Shhhh… supersonic, without the boom

1 day ago6 min read

I’m a little obsessed with supersonic flight. As a teen I had a poster of the SR-71 “Blackbird,” the coolest jet ever invented, glued to my bedroom wall. When I meet older businesspeople, I ask them, “Did you ever fly Concorde?”

Lucky for me, new and exciting stuff is happening in supersonic almost every week.

If you’re just catching up: We’ve had the technology to fly passenger planes twice as fast for 50 years. LA to New York in 2.5 hours instead of 5.

But flying that fast created a sonic boom that disturbed a small fraction of people on the ground. Long story short, the Federal Aviation Administration banned fast planes in 1973.

This was a disastrous unforced error, as my friend Alex Tabarrok from Marginal Revolution explained recently. Instead of banning LOUD planes, they banned fast planes. Innovation killer. Instead of trying to solve the loudness problem, we just… stopped trying.

That is, until Blake Scholl founded Boom Supersonic. Its test jet ripped through the sound barrier three times in one flight over the Mojave Desert in February. We covered it here.

Here’s the coolest part: No one on the ground heard a whisper when Boom went supersonic above. It achieved this by exploiting the concept known as “Mach cutoff.” High up where it’s very cold, sound slows down. Go supersonic at a high enough altitude, and the sound wave never reaches the ground.

Mach cutoff isn’t a new discovery. What’s new are Boom’s proprietary engines that can climb high enough—and efficiently enough—to make this possible.

Boom also has an artificial intelligence (AI) autopilot that assesses atmospheric conditions and adjusts its speed automatically—a key innovation we didn’t have the computing power for in the days of the Concorde.

This breakthrough means Boom’s jet will be able to fly almost 1,000 miles per hour over land without a peep below. Over oceans, it’ll crank to 1,300 mph, slashing New York to London to 3.5 hours. It’s a melody to my soul as a frequent transatlantic flyer.

Once Boom takes off, New Yorkers will be able to visit Tokyo for a weekend. Leave Friday night, land Saturday morning, enjoy two full days eating fresh sushi, then head back Sunday night. You’re at work Monday, jet-lagged but happy.

Where will you go when the world shrinks?

One big hurdle remains. The US still bans supersonic flight over land, boom or no boom.

I’m hopeful the rules will change soon. Love it or hate it, this new administration is hellbent on cutting red tape and silly laws. That’s a model of Boom’s supersonic jet he’s holding:

President Trump with Boom supersonic jet model image

Source: The Economic Times

Prediction: The next Air Force One will be a supersonic jet, made in America, by Boom.

“Great, but what about nuclear waste?”

The Rational Optimist Society crew lit up our inbox with this question when I wrote about small modular reactors (SMRs) and their potential to revolutionize nuclear energy.

The idea of radioactive green goo oozing out of rusty barrels is scary. The truth is that nuclear waste is a solved problem. And now, innovators are turning it into an opportunity.

First, the basics: All the nuclear waste ever generated in America—60 years’ worth—could fit on a single football field, stacked less than 20 feet high.

Nuclear’s waste footprint is a speck compared to the 43 billion tons of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere every year from fossil fuels.

Atomic leftovers have never harmed anyone in the US. Spent fuel is safely tucked away in sealed containers at over 60 locations across 34 states.

But why just store it? SMR startups are building reactors that run on waste. Oklo’s Aurora micro-reactor, small enough to fit in a large living room, can take used fuel from old plants and turn it into new energy. Like a car that runs on exhaust fumes!

The most frustrating aspect of the nuclear waste “problem” is we’ve been sitting on the solution for 60 years. In the 1960s, Argonne National Laboratory built reactors that could recycle nuclear waste into fuel.

Why don’t we recycle fuel already? Blame politics. President Carter halted reprocessing in the '70s over nuclear proliferation fears. Reagan lifted the ban, but by then, companies had moved on.

Innovators like Oklo are bringing the future back. And did you know the US has enough nuclear waste stockpiled to keep the entire country powered for 150 years?

I rarely compliment Europe, but America should take a page out of France’s playbook. Roughly three out of four homes in France are powered by atomic energy. Its reactors reuse 96% of their spent fuel. Only 4% ends up as waste.

