Boom: From Engine Setback to Supersonic and Power-Turbine Plans

The Rolls-Royce breakup

• Boom founder Blake Scholl says outsourcing the company’s supersonic engine to Rolls-Royce was a major mistake.
• In 2022, a Rolls-Royce leadership crisis stalled the proposed deal. The engine concept also relied on technology Rolls-Royce had stopped developing.
• After American Airlines announced a pre-order, Rolls-Royce publicly ended the relationship. Boom struggled to attract partners and investors.
• The proposed Rolls-Royce engine would have required compromises, including not supporting Boom’s goal of boomless cruise.

Why Boom built its own engine

• Boom assembled a team from a former Pratt & Whitney supersonic-engine group and began developing its own engine in 2022.
• Controlling the engine let Boom optimize it together with the aircraft rather than adapt the plane around a supplier’s design.
• That integration enabled boomless supersonic flight: Boom’s calculations showed that an optimized aircraft-engine combination could keep the sonic boom from reaching the ground under certain flight conditions.
• Boom says it discovered this capability while refining the design, before realizing it had solved the problem.

A second product: turbines for AI power

• In 2025, Scholl saw reports of power shortages and long turbine backlogs driven by demand from AI data centers.
• Boom realized its engine design could be adapted into a roughly 42-megawatt power turbine by replacing the aircraft’s thrust-producing fan with an electrical generator.
• The modular units could be combined in data centers, offering a new revenue source that Boom expects to help fund its supersonic-aircraft program.
• Scholl says the turbine opportunity has ended the company’s “paycheck-to-paycheck” fundraising era.

Benefits for the aircraft and passengers

• Owning the engine also lets Boom explore new cabin and aircraft designs.
• The company says it used flight simulations to compare multiple engine configurations and recover much of the range lost to a more spacious cabin design.
• Planned passenger-experience features include:
• No middle seats.
• A goal of boarding and deplaning in five minutes.
• Built-in Wi-Fi antennae, avoiding the external “humps” added to older aircraft.
• A focus on improving details and comfort that Boom says traditional aircraft design has neglected.

Scholl’s view of the industry

• Scholl argues that commercial aerospace has suffered from decades of limited innovation, pointing to the long gap since Boeing introduced a new aircraft design and to turbine models based on old jet engines.
• He attributes stagnation partly to short-term corporate incentives, regulation, and the loss of competitive pressure to develop faster aircraft.
• He also argues that hard-tech startups face a different funding challenge from software companies: they need substantial investment before they can demonstrate product-market fit through a finished product and revenue.

Defense manufacturing and talent

• Boom aims to use digital engineering and manufacturing that can be reconfigured quickly, potentially allowing it to shift production toward defense needs in an emergency.
• Scholl argues that a flexible commercial manufacturing base can complement a slow, rigid defense industry.
• He says interest in aerospace is growing among younger engineers, and that visible projects such as Boom’s supersonic test flights can inspire future talent.

Bottom line

Boom’s break with Rolls-Royce forced it to develop its own engine. According to Scholl, that decision made boomless cruise possible, gave the company greater control over aircraft design, and revealed a power-turbine business that could help finance its supersonic ambitions.