We consider it our duty to keep you, as an ROS member, at least three to six months ahead of the general public on all the amazing things happening. If we’re doing our jobs, your friends should frequently wonder how you know things before they happen.
Last year, you were among the first to learn about new supersonic jets that will slice flight times in half.
And about the safe, clean nuclear reactors that will soon power a whole neighborhood from a land plot the size of a tennis court.
But I hear the skeptics when they say: “Great, but when will these wonderful things actually happen?”
Oh, they’re happening. Fast. Let’s look at the accelerating progress in these two key technologies since we first introduced you to them a few months ago.
Supersonic flight for all:
Speed Machines is my three-year-old son’s favorite bedtime book. It’s filled with the fastest planes, trains, and cars in history.
But there’s something sad about it: Most of these speed records were set decades ago. Why have we slowed down?
Take airplanes. Flying from New York to London today takes exactly as long as it did in 1965. Seven hours wedged in a seat, watching the clock tick by. Frequent transatlantic flyers know the pain!
Actually, it’s worse than stagnation. We went backward. The supersonic jet, Concorde, used to take off from London at 1:00 pm and land in Washington, DC at 12:10 pm the same day. A time machine! But Concorde shut down in 2003.
Two weeks ago, Denver startup Boom achieved a milestone that should be all over the news.
Its new XB-1 jet broke the sound barrier over the Mojave Desert, flying at roughly 770 mph. This was the first civil supersonic flight over American airspace in over 20 years. It was also the first time a privately developed jet had ever broken the sound barrier.
Boom’s story is as American as it gets. This supersonic jet didn’t come from a top-secret government project. It was built by a guy who used to work at Groupon.
Boom founder Blake Scholl was a computer programmer designing internet coupons. With no aerospace background, he taught himself the necessary skills and built a team of believers.
I'm Irish, but having worked with Americans since 2015, I understand America’s greatest lesson. With enough hard work and perseverance, you can be anyone and do anything.
In a decade, Boom went from wooden cutouts in Scholl's basement to a working supersonic jet.
Source: Boom
Boom is solving the two problems that killed Concorde: too expensive, too loud.
Concorde tickets cost upward of $20,000 in today’s money. Its supersonic engines guzzled fuel like a race car going full throttle. They burned 7X–9X more fuel per passenger than regular planes. Fuel made up roughly half the cost of operating a supersonic jet!
Boom’s jets use modern, fuel-efficient engines that sip fuel rather than chug it, cutting costs dramatically. They’re also designed to fly on 100% sustainable aviation fuel.
What exactly is “sustainable aviation fuel?”
Last fall, I met Casey Handmer, the CEO of startup Terraform. It has a working prototype of its machine that turns air into fuel (seriously). Casey’s first goal is to make “clean” jet fuel that will power supersonic jets.
Great ideas are “having sex,” as Matt Ridley would say.
Concorde also emitted an explosive sonic boom that rattled windows down below. So noise got supersonic jets canceled in America.
Boom built its engines to be quiet and efficient at slower speeds for flying over land. But they can go supersonic over oceans. It’s also shaping its jet to soften the boom, so it sounds like a thump instead of an earth-shattering roar.
Supersonic flight literally creates time. Bill Gates flew economy class for a decade after he became a billionaire. He wouldn’t spring for a comfier seat. I bet he’d pay to cut his travel day in half.
Boom’s XB-1, which broke the sound barrier, is a single-person “test jet.” Eventually, its Overture airliner will carry 60–80 passengers at speeds of 1,300 mph and be profitable at normal business-class fares. You had me at London to New York in three hours.
Supersonic will fundamentally change how we live, work, and connect with each other. Imagine flying to Tokyo for the weekend. Where will you go when you can travel almost anywhere in a few hours?
Boom’s “supersonic factory” in Greensboro, North Carolina will employ 2,400 people. It’s secured over $20 billion in pre-orders from United, American, and Japan Airlines. Commercial supersonic flight: Made in the USA.
Thank you, Boom, for making America supersonic again.
Thank you, founder Blake Scholl, for building a supersonic jet company from scratch.
And thanks especially for the inspiration you’re giving to a whole new generation of young entrepreneurs… to achieve big, bold, brash things.
Nuclear… coming to your neighborhood?
Rational Optimists know nuclear energy is humanity’s ace card. It's the cleanest, safest way to power our world. Nuclear power generation can be so safe, doctors once routinely implanted nuclear-powered pacemakers in human hearts.
We should have nuclear everything. Homes powered by mini nuclear generators, humming in the basement. Cars that never need refueling because they run on tiny reactors. Nuclear batteries that make your life “cordless.”
