Inside the groundbreaking design of Boom Supersonic’s ultrafast jet

“It is surprisingly kind of anticlimactic,” Tristan ‘Geppetto’ Brandenburg says about the time he broke the sound barrier. “You don’t hear a sonic boom from the cockpit because you are leaving the shock waves behind you. You can only feel that she is happy flying at supersonic speed.” Brandenburg is the chief test pilot of Boom Supersonic. And the “she” he’s referring to is the XB-1, a long, thin dart designed to cut through the air in the most efficient way possible. Last month, the...