Move fast and don't break safety critical things

Boom Supersonic treats the airplane as a software product, wiring every design change into a continuous integration pipeline. Engineers push code that automatically updates digital twins, runs safety-critical simulations, and flags regressions before any physical prototype is built. This approach collapses weeks of manual testing into minutes, letting the team move fast without sacrificing certification standards.

The core insight is that software tooling can enforce safety constraints the same way it enforces code quality. By codifying material properties, stress limits, and regulatory checks, the same CI system that catches a typo also catches a structural flaw. The team can experiment with new wing shapes or propulsion concepts, get instant feedback, and iterate with confidence that every build meets the same safety envelope.

For technical leaders, the article demonstrates a concrete path to embed software practices into hardware teams: adopt version-controlled models, automate simulation suites, and treat safety requirements as test cases. The result is a faster development cadence, reduced reliance on costly physical prototypes, and a culture where safety is baked into the development workflow rather than bolted on at the end.