital intensive to the proof point. So the old strategy of just like you prove you got product market fit by shipping doesn't work. You need a different strategy to prove you got product market fit. So that's that's a real difference. But the market hadn't sorted it out and SAS companies were still working. So it was it was just very very hard. People people were scared investors pattern match right. So the the last entrepreneur founded commercial aircraft company before boom.

20:17 >> Do you know when it was >> you sold you told us it was in like the 50s or something. >> The 20s. >> The 20s. It was in 1921. Douglas Aircraft was the last entrepreneur founded commercial aircraft company before boom. >> So, so it's like nobody's made a compund years ago, >> right? 100 years ago maybe somebody made money and then some airplane company that everyone's forgotten. >> So, so it doesn't pattern match for VC.

20:41 So, it was very it was very difficult to keep the thing alive. And ironically, that like living paycheck to paycheck made the company less capital efficient. We It was very difficult to get the team to make any long-term decisions. >> Yeah. >> When when they they kind of knew we were on, you know, like, "Oh, we should probably do a riff. There's no point doing a riff. The runway's really short." >> Yeah. Oh gosh, it must have been so stressful.

21:03 >> It It sucked. It was not It was not that I I tell the team that there are some things in life that are more fun to tell stories about later than they are to live through. >> And this is this is one of those. It's more I I enjoy telling the story now. It was not fun. So, when did you raise with the turbine? >> It was end of end of last year. End of 25.

21:22 >> End of 25. >> And everyone was super psyched. >> Yeah, everyone was super psyched. People People thought we might not do the supersonic jet, but no, we're still going to do the supersonic jet. >> Good. >> >> it's on the path. >> It's absolutely on the path. I mean, I tell the one of the talent hacks here is we get to hire a supersonic airplane engineering team with to to work on a power turbine. And you would never be able to pull that off talent-wise any other way. Like we have an incredible talent magnet because of the sexiness of the mission. and you could never get that in in a power business.

21:55 >> No one wants to say I'm working on a turbine but I'm working on a jet. >> I'm working on a supersonic engine for an airplane that you are going to get to fly on. Like like that's that is mag that is that is magnetic. You know, Sevy and I might not appreciate like turbines as much as other people, but turbines are pretty exciting, right? >> Well, when you when you contextualize it right now where we are and how much power we need for compute, like it it makes it's probably more sexy now than it would have been two decades ago.

22:26 >> Leave the sexiness aside for a sec. I think it's important. So if you look at so there's a trend line that you can look at basically from the industrial revolution forward which is amount of energy production per capita and this was a this was an exponentially increasing curve until 1971 and then it turned into a a slow linear curve which eventually flatlined and it stopped in the US. We are not increasing energy production per human.

23:01 We haven't for decades. >> Is it because of nuclear? >> Well, it certainly coincides with nuclear getting frozen, right? But we didn't we we stopped building new power plants kind of in general or at least it kept up with population growth, but like no more than that. And it's it's why exactly that happened I think is a little bit I don't know if I know all the answers. It coincides with the the success of the environmental movement, early environmental movement. coincides with a lot of regulation >> going into place. you I think I think you can make a good So one of my regulatory theories is that most regulations are are have have two pieces. They have a moral cover story like we must ban supersonic flight because sonic boom is really bad >> or nuclear power is scary and it's going to like you know irradiate all of us, right? You've got the some moral cover story, but the but if you follow the money, you find there's some lazy incumbent that doesn't want to work hard. Like it would not surprise me if the truth were that the the the coal industry was behind the nuclear opposition. I don't know that. But but I I have on pretty good authority that Boeing was behind the supersonic opposition.

