Supersonic planes are inching toward takeoff. That could be a problem.

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Supersonic planes are inching toward takeoff. That could be a problem.

Boom Supersonic broke the sound barrier in a test flight of its XB-1 jet last week, marking an early step in a potential return for supersonic commercial flight. The small aircraft reached a top speed of Mach 1.122 (roughly 750 miles per hour) in a flight over southern California and exceeded the speed of sound for a few minutes. “XB-1’s supersonic flight demonstrates that the technology for passenger supersonic flight has arrived,” said Boom founder and CEO Blake Scholl in a statement after the test flight. Boom plans to start commercial operation with a scaled-up version of the XB-1, a 65-passenger jet called Overture, before the end of the decade, and it has already sold dozens of planes to customers including United Airlines and American Airlines. But as the company inches toward that goal, experts warn that such efforts will come with a hefty climate price tag. Supersonic planes will burn significantly more fuel than current aircraft, resulting in higher emissions of carbon dioxide, which fuels climate change. Supersonic jets also fly higher than current commercial planes do, introducing atmospheric effects that may warm the planet further. In response to questions from MIT Technology Review, Boom pointed to alternative fuels as a solution, but those remain in limited supply—and they could have limited use in cutting emissions in supersonic aircraft. Aviation is a significant and growing contributor to human-caused climate change, and supersonic technologies could grow the sector’s pollution, rather than make progress toward shrinking it. XB-1 follows a long history of global supersonic flight. Humans first broke the sound barrier in 1947, when Chuck Yeager hit 700 miles per hour in a research aircraft (the speed of sound at that flight’s altitude is 660 miles per hour). Just over two decades later, in 1969, the first supersonic commercial airliner, the Concorde, took its first flight. That aircraft regularly traveled at supersonic speeds until the last one was decommissioned in 2003. Among other issues (like the nuisance of sonic booms), one of the major downfalls of the Concorde was its high operating cost, due in part to the huge amounts of fuel it required to reach top speeds. Experts say today’s supersonic jets will face similar challenges. Flying close to the speed of sound changes the aerodynamics required of an aircraft, says Raymond Speth, associate director of the MIT Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment. “All the things you have to do to fly at supersonic speed,” he says, “they reduce your efficiency … There’s a reason we have this sweet spot where airplanes fly today, around Mach 0.8 or so.” Boom estimates that one of its full-sized Overture jets will burn two to three times as much fuel per passenger as a subsonic plane’s first-class cabin. The company chose this comparison because its aircraft is “designed to deliver an enhanced, productive cabin experience,” similar to what’s available in first- and business-class cabins on today’s aircraft. That baseline, however, isn’t representative of the average traveler today. Compared to standard economy-class travel, first-class cabins tend to have larger seats with more space between them. Because there are fewer seats, more fuel is required per passenger, and therefore more emissions are produced for each person. When passengers crammed into coach are considered in addition to those in first class, each passenger on a Boom Supersonic flight will burn somewhere between five and seven times more fuel per passenger than the average subsonic plane passenger today, according to research from the International Council on Clean Transportation. It’s not just carbon dioxide from burning fuel that could add to supersonic planes’ climate impact. All jet engines release other pollutants as well, including nitrogen oxides, black carbon, and sulfur. The difference is that while commercial planes today top out in the troposphere, supersonic aircraft tend to fly higher in the atmosphere, in the stratosphere. The air is less dense at higher altitudes, creating less drag on the plane and making it easier to reach supersonic speeds. Flying in the stratosphere, and releasing pollutants there, could increase the climate impacts of supersonic flight, Speth says. For one, nitrogen oxides released in the stratosphere damage the ozone layer through chemical reactions at that altitude. It’s not all bad news, to be fair. The drier air in the stratosphere means supersonic jets likely won’t produce significant contrails. That could be a benefit for climate, since contrails contribute to aviation’s warming. Boom has also touted plans to make up for its expected climate impacts by making its aircraft compatible with 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a category of alternative fuels made from biological sources, waste products, or even captured carbon from the air. “Going faster requires more energy, but it doesn’t need to emit more carbon. Overture is designed to fly on net-zero carbon sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), eliminating up to 100% of carbon emissions,” a Boom spokesperson said via email in response to written questions from MIT Technology Review. However, alternative fuels may not be a saving grace for supersonic flight. Most commercially available SAF today is made with a process that cuts emissions between 50% and 70% compared to fossil fuels. So a supersonic jet running on SAFs may emit less carbon dioxide than one running on fossil fuels, but alternative fuels will likely still come with some level of carbon pollution attached, says Dan Rutherford, senior director of research at the International Council on Clean Transportation. “People are pinning a lot of hope on SAFs,” says Rutherford. “But the reality is, today they remain scarce [and] expensive, and they have sustainability concerns of their own.” Of the 100 billion gallons of jet fuel used last year, only about 0.5% of it was SAF. Companies are building new factories to produce larger volumes of the fuels and expand the available options, but the fuel is likely going to continue to make up a small fraction of the existing fuel supply, Rutherford says. That means supersonic jets will be competing with other, existing planes for the same supply, and aiming to use more of it. Boom Supersonic has secured 10 million gallons of SAF annually from Dimensional Energy and Air Company for the duration of the Overture test flight program, according to the company spokesperson’s email. Ultimately, though, if and when Overture reaches commercial operation, it will be the airlines that purchase its planes hunting for a fuel supply—and paying for it. There’s also a chance that using SAFs in supersonic jets could come with unintended consequences, as the fuels have a slightly different chemical makeup than fossil fuels. For example, fossil fuels generally contain sulfur, which has a cooling effect, as sulfur aerosols formed from jet engine exhaust help reflect sunlight. (Intentional release of sulfur is one strategy being touted by groups aiming to start geoengineering the atmosphere.) That effect is stronger in the stratosphere, where supersonic jets are likely to fly. SAFs, however, typically have very low sulfur levels, so using the alternative fuels in supersonic jets could potentially result in even more warming overall. There are other barriers that Boom and others will need to surmount to get a new supersonic jet industry off the ground. Supersonic travel over land is largely banned, because of the noise and potential damage that comes from the shock wave caused by breaking the sound barrier. While some projects, including one at NASA, are working on changes to aircraft that would result in a less disruptive shock wave, these so-called low-boom technologies are far from proven. NASA’s prototype was revealed last year, and the agency is currently conducting tests of the aircraft, with first flight anticipated sometime this year. Boom is planning a second supersonic test flight for XB-1, as early as February 10, according to the spokesperson. Once testing in that small aircraft is done, the data will be used to help build Overture, the full-scale plane. The company says it plans to begin production on Overture in its factory in roughly 18 months. In the meantime, the world continues to heat up. As MIT’s Speth says, “I feel like it’s not the time for aviation to be coming up with new ways of using even more energy, with where we are in the climate crisis.”

