487: Blake Scholl—Making Supersonic Travel Real
6/2/20261 hr 16 min
Mike Rowe sits down with Blake Scholl, the former Amazon software engineer turned aerospace entrepreneur who walked away from Silicon Valley to revive supersonic passenger travel.
As the founder of Boom Supersonic, Blake explains the century-long pursuit of faster flight. From the Cold War race to break the sound barrier to the rise—and fall—of the Concorde, Blake explains why supersonic travel disappeared just as it seemed destined to change aviation forever. He also shares how Boom Supersonic is working to make high-speed passenger flight practical again, and what it will take to shrink a 12-hour flight into just a few hours.
Along the way, Mike and Blake discuss innovation, risk, engineering breakthroughs, and why some people refuse to accept that getting somewhere faster is a problem already solved.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMike Rowe· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Hey guys, Mike Rowe here. This is The Way I Heard It, and today we are making supersonic travel real, or at least talking to the guy who has dedicated a big chunk of his life to making that possible. I like the way it sounds, Chuck. I like the idea of, uh, flying from, uh, New York to San Francisco. I like the idea of leaving at 9:00 in the morning and getting there at 9:30 local time. [laughs] I like that a lot.
Chuck Klausmeyer· Host0:30
Yeah, that would be great. Three and a half hours? Woo, that would be awesome.
Mike Rowe· Host0:34
Uh, Blake, uh, what did we decide?
Chuck Klausmeyer· Host0:36
Scholl.
Mike Rowe· Host0:37
It's Scholl.
Chuck Klausmeyer· Host0:37
Yeah. We did- Even though he spells it like school. No, no, it's one O, two Ls. S-C-H-O-L-L, Scholl.
Mike Rowe· Host0:44
Well, you know what?
Chuck Klausmeyer· Host0:45
Blake Scholl.
Mike Rowe· Host0:45
If we got it wrong, it serves him right. He's got a funny name. [laughs] But man, what a big brain, and what a nice guy.
Chuck Klausmeyer· Host0:50
Super.
Mike Rowe· Host0:50
He's on such a mission. It's such a big swing, and he's got so many reasons to feel optimistic because he really just, he asked himself a really simple question, this guy did, um, back in whatever it was, 14 years ago. It just occurs to him that, you know, planes haven't really gone any faster- No ... than they got in, what, I guess 2003 or so. We just, it's like we just said, "Okay, that's fast enough."
Chuck Klausmeyer· Host1:19
Yeah.
Mike Rowe· Host1:19
And, uh, you know, never mind the Concorde. Those sonic booms were annoying. They were outlawed. We just came to accept the fact that this was as good as it gets.
Chuck Klausmeyer· Host1:29
Right,