24:09 >> Yeah. Interesting. and I think you see that in a lot of places and it you know echoes into conversations around AI today in some corners regardless of what happened to you know so there's some big laws that were passed there was something called NEPA the national environmental policy act that made it very very difficult to build hard infrastructure in the US and and so that and so the grid just like flatlines and then the story is we should conserve energy instead of having energy abundance right and now now all of a sudden super intelligence needs a lot of energy and and we're trying to spin back up the energy production machine that's been sitting there doing nothing for decades >> for 55 years >> for 55 years and it's all like the big turbine companies are by the way the same as the big jet engine companies and they're like not really doing anything >> and yet the the market gets constrained the turbine prices go up the stock prices go up all the executives have stock options in the money >> and they're like why should I why should I bother to scale like everything seems fine and and they they tell themselves that you couldn't possibly have a turbine new entrant.

25:11 >> Did you get any kind of bad press or the the existing turbine companies? Did they try to like undermine you? >> They laughed at us like like the we've hired some people from GE recently and what the we hired this great young guy out of GE and he's like by the way do you know what all my colleagues say? They say we can barely build an engine. There's no way Boom can. >> Oh my god.

25:34 >> And they're and they're taking bets on when we will fail. >> Oh wow. So, so, so it's I mean it's kind of nice for us cuz like they're not even taking us seriously. >> Right. Right. That's sort of what you want with a >> It's Yeah, I think they're they're a little bumbling. but but I guess it's convenient that they don't think they need to mess with us. >> So, they haven't changed their turbine in x number of decades.

25:56 >> No. So, so these midsize turbines, all of them are modified jet engines. but the, literally if you go by the state-of-the-art GE midsize turbine, it's called the LM6000. >> Mhm. >> It is based on a 747 engine from 1971. >> Wow. Oh my gosh. >> That's so weird. So not innovative. >> Exactly. >> So not innovative. This this whole like the state of the American sort of aerospace and industry induster and energy industry is really bad. You know, like like think about Boeing here as a as a thing. You know, when Boeing last built a new airplane, like a new design airplane.

26:36 >> Oh, decades. >> 2004. >> Not decades. >> Yeah. More than more than two decades. Like I was I was speaking at Georgia Tech recently to like a whole crop of undergraduates and I was like, "How many of you were born after 2004?" And they all were they all every single one, right? Of course, >> because they're not, you know, and and it's like the the entire time all of you been have been alive, Boeing has built zero new airplanes.

27:03 >> Designed or built? >> Designed. >> Designed. Okay. >> Yeah. I mean, the all they do is take the old ones and tweak them and they don't even do that competently anymore. >> Yeah. >> So, designing your own turbines and engines, that kind of thing, taking control of this. What other benefits has it had for you guys? >> Yeah. So, so, so we talked about it unlocked boomless cruise. >> Probably the most significant thing is is it pulls revenue in and a very high margin product. So, we can self-fund the airplane and still have lots of money left over.

27:34 >> So, no more paycheck to paycheck. >> No more no more paycheck to paycheck. It's much better for building the company that way. The passenger experience is going to be completely different. So, when we were like shoehorning, you know, a Rolls engine into our airplane and without a lot of control, you couldn't optimize anything. You know, there was a there was a moment I don't know when this was 18 months ago, two years ago. there was there was a problem we had in our passenger experience design that that we just it always felt like we're trying to convince ourselves it was good enough.

28:00 And I was like, wait, why are we talking ourselves into this being good enough? It doesn't feel great. >> And at one point the I walk in and the team is like, hey, we got to show you something. >> And it was this different cabin layout. which I can't say what it is exactly because we haven't revealed it yet, but it's like wildly better. >> So intriguing. It's wildly better than what's ever been done in a small airplane before. And it's like, wait a minute, how do we even make that fit? And they're like, well, to make it fit, you have to like change the shape of the fuselage a little bit, >> okay?

28:32 >> to make this interior fit. And and like one of my premises, you want designers that think like engineers and engineers that think like designers. So this is really a collaboration between design and engineering. But we we had run it through our simulations and we'd lost 1,000 miles of range. >> Oh. >> On a 4,000 mile airplane >> because because of the shape >> because Yeah. It it had an efficiency penalty. Actually, a pretty significant efficiency penalty.

