You don’t get to see inside the construction of a composites-intensive supersonic jet very often! Boom Supersonic is building a demonstrator aircraft for their planned supersonic passenger jet – and they’re posting lots of interesting information, video and pictures of the process.
- Read about it on their blog: An Inside Look at the Build of Boom’s Supersonic Demonstrator
- Check out the Boom XB-1 section of their website: Meet XB-1
From the looks of it there are lots of nice pieces of tooling and out-of-autoclave pre-preg parts. There’s a lot of interesting one-off assembly fixturing too. From what I can see it looks like a slightly fussier version of the race-boat building world that I am familiar with – lots of manual laminating, fitting, prepping and bonding! Lots of metrology equipment and ultrasonic testing too – but plenty of wood jigs and modular ovens made of foam. It will be fun so watch them finish the build and move on to testing and flying!