As our friends at Doomberg like to say, “There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.” I love solar, but it’s no saint, either.

Solar panels die after 20–30 years. By 2050, solar waste could hit 78 million metric tons worldwide, much of which contains toxic materials that are expensive or impossible to recycle. That equals mountains of waste versus a few football fields for nuclear.

The real killer isn’t nuclear waste. It’s the nuclear plants we don’t build, leaving us stuck with dirtier options. Innovators are turning a fake problem into real power. Stop fretting and start building.

This kid built a nuclear fusor in his bedroom

A few weeks ago, we talked about the power of using AI, which was our most-requested essay ever.

I’m convinced we’re staring down the barrel of an AI divide. Those who use AI will get way ahead, and those who don’t will get left behind.

Nothing illustrates this shift better than the story of a 20-year-old college kid named Hudhayfa Nazoordeen. “HudZah” built a nuclear fusion reactor in his bedroom. Real nuclear fusion. The same process that makes the sun blaze.

His toolkit? A laptop and a $20 Claude subscription.

Before you picture a mushroom cloud over the Golden Gate Bridge, let me clarify. A fusor isn’t a bomb. Imagine two metal spheres nestled perfectly inside the other like a high-tech Russian doll. You pump in hydrogen, crank up the voltage, and those atoms smash together so hard they fuse into helium, spitting out neutrons in the process.

While it achieves genuine nuclear fusion, a fusor consumes more energy than it produces. It’s a science experiment on steroids, not a power plant.

HudZah had zero nuclear hardware experience. He used Claude—Anthropic’s AI chatbot—as a virtual physics professor, safety advisor, and engineer rolled into one.

He livestreamed his 36-hour experiment online for everyone to see. Nuclear fusion happening not in a government lab, not at a multibillion-dollar research facility, but in a college kid’s bedroom.

Look at the fusor, crackling with plasma, perched on top of two candy boxes:

Source: Business Insider

We already know AI can whip up computer code like magic. But this is a different beast. Nuts and bolts. High voltage. Vacuum chambers. Real, physical stuff that can kill you if you don’t know what you’re doing.

AI isn’t just another technology trend or market opportunity. AI is a force multiplier for human potential. It lets one college kid do what once required a team of scientists and millions of dollars.

Folks who think this won’t fundamentally reshape the world simply aren’t paying attention.

Honestly, reading HudZah’s story made me feel a little behind. I like to think I’m on the cutting edge of tech. This kid’s making a fusor from scratch in his bedroom! That’s both exhilarating and a little terrifying.

The good news, my fellow Rational Optimists, is we’re still early in this shift. It’s a level playing field right now. The AI natives haven’t left us behind, yet.

I’m increasingly convinced mastering AI will be the most important skill of the next 20 years. Not because AI will replace humans, but because it amplifies us in ways we’re only beginning to understand.

AI is what I call an “8 to 80” breakthrough—a technology everyone from the ages of 8 to 80 can, and should, be using. It’s the greatest leverage tool ever created. One- or two-person teams will build billion-dollar businesses with AI as their co-founder.

If AI can help a college kid spark nuclear fusion on a dorm desk, what billion-dollar idea is rattling around in your skull, waiting for AI to bring it to life?

The future belongs to the AI optimists. Let’s be the ones who shape it.

A Note of Thanks

Thank you to all the members who wrote us requesting an essay on why AI-powered robots won’t steal all our jobs. It’s cooking!

ROS is truly a Society in every sense—driven by you, our fellow rational optimists. We love hearing your thoughts on each issue and discovering which breakthroughs you're eager to learn about next. Keep ’em coming.

The Rational Optimist Society began as something of a selfish endeavor. It fills a gap in our own media diet which is malnourished in stories about innovators changing the world for the better.

I (Stephen) imagine my six-year-old daughter asking me a few years from now: "Dad, what did you do when everyone was telling us the world was doomed?" I want my daughter—and your kids and grandkids—to know the truth. The world is bursting with opportunities. With grit and innovation, we can tackle almost any problem.

I’ll see you next Sunday!