Move fast and don't break (safety critical) things

Boom argues that fast hardware development depends on reducing the cost of iteration. The company says it built XB-1 with a small team and a fraction of the usual budget, and that it could have gone faster still if it had known then what it knows now.

Reading notes

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• Boom says its engineering culture is built around iteration and lowering the cost of repeating analysis.
• The company embeds software engineers inside hardware teams and expects hardware engineers to code as well.
• Engineers are expected to “invent together,” with software people learning the hardware domain and hardware people contributing code.
• Boom says it builds software practices like automated unit testing and continuous integration into hardware workflows.
• This approach produced mkBoom, its internal airplane design software.
• mkBoom automates aircraft-level analysis for weights, propulsion, and aerodynamics.
• Engineers can define an airplane parametrically in a configuration file and run a quick analysis in minutes.
• Overnight runs provide higher-fidelity simulations.
• Boom says this lets small teams evaluate many more designs and find better ones.
• The article gives an example from Overture passenger experience, where a cabin concept required fuselage changes that initially appeared to cost 1,000 miles of range.
• Boom used joint simulation of Overture and the Symphony engine inside mkBoom to search engine and airplane design options together.
• After evaluating multiple engine variants, Boom says it found a better design in two weeks.
• The chosen changes recovered more than 1,000 miles of range and preserved acoustic margin for quiet takeoff and landing.
• Boom connects those changes to Boomless Cruise on Overture.
• The article ends by saying better tools reduce repetitive work and help the company build small teams it can hire selectively into.