“XB-1’s supersonic flight demonstrates that the technology for passenger supersonic flight has arrived,” said Boom founder and CEO Blake Scholl in a statement after the test flight.

Boom plans to start commercial operation with a scaled-up version of the XB-1, a 65-passenger jet called Overture, before the end of the decade, and it has already sold dozens of planes to customers including United Airlines and American Airlines. But as the company inches toward that goal, experts warn that such efforts will come with a hefty climate price tag.

Supersonic planes will burn significantly more fuel than current aircraft, resulting in higher emissions of carbon dioxide, which fuels climate change. Supersonic jets also fly higher than current commercial planes do, introducing atmospheric effects that may warm the planet further.

In response to questions from MIT Technology Review, Boom pointed to alternative fuels as a solution, but those remain in limited supply—and they could have limited use in cutting emissions in supersonic aircraft. Aviation is a significant and growing contributor to human-caused climate change, and supersonic technologies could grow the sector’s pollution, rather than make progress toward shrinking it.

XB-1 follows a long history of global supersonic flight. Humans first broke the sound barrier in 1947, when Chuck Yeager hit 700 miles per hour in a research aircraft (the speed of sound at that flight’s altitude is 660 miles per hour). Just over two decades later, in 1969, the first supersonic commercial airliner, the Concorde, took its first flight. That aircraft regularly traveled at supersonic speeds until the last one was decommissioned in 2003.

Among other issues (like the nuisance of sonic booms), one of the major downfalls of the Concorde was its high operating cost, due in part to the huge amounts of fuel it required to reach top speeds. Experts say today’s supersonic jets will face similar challenges.