But nuclear energy has been paralyzed by red tape for 50 years. America shut down more plants than we’ve built this century. Nuclear power output has been flat for 25 years!
Source: Our World in Data
I bring good news, my fellow Rational Optimists. America’s second atomic age is dawning.
A decade’s worth of nuclear breakthroughs have been compressed into the past few months. The industry that moved at a glacier speed is now sprinting like a Silicon Valley startup.
Bill Gates’s nuclear startup TerraPower is turning a Wyoming coal plant into America’s first advanced nuclear facility. Inside, liquid salt will flow like molten lava, carrying heat more efficiently than water ever could.
TerraPower just became the first small modular reactor (SMR) project ever to receive state approval. While there’s still a regulatory road ahead, the path is clearer than ever.
Imagine a nuclear reactor that becomes safer the hotter it gets. Our friends at Aalo Atomics (read about our visit to Aalo in Austin, TX) are building meltdown-proof reactors.
Aalo uses a special type of fuel (TRIGA) that halts nuclear reactions as temperatures rise, making meltdowns physically impossible.
The Department of Energy recently gave Aalo the green light to build its first experimental reactor. This is the first step toward a new kind of small, factory-made reactor that can be mass-produced like LEGOs.
Nuclear generators, anyone? Westinghouse’s eVinci reactors will be about the size of a shipping container but packed with enough punch to power 20,000 homes. These “atomic batteries” could save thousands of lives.
Between 2003 and 2007, over 3,000 American troops were killed or injured while protecting fuel convoys in Iraq. Every diesel truck was a target. Imagine if, instead, they’d had a single nuclear generator that only needed to be refueled once a decade.
Nuclear is uniquely versatile. It’s the only power source that works atop Mount Everest, in the harsh desert, or at the bottom of the ocean.
There’s too much innovation happening in nuclear for us to cover. When was the last time anyone could say that?
Dormant nuclear plants are being revived in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Iowa…
AI chip king Nvidia is building a data center inside California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant…
We’re even seeing progress in nuclear fusion!
Back in December, I told you about Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which was building a $1.2 billion fusion reactor. The startup just announced that it’s building the world’s first commercial fusion plant 15 miles south of Richmond, Virginia. I’ll try to visit the site next time I’m in DC.
“What’s the Starhopper of nuclear?”
My friend and Abundance Institute Chief Economist Eli Dorado posed this question.
Starhopper was the first test vehicle for SpaceX’s skyscraper-sized rocket, Starship. Instead of spending a decade designing the perfect rocket, SpaceX built fast, failed fast, and learned fast.
Stubby Starhopper (left) paved the way for awe-inspiring Starship (right):
Source: New Scientist
Every successful technology follows the same path: build, test, learn, improve.
Bureaucrats prevented nuclear from going through this crucial process. To build a new reactor in America, the licensing process alone takes nine years and costs more than a SpaceX rocket launch.
Startup NuScale spent $500 million and 2 million hours of labor just trying to get approval for its mini reactor design.
Today’s nuclear designs are light-years ahead of the aging plants that power one in five American homes. We have meltdown-proof reactors, yet they’re effectively illegal to build. What are we doing?
This is why most nuclear startups have never built a reactor. Heck, most nuclear engineers alive today haven’t built a reactor.
A new lawsuit from Texas and Utah, backed by startup Last Energy, might finally crack the ice. In the simplest terms, they found a loophole in a 1954 law that says small reactors might not be subject to crushing federal oversight. States could regulate them instead, just like they regulate other power plants.
If the “good guys” win, get ready for a burst of nuclear innovation. Nuclear’s regulatory winter is finally thawing.
Rational Optimists, we have a job to do. Tell the true story of nuclear power.
Atomic energy isn’t dangerous. The real killer is the nuclear plant that’s NOT built.
Chernobyl was the worst nuclear disaster in history. Depending on who you ask, it killed somewhere between 4,000 and 60,000 people.
The global retreat from nuclear that followed killed an estimated 4 million people through increased air pollution alone.
Every nuclear plant we didn’t build meant more coal and gas plants belching pollution into our air. When America abandoned its "Project Independence" goal of 1,000 nuclear plants by 2000, we locked ourselves into decades of fossil fuel addiction.
It’s time to revive Project Independence. Let’s build 1,000 mini nuclear plants across all 50 states. The mission starts with us showing the world nuclear isn’t dangerous. The more nuclear we build, the more lives we save.
Years from now, when your grandchildren ask about the great energy enlightenment of the 2020s, you'll be able to tell them, “I saw it coming. I understood what it meant. I helped others see it, too.”
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Writer: Stephen McBride
Editor: Dan Steinhart
Rational Optimist Society: ROS
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