The real BOOM

On July 25, 1997, the first Boom, a psychedelic festival that brought together 3,500 people that year on the shores of a Portuguese lake, ended. Three years later, on July 25, 2000, another kind of boom occurred in the skies over Paris, shaking the aviation world. The fatal Concorde crash, the only one ever suffered by this type of aircraft, marked the beginning of the end of the supersonic era of commercial aviation.

If the Boom festival, now approaching its 30th anniversary, grew organically, almost tribally, to the 40,000 people who celebrate it today as a ritual of reconnection, art, and environmental awareness, the Concorde, a European achievement and symbol of a future in a hurry, flew for nearly three decades with a mixture of admiration and unease. It carried 2.5 million passengers, but never amounted to more than a flying luxury: restricted, noisy, unsustainable. When it exploded, it took with it a mix of dream and nightmare.

Now, a new company—this time American, called Boom Supersonic—promises to revive supersonic aircraft from the ashes. Is this the right direction for mobility? Leaving the Boom festival in Idanha-a-Nova covered in mud for Alcochete, crossing half a burning country by road, complying with all airport protocols, and waiting in a duty-free shop until boarding a new Concorde? Is this a return to a technological race of the past, or a genuine promise of the future?

While the Boom festival focuses on proximity, sustainability, and sensory and human experience, Boom Supersonic insists on speed as a technological fetish. A recent experiment may help refine the debate: an electric plane flew 133 km with four passengers, consuming only 7% of the energy of a conventional aircraft. Aviation—like any other form of mobility—needs to reconcile itself with the planet, and perhaps the next revolution will come from another place, the massive development of which we witness every day: autonomous, silent, affordable drones, increasingly used in war scenarios, just as military aviation preceded civil aviation in the First and Second World Wars.

I believe the next BOOM may not be the audible result of breaking the sound barrier, but rather the result of an idea that matures in silence. What if, next time we go to the Boom festival, we order a drone from our cell phone to pick us up on our street? No airports, no runways, nothing. On the way back, just wipe off the mud before boarding to avoid getting dirty. Thanks, and have a good trip!