The startup plans to use large solar arrays in geosynchronous orbit ' about 22,000 miles above Earth where satellites match the planet's rotation ' to harvest sunlight. It will then use infrared lasers to transmit that power to utility-scale solar farms on Earth, allowing them to send power to the grid nearly round the clock. Overview has raised $20 million to date, and part of that money has gone toward an airborne demonstration of its power-beaming technology. A light aircraft transmitted power using