Erin Young joined the XB-1 supersonic aircraft project in 2016 when it was five people modeling designs in a basement. She traces the journey from computer models through building the airframe, ground tests at Mojave, and finally flight, showing how hands-on engineering turns supersonic concepts into reality.
This is a level of engineering and hard work that could compel someone to have a momentary spell of patriotism, as we're reminded that America still knows how to make things. The company started at Blake's house back in 2014, and some people like Erin Young have been along for the entire ride.
It's been a really fun journey. I started, um, back in early 2016. I walked into Blake's basement and it's 5 of guys kind of sitting in the dark with their computer screens glowing. And somehow in that moment, Blake's pitch really convinced me that if someone's going to do this, it's this group of people. Although it's been a long time, it's actually kind of the dream in engineering and especially in aviation. A lot of the products that are out there in aviation stay theoretical, especially if they're supersonic. So I got to come in and from nothing on a computer screen. We generated the model for XB-1, how we're actually going to make this aircraft look and function. Then we got to build it. Then we got to test it in the hangar, and then we got to test it in Mojave on the runway, taxi testing. And then we finally get to flight test it. In aviation, you can't learn the final lesson until you actually fly it. So getting to do that whole life cycle really lets you see the engineering come to life and makes it all
