Blake Scholl: Why Plane Speed Stalled, Supersonic Commercial Flight, & Revolutionizing the Engine
September 22, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readBreaking the Sound Barrier—Again
In 1969, humanity landed on the moon and flew an airliner through the sound barrier. More than half a century later, we can do neither. Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, opened his conversation on All-In with that uncomfortable fact, then walked through how a 50-person team with a cardboard-and-plywood mockup is trying to fix it. "Boeing hasn't built a new airplane in 20 years," he said. "We have interns born after the last time Boeing launched a new airplane in 2004."
Scholl is a former software engineer from Amazon and Groupon—not an aerospace veteran. He pitched Jeff Bezos on Boom's seed round in 2015. Bezos passed, then wrote in that year's Amazon shareholder letter that certain things only large companies can do, and building an all-composite airliner in a garage startup is one of them. "I took that a little personally," Scholl said. But the garage pitch deck included a photo of the actual mockup: cardboard, plywood, and seats from Office Depot.
The Engine That Nearly Killed the Company
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **The Pitch: Why Supersonic Flight Stalled & How Boom Will Fix It** - Blake Scholl frames the core problem: innovation in flight stopped after 1969, and Boom exists to restart it.
- 2 (05:05) **The Regulatory Win: How Boom Killed the Sonic Boom Ban** - Scholl details the rapid political campaign that ended a 50-year-old ban on supersonic flight over land.
- 3 (06:27) **The Pivot That Saved the Company: Building Engines In-House** - Scholl explains why outsourcing engine development to Rolls-Royce nearly killed Boom, and why vertical integration became the company's superpower.
- 4 (08:39) **The Data Center Pivot: Printing Money Before Flying** - Scholl reveals the unexpected business model that makes Boom financially viable before the first passenger flight.
- 5 (10:42) **The Numbers: Price, Speed, and Timeline for Passengers** - Scholl gives concrete answers on when passengers can fly and what it will cost.
- 6 (12:08) **Boomless Cruise Explained: No Boom, Just Speed** - Scholl clarifies the physics of how supersonic flight over land will work without disturbing anyone.
- 7 (13:57) **The Long Game: From Air Force One to Private Jets** - Scholl shares his vision for normalizing supersonic flight across every class of passenger.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
(0:00) Welcome Blake Scholl!
(5:11) Solving the sonic boom & legalizing supersonic flight
(7:59) The pivot to powering data centers
(10:38) Jason joins: data center demand, private jets & what winning looks like
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