Flying close to the speed of sound changes the aerodynamics required of an aircraft, says Raymond Speth, associate director of the MIT Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment. “All the things you have to do to fly at supersonic speed,” he says, “they reduce your efficiency … There’s a reason we have this sweet spot where airplanes fly today, around Mach 0.8 or so.”

Boom estimates that one of its full-sized Overture jets will burn two to three times as much fuel per passenger as a subsonic plane’s first-class cabin. The company chose this comparison because its aircraft is “designed to deliver an enhanced, productive cabin experience,” similar to what’s available in first- and business-class cabins on today’s aircraft.

That baseline, however, isn’t representative of the average traveler today. Compared to standard economy-class travel, first-class cabins tend to have larger seats with more space between them. Because there are fewer seats, more fuel is required per passenger, and therefore more emissions are produced for each person.

When passengers crammed into coach are considered in addition to those in first class, each passenger on a Boom Supersonic flight will burn somewhere between five and seven times more fuel per passenger than the average subsonic plane passenger today, according to research from the International Council on Clean Transportation.

It’s not just carbon dioxide from burning fuel that could add to supersonic planes’ climate impact. All jet engines release other pollutants as well, including nitrogen oxides, black carbon, and sulfur.

The difference is that while commercial planes today top out in the troposphere, supersonic aircraft tend to fly higher in the atmosphere, in the stratosphere. The air is less dense at higher altitudes, creating less drag on the plane and making it easier to reach supersonic speeds.

Flying in the stratosphere, and releasing pollutants there, could increase the climate impacts of supersonic flight, Speth says. For one, nitrogen oxides released in the stratosphere damage the ozone layer through chemical reactions at that altitude.

It’s not all bad news, to be fair. The drier air in the stratosphere means supersonic jets likely won’t produce significant contrails. That could be a benefit for climate, since contrails contribute to aviation’s warming.

Boom has also touted plans to make up for its expected climate impacts by making its aircraft compatible with 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a category of alternative fuels made from biological sources, waste products, or even captured carbon from the air. “Going faster requires more energy, but it doesn’t need to emit more carbon. Overture is designed to fly on net-zero carbon sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), eliminating up to 100% of carbon emissions,” a Boom spokesperson said via email in response to written questions from MIT Technology Review.

However, alternative fuels may not be a saving grace for supersonic flight. Most commercially available SAF today is made with a process that cuts emissions between 50% and 70% compared to fossil fuels. So a supersonic jet running on SAFs may emit less carbon dioxide than one running on fossil fuels, but alternative fuels will likely still come with some level of carbon pollution attached, says Dan Rutherford, senior director of research at the International Council on Clean Transportation.

“People are pinning a lot of hope on SAFs,” says Rutherford. “But the reality is, today they remain scarce [and] expensive, and they have sustainability concerns of their own.”

Of the 100 billion gallons of jet fuel used last year, only about 0.5% of it was SAF. Companies are building new factories to produce larger volumes of the fuels and expand the available options, but the fuel is likely going to continue to make up a small fraction of the existing fuel supply, Rutherford says. That means supersonic jets will be competing with other, existing planes for the same supply, and aiming to use more of it.

Boom Supersonic has secured 10 million gallons of SAF annually from Dimensional Energy and Air Company for the duration of the Overture test flight program, according to the company spokesperson’s email. Ultimately, though, if and when Overture reaches commercial operation, it will be the airlines that purchase its planes hunting for a fuel supply—and paying for it.

There’s also a chance that using SAFs in supersonic jets could come with unintended consequences, as the fuels have a slightly different chemical makeup than fossil fuels. For example, fossil fuels generally contain sulfur, which has a cooling effect, as sulfur aerosols formed from jet engine exhaust help reflect sunlight. (Intentional release of sulfur is one strategy being touted by groups aiming to start geoengineering the atmosphere.) That effect is stronger in the stratosphere, where supersonic jets are likely to fly. SAFs, however, typically have very low sulfur levels, so using the alternative fuels in supersonic jets could potentially result in even more warming overall.

