We tried with the British-French Concorde, the US Boeing 2707, and the Russian Tupolev Tu-144. That's three tries (or maybe two, the Boeing version was cancelled before prototype completion).

Maybe we can do better today with the lessons learnt and the advances in material science since then. There's several startups banking on that. But so far commercial supersonic flight has only worked out as prestige projects, not as commercial successes.

> But so far commercial supersonic flight has only worked out as prestige projects, not as commercial successes.

I suspect that further optimizing the fast part of air travel doesn't offer as much gain as further optimizing the slow part, which is between the real origin and the plane door and between the plane door and the real destination.

Wasn’t TU-144 just a pissing contest entry with retrofitted engines of another aircraft? And Boeing 2707 quickly scrapped? Only Concorde ever saw the light of commercial operations. It was truly limited by its technology, of that date. And post 9/11 situation sealed its fate, its had one fatality in 20 years, its already better than 747 max by that metric. There is no point in saying Supersonic is impossible, things changed a lot in last few years. Having computer monitors instead of a dedicated flight engineer with gazillion dials and Fly by wire, it can be much more optimised now. Boom just needs to make a working jet, and it would definitely revolutionise aviation again.

> Wasn’t TU-144 just a pissing contest entry with retrofitted engines of another aircraft?

Pissing contest, maybe, but the Tu-144 was its own aircraft. The airframe was designed from day one to be exactly what it was, a supersonic airliner (and contrary to popular myth, the design was not simply stolen from the Concorde although maybe the premise was..) I'm not sure if the original Tu-144 engines, the NK-144's, were originally intended for another plane, but as far as I know the only planes they were ever put in were the Tu-144. They were later replaced by RD-36 engines, which were designed for the Tu-144.

And let's not forget the Concorde's engines had a military background. They were derived from engines originally meant for the [cancelled] TSR-2.

The major problem I see for Boom is social. Environmental and class/economic concerns particularly; see the public backlash against Jeff Bezos' rocket hop for instance. Not to mention, the little experiment we've been running for the past ~2 years with remote work and teleconferencing has probably reduced demand for high speed business travel.

I always thought the problem was intractable and related to just ... moving through the atmosphere at that speed induces a lot of drag. Has there been any sort of major breakthrough that would change that?

I guess you could always fly at a much higher altitude (with its own problems) but it all seems motivated by, well, prestige as you put it. Like, I have a hard time believing it'll ever be more economical (as a commodity/for the market), environmentally friendly, profitable (for the operator), or just more practical than transsonic flight. The only advantage seems to be bragging rights, and the ability to cross great distances really quickly for an elite few.