28:55 >> Yeah. >> And we're like gh. So if we want this to work, we have to we have to go find a thousand miles of optimization somewhere else. And I remember standing in front of the whole company and I I was I I remember the story of Purple One and Purple Two. Do you guys know Purple One and Purple Two? So before iPhone, there were two iPhone projects at Apple. Purple One and Purple Two. Purple One was taking an iPod and putting a phone in it.

29:24 >> Okay, sounds like a good start. >> and you know, but that would have resulted in like, you know, a small grayscale display and maybe the click wheel would have been the dialer. I don't know, right? Like it was it was not the iPhone that we all have. Yeah. >> And then they had Purple 2, which was taking what had been the the iPad project, which they had actually launched internally before iPhone >> and and like trying to shrink it down from a tablet to a phone.

29:49 >> Yep. >> And but they had no idea whether they could make it work. They're like we we'll have enough battery life, enough power, like their engineering prototypes like you know would run out in an hour or something like that. Like it wasn't a real product yet. And I remember the story was Steve sat in front of the team and said, "Well, which which one do you want in your pocket?" And everyone's like, "Purple two." And so they they shut all the work on Purple One and they went all in on Purple two and just bet they would figure it out. And so I was like, "Okay, I'll stand in front of the company." And I'm like, "Which airplane do you want to sit on? That one or this one?" And everyone's like, "That one."

30:21 Like, "Do you guys want to try and find 1,000 miles of range?" And everyone's like, "We're in." So, so the so one of the thing we did that got us back most of the thousand miles was to say, "Oh, what when we'd broken up with Rolls-Royce, we basically said, well, let's just build our own engine with the same specs." >> And but oh, what if the specs were a little bit different? What if you had a little bit bigger fan on the front? What if it's a little bit smaller fan? What if the core was a little bit bigger?

30:44 What was a little bit less? And it's very difficult to know just looking at it what's going to be the better answer because if you got a bigger fan it makes the airplane quieter but it's worse at full speed. if you got a bigger core it's better transonically. So you've got all these like things that trade off against each other. And so we what we did is we basically designed a dozen theoretically buildable engines. And we and we we have this software we built called Makeboom that will basically take an engine and wrap an airplane around it automatically and then can run simulations like takeoff, climb out, accelerate, cruise, descent software.

31:18 >> Yeah, we built this. >> Amazing. >> And we we built this before AI. >> but but it turns out to be the pattern that is now very >> >> akin to what you can do because you can do it so much more now with AI. >> So we we ran these dozen engines through a full-flight simulation >> and there was like a very clear winner. >> Oh. that was that gave us back most of that thousand miles of range.

31:40 >> Oh, awesome. >> And so the long-winded story, but the punch line is because we were able to optimize the airplane and the engine together. The passenger cabin is different from what it would have been otherwise. >> And we're going to love it when we go on our trip. >> I I hope you're going to love it. We are world tour. We're going to be on a boom plane. >> We're really trying. Like long before I started, boom, you I was I was an Apple fanboy and I would get on an airplane and I would think, "What if this airplane had been designed by somebody who cared as much as Steve Jobs or Johnny IV?"

32:09 >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> And then and this would cause me to start to see all the horrible things that are on airplanes, the seams and the gaps. the stuff that doesn't fit right, the stuff that's dirty. how many how many like seals are there between the inside of the airplane and the outside of the window? Just start counting it next time. It's just nasty, you or the the worst thing I'm I'm about to spoil it for everybody. on any airplane that's not brand new, if you look above the window seat on the underside of the overhead bin, >> there's a little black smudge >> in every row.

32:40 >> Why? >> Because people stand up and they bump their head and they transfer their head schmutz onto the overhead bin. >> Really? >> It's you can't It's so And then the airlines don't clean it. >> Well, we know that. and so it's just there. The hedgeh it's it's like climbing a little dot. It took me a little while to figure out where it was coming from. Like, oh, I everyone bumps their head in the same place. The the point really is that these things are thoughtlessly designed. And and so we have we have a chance to design the passenger experience together with the airplane and to build the first like really lovable experience. And so we are trying to figure out what are the things that people hate the most about flying >> and and and fix as many of them as possible and and create a handful of really meaningful, positive, lovable experiences. and so some of this, you know, I can I can share a few of them like >> Yeah.