There are other barriers that Boom and others will need to surmount to get a new supersonic jet industry off the ground. Supersonic travel over land is largely banned, because of the noise and potential damage that comes from the shock wave caused by breaking the sound barrier. While some projects, including one at NASA, are working on changes to aircraft that would result in a less disruptive shock wave, these so-called low-boom technologies are far from proven. NASA’s prototype was revealed last year, and the agency is currently conducting tests of the aircraft, with first flight anticipated sometime this year.

Boom is planning a second supersonic test flight for XB-1, as early as February 10, according to the spokesperson. Once testing in that small aircraft is done, the data will be used to help build Overture, the full-scale plane. The company says it plans to begin production on Overture in its factory in roughly 18 months.

In the meantime, the world continues to heat up. As MIT’s Speth says, “I feel like it’s not the time for aviation to be coming up with new ways of using even more energy, with where we are in the climate crisis.”

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Flexential Partners with Lonestar to Support First Lunar Data Center

Flexential, a leading provider of secure and flexible data center solutions, this month announced that it has joined forces with Lonestar Data Holdings Inc. to support the upcoming launch of Freedom, Lonestar’s second lunar data center. Scheduled to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket via Intuitive Machines, this mission is a critical step toward establishing a permanent data center on the Moon. Ground-Based Support for Lunar Data Storage Flexential’s Tampa data center will serve as the mission control platform for Lonestar’s lunar operations, providing colocation, interconnection, and professional services. The facility was chosen for its proximity to Florida’s Space Coast launch operations and its ability to deliver low-latency connectivity for critical functions. Flexential operates two data centers in Tampa and four in Florida as part of its FlexAnywhere® Platform, comprising more than 40 facilities across the U.S. “Flexential’s partnership with Lonestar represents our commitment to advancing data center capabilities beyond conventional boundaries,” said Jason Carolan, Chief Innovation Officer at Flexential. “By supporting Lonestar’s space-based data center initiative, we are helping to create new possibilities for data storage and disaster recovery. This project demonstrates how innovative data center expertise can help organizations prepare for a resilient future with off-world storage solutions.” A New Era of Space-Based Resiliency The growing demand for data center capacity, with U.S. power consumption expected to double from 17 GW in 2022 to 35 GW by 2030 (according to McKinsey & Company), is driving interest in space-based solutions. Storing data off-planet reduces reliance on terrestrial resources while enhancing security against natural disasters, warfare, and cyber threats. The Freedom data center will provide resiliency, disaster recovery, and edge processing services for government and enterprise customers requiring the highest levels of data protection. The solar-powered data center leverages Solid-State Drives (SSDs) and a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) edge

Why DeepSeek Is Great for AI and HPC and Maybe No Big Deal for Data Centers

In the rapid and ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), the emergence of DeepSeek’s R1 model has sent ripples across industries. DeepSeek has been the data center industry’s topic of the week, for sure. The Chinese AI app surged to the top of US app store leaderboards last weekend, sparking a global selloff in technology shares Monday morning. But while some analysts predict a transformative impact within the industry, a closer examination suggests that, for data centers at large, the furor over DeepSeek might ultimately be much ado about nothing. DeepSeek’s Breakthrough in AI and HPC DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, this month unveiled its R1 model, claiming performance on par with, or even surpassing, leading models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 and Anthropic’s Claude-3.5-Sonnet. Remarkably, DeepSeek developed this model at a fraction of the cost typically associated with such advancements, utilizing a cluster of 256 server nodes equipped with 2,048 GPUs. This efficiency has been attributed to innovative techniques and optimized resource utilization. AI researchers have been abuzz about the performance of the DeepSeek chatbot that produces results similar to ChatGPT, but is based on open-source models and reportedly trained on older GPU chips. Some researchers are skeptical of claims about DeepSeek’s development costs and means, but its performance appears to challenge common assumptions about the computing cost of developing AI applications. This efficiency has been attributed to innovative techniques and optimized resource utilization. Market Reactions and Data Center Implications The announcement of DeepSeek’s R1 model led to significant market reactions, with notable declines in tech stocks, including a substantial drop in Nvidia’s valuation. This downturn was driven by concerns that more efficient AI models could reduce the demand for high-end hardware and, by extension, the expansive data centers that house them. For now, investors are re-assessing the

Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs). In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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