Yes but think of the billionaires. They don’t give a fuck about you.
Their private jets won’t have the queues for boarding or the crowding, they won’t be corralled like cattle that shop hours early into highly profitable retail real estate, they won’t be delayed by security theatre (they can bring their guns, drugs, and human traffic with no fuss, prearranged and whisked past the thirsty sweating mooing crowd).
Supersonic travel looks a whole lot more attractive from that perspective.
For decades, aerospace engineers have attempted to design supersonic jets that could achieve incredible speeds without rattling windows and angering residents of inhabited areas below the planes’ flight paths.
Did they? Because my understanding is the we mostly stopped bothering putting resources into civilian supersonic flight, and the military didn’t care about sonic booms. Then, when we finally started applying modern tools to the problem, innovation happened at roughly the rate you’d expect for any major advance in aviation.
What is the rate that you’d expect for “any major advance in aviation”? Because that’s been very inconsistent over time. We went from the Wright Brothers’ first flight to a cosmonaut in orbit in just 58 years. For commercial air travel the time between the debut of the Ford Trimotor and the de Havilland Comet passenger jet was just 24 years.
Boom Technology is probably the biggest private company working on a supersonic passenger aircraft. They were founded in 2014 and currently have ambitions to introduce a passenger jet in 2029. I really doubt they’ll make that timeline.
From a couple years ago there was this fly-by in Brazil that shattered the courthouse windows
I know, right? This is money that could have far better been spent on efforts to decarbonize air travel.
These days, largely due to high safety standards, I’d say typically the time to actually getting in planes is 10-30 years depending on how extensive of a change it is, starting from how early of a TRL. (I’m a consultant and former analyst who has done a lot of work with aerospace companies, but not an aerospace industry expert by any means, so interpret accordingly).
Does boom have any trousers, I had just assumed it was more vapour ware?
They’ve built a “Technology Demonstrator” plane called the XB-1 that is supposed to start flying over Edwards Air Force Base starting this year. But it’s hard to say how significant that really is. This small plane is a significantly different design from any future airliner, and the testing is already years behind schedule.
David Frost used it almost to commute between London and New York.
During his career as a broadcaster, Frost became one of [Concorde]
(Concorde - Wikipedia)'s most frequent fliers, having flown between London and New York an average of 20 times per year for 20 years
3 hours flight time compared to 8 or so is a big difference!
If you’re an extremely well-funded person doing transatlantic flights every week or two, maybe. It’s not a time savings worth thousands of dollars for the vast majority of fliers though. Plus you’d have to be some kind of sociopath to ignore the environmental cost—the Concorde used four times as much fuel as a 747 and only had a fifth the passenger capacity.
… inefficient? wasteful? warming the globe? 
Gulfstream patented the Quiet Spike in 2004. So, yes, I guess this latest effort to reduce sonic booms has technically lasted “decades” (20 years).
But you’re right: I don’t think this was an active area of research between the shutdown of the American SST program around 1970 until the prospect of a supersonic business jet started to look promising in the late 90s.
I agree. That having been said: Jets are already certified to fly on biofuel, it’s only a matter of airlines choosing to buy it instead of fossil fuel. (Yes, I know that it takes energy to make and transport biofuel, so it’s not totally carbon-neutral yet, but it would be a big step, especially since it does not sacrifice the capabilities of the airplanes, and doesn’t require any new technologies to be developed, or even any modifications to be made to airplanes). Yes, I would also love aviation to consist largely of zero-emission electric airplanes (ideally powered by hydrogen, since batteries only allow for short range) but I know we’re years away from that, at best.
For what it’s worth NASA also is involved with a variety of programs to test Sustainable Aviation Fuels. I don’t know how their budget for those efforts compare to the supersonic research though.
Okay, sonic boomer.
As a person who has lived the last 25 years under a final approach flight path just a few miles south of MSP airport, I can say that I notice very much when planes aren’t following noise abatement restrictions, as they really stand out.
The loudest airplane in recent memory was the Ukrainian built An-225, which was the largest capacity air freight hauler on the planet. I drove to the airport to watch that beast depart. (It was destroyed on the ground at Antonov Airport a couple years ago by Russia during their invasion. 
)
Prior to that, I still remember the incredible noise from Gorbachev’s Ilyusian Il-62 when he stopped in on his tour of America, and having sympathy for the people of Moscow who had to live with those noisy jets constantly.
Whatever work is being done to reduce airport noise is definitely noticeable.
There is the wider issue that a widespread switch to bio-fuel would almost certainly lead to more deforestation as late-stage capitalists realised there was money to be made in growing mono-crops specifically for this purpose on a massive scale. And/or land used productively for food would be switched to growing said crops.
There is also the extremely non-trivial task of manufacturing a useful proportion of the ~100 billion gallons of fuel that is burnt each year by the global aviation industry.
It is technically possible to make sustainable fuels without biomass by sucking carbon out of the air, with the caveat that it requires lots of electricity to run the process. This is known as “power-to-liquid” fuel and there are several small-scale demonstration projects in the works, although it’s probably not something that would be remotely economically viable anytime soon.
One big drawback is that even if the process is run on 100% clean & renewable electric power, that same power would be better put to use in replacing coal power plants, reducing the carbon footprint for cement production, or similar dirty earth-bound processes for the forseeable future. But if we do eventually have a surplus of clean electric power someday then it would be a good option, so I’m glad they’re researching it. Seems more achievable than large electric passenger jets that are battery powered with the same speed and range capabilities of existing jets