33:34 >> No middle seats. >> Yeah. Yay. >> Right. No middle seats anywhere on the airplane. >> we have a goal of getting being able to board the entire airplane in 5 minutes >> and offboard in 5 minutes. >> amazing. >> I can't even believe that would work. >> It's It's totally doable. In fact, you could we could probably beat the goal. I I'll tell you offline and you'll be like, "Oh, that sounds obvious." >> It's going to have Starlink immediately.

33:59 >> Of course, it will have Starlink. In fact, by the way, because so internet Wi-Fi, so inflight Wi-Fi was basically invented after the last new commercial airplane was designed. >> So, so this is why why do you see those Wi-Fi humps on every airplane? It's because it's a literal bolt-on. because no one has designed a new airliner since Wi-Fi since airborne Wi-Fi was invented. So you have to bolt it on the back of the airplane, right? So this will be the first commercial airplane that was designed post Wi-Fi and and the antenna will be built in so you won't see it and it won't cause extra drag.

34:30 >> Wow. >> I don't understand why Boeing doesn't design a new aircraft. Like the time is right, but like there's so much new technology. Like what is stopping them? So at a certain level that and this is a well-known story that they acquired McDonald Douglas and then McDonald Douglas brought in a bunch of people that were being counters that by the way were like GE Jack Welch disciples. >> Okay. And like the way Jack Rollan GE was he invented this metric called return on net assets which like somehow was I don't know why anybody thought this mattered more than free cash flow but somehow everyone gets drunk on return on net assets and so that tells you you need to sell out your supply chain. So they so GE Boeing everybody else they start spinning out their manufacturing is it gets the capital equipment off their balance sheet and it optimizes for a number that doesn't matter but somehow everyone thinks it matters. So then the the last like actually good CEO who's now on our board leaves in like 2003 like right when they launched the last new airplane and and then they bring in these idiots who look at all of this and they're optim the other Jack Welch thing is like whatever you do you look at the Wall Street forecast for the next quarter you try to beat it by a nickel and so this is you can do this for a little while but like it's like trying to fly an airplane while looking only straight down like you're never you're going to end up in some very weird place. So, so and then what you don't want to do is make any kind of long-term investments.

35:53 So, so the the Jim Mcernney who was like the late 2000s Boeing CEO went around saying no more moonshots >> which is like oh my gosh >> which is like guys hang on your Boeing used to be literally in the moonshot business but what he what he meant was actually something worse which he meant no new products >> like no they would only take the existing product portfolio and tweak it >> and and so that at one level that's the disaster but I think the actual disaster started much earlier So in in aviation there have been like two primary vectors that would drive innovation. on the commercial side it's speed. If you look at every airplane you know from the Wright brothers through the Boeing 707 the first full jetliner the thing that made it exist was it was faster than the ones that had come before it. Right.

36:41 >> Right. but in 1973 we banned supersonic flight in the US. So we actually banned commercial aviation innovation in 1973. >> Mhm. And then on the defense side, the thing the thing that drives innovation is there's there's an urgent need to defend the country, right? And so we had we had innovation there that really went through the end of the cold war. And the the problem is so in defense, the enemy is actually the customer because they actually define what you actually need to win and haha they take delivery of the product. It was so basically enemies went away for like 20 years.

37:16 >> Yeah. maybe 30 years from the end of the cold war through to I don't know the invasion of Ukraine something like that and so there was no urgent need for defense innovation and all the defense airplane programs became jobs programs they became corporate welfare so you've got commercial innovation is basically illegal defense innovation there is none it's a job it's a corporate welfare jobs program >> and and so what happens is young people who would have gone into the industry go into a different one >> so there is a there is a missing generation about my age. Like I was one of these and I I I feel like I run into other software engineers or tech entrepreneurs who are like also part of the missing generation who are incredibly passionate about flight and airplanes but they're running like SAS companies because when they were kids nothing was going on and you're like what do you like I don't want to go work for Boeing that sounds like miserable. There's nothing new to do. And so what happened is a whole bunch of talented people like the the only people who stayed at Boeing were by definition the ones who didn't care about innovating. Mhm.

38:16 >> Like and like nuclear had the worst version of it. Nuclear hasn't they didn't even At least Boeing kept making more of the same airplane. Like nuclear stopped making anything. So the only people left in the nuclear industry are those who don't care about doing anything. By definition, they're all terrible. >> Do you think maybe some of the folks in your generation actually just skipped right to rockets? Cuz rockets seem like, you know, whether it's Blue Origin or SpaceX or >> Well, the same thing happened with rockets. So 1969 we land on the moon.

38:42 1969 we fly Concord supersonic. And I think if you've got imagine you go back to 1969 and you find the most pessimistic human on the street and you say, "What do you think air travel is like?" And what do you think space travel is like in 2026? You could not find anybody who would tell you, "You can't go back to the moon and you can't break the sound barrier." >> Yet, that's what actually happened, >> right? Crazy.

39:03 >> And and so I think it's going to change. So, thanks to SpaceX and like the rebirth of private space, I think we're going to, you know, we're going to be back on the moon here, I think, before too too long. and maybe in a durable way if we do it commercially and you know and I hope to do the same thing with with supersonic let's bring it back and make it stay this time we really got lost and I think the single Concord and Apollo share a common thread >> they were both cold war era government glory projects >> we didn't go to land of the moon because we thought there'd be like a great lunar economy or even for like you know space tourism like no we did it to show the Russians out >> right >> and and we did Concord similarly it was at national there was originally there was Soviet supersonic project, a European supersonic project, an American supersonic project and the American one got cancelled which is what led to the supersonic ban in the US. Okay, >> Concord is still coming. The Soviets still have this thing. Oh, okay. All of a sudden it's bad. We got to ban it. If you think about the the basically the the political dynamic around supersonic, the political dynamics around rocketry. So what happens in rocketry is is so we did the Apollo program with no even trappings of economics. It consumed I forget 4% something like that of the federal budget.

40:13 >> Wow. >> Right. Like this is the enormous national expendure obviously unsustainable and then you get all these like so NASA would like contract it out to like Northrup and Boeing and like you know Grumman and all these people and they'd have these you know massive cost plus contracts. Now now the moon landing's done, Apollo's canceled. Oh crap. How do we like keep all these aerospace contractors alive? Well, they start getting like more like pet projects, right? And so you end up with like, you know, the space shuttle, which is a total disaster.

40:44 >> Yeah. >> Like people I the thing that kills me of the space shuttle is like kids think it was good, but like they we built five and of the five, two crashed in fatal accidents that killed everybody. >> Y >> this is like not even the Ford Pinto was that bad. >> Yeah. >> This is like one of the most dis and so the space industry died until Elon brought it back. >> Yeah. What do you think the implications of boom will be on defense aircraft?

41:10 Like are you >> do you feel like the that will cause sort of a rejuvenation of >> indirectly? So so I think the so what I think one of the really interesting philosophical questions you can ask is what should have happened with the defense industry and and what what what we actually did was we had this theory of you have to keep the industrial base alive because you might need it, >> right? And so and so you got to put you got to start feeding you know little projects to locked and to Boeing defense and right because you know maybe there's a war one day. It I think with the benefit of time you can now see this as a horrible strategy because you know you put a human on welfare they get fat and dumb and lazy. If you put a company on welfare they get fat and dumb and lazy.

41:51 And like what we've actually seen this year is Lockheed, which makes missile interceptors, which we now needed to protect our troops from Iranian missiles, ran out and they could it would take them more than two years to make a missile interceptor. Like why the heck are we not done in Iran? I think it's because we ran out of interceptors. And like this was my theory months ago. I think it's pretty well proven now. And it's like these big dumb companies can't move >> and it's a real defense problem. So So okay, so what should you do? If you look back at the history of World War II, there's a great book on this called Freedoms Forge and and what happened was there was no defense industrial base prior to World War II, but we had the commercial industrial base that was like the best in the world. We had the best manufacturer. We had Ford and GM and Chrysler, but not the ones you know today, the ones that were great. And and so when when the country was threatened, they all pivoted and they they retoled their factories and they they chunked out fighters and bombers and tanks and everything else we needed to like defeat the the Nazis. But if you fast forward to today, now we've shipped all the commercial manufacturing to Asia. The defense industrial base is like calcified and horrible. like if I needed a part out of the commercial aerospace industry, like like example, a blade that I could 3D print in three days, >> takes 18 months to get.

43:14 >> Oh my word. >> And costs more than the machine to make >> from the US, not from China. >> From the US. From the US. Yes. Right. The one thing manufacturing that didn't leave the US is is aerospace because it's seen as national defense critical, but but it got it got terrible. It got in shitified. >> This is really distressing. Is there is there like is there going to be >> there is there is I'm going to come back to so so that you you were sort of asking what's the role of boom and defense >> so the role of boom and defense is to be the competent commercial manufacturer that could pivot in wartime >> oh >> so so we are everything we are doing is designed to turn on a dime to make a different kind of product so so very few things in our turbine or in our airplane are built on hard tooling that's that's difficult to reconfigure so we have digital we have digital engineering ing and we have digital manufacturing and like you know like one of our goals is to be able to go in 24 hours from a design idea to a fully manufactured high performance turbine component and I I think we'll actually be there in a few months. We're we're like >> pretty close and and what that means is you know if if the worst happens we we stop making you know supersonic passenger jets and power turbines and instead make whatever the defense defense industrial base needs. Yeah. But we'll be able to do it quickly and efficiently as we weren't we weren't like Adam Smith's hand forced us to know how to do it well.

44:34 >> Wow. >> Like so you need I I think the the best defense is a strong commercial industrial base that is flexible and can pivot >> and and no one else can right now. and roll maybe. >> I mean like some of this some of what I was explaining here like I learned from Palmer because he he talks about a bit of this >> but like one of one of the things they're trying to do to Androll is to make a lot of their products manufacturable and commercial technology. So I think they're they're barking up a tree that rhymes with rhymes with this.

45:04 >> Yeah. >> and there's and now what how many companies in the last YC batch were hard tech? Like a lot >> like 25% or something like >> I think 25%. Yeah. >> Yeah. So so okay. So great. So these things are getting created and here's the most inspiring thing. I talked about how there's a missing generation. There is not anymore. When I go talk to like the aerospace and mechanical engineering students that are undergrads now or just graduating, holy crap, they're awesome.

45:31 >> Okay, >> we have good people choosing this industry again. And I think it's, you know, first credit goes to Elon there. >> I agree >> for like having made it having there been like an inspiring thing. Yeah. And this is this is one of the reasons we live streamed the XP1 supersonic flight. And the best the best thing I ever got out of that was pictures from classrooms. >> And they're like kids, you know, that would not be tuned in on flight, like glued to the screen in a good way. And they're like standing up and watching it as it takes off. And the the best thing I ever got was this video clip of of like some she must be like six or seveny old girl and like the little like supersonic thing popped up on our live stream that we' broken the sound barrier and she's just jumping up and down, >> right? And like one of those kids is a future chief engineer.

46:15 >> Yeah, of course. >> Some of them are pilots, some of them are, you know, some of them are mechanical engineers, but like in one of those classrooms, some kid is thinking, "That's cool. I want to do that." Well, I'm glad we finally caught up with you and found out, you know, the big problem that that these turbines solved. That's very exciting news. How how far you've come. And we've also learned about the hairs problem on the like maybe they can like it can't be that hard to solve that.

46:45 >> We're never going to unsee that by the way. >> I know we're never going to be able to unsee that on my floor. >> I'm sorry. It's a oneway door. But thank you for coming and sitting down with us and sharing. >> I mean I mean exciting. >> It's great to do it in technical or and 3D. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Awesome. So, thanks again. Such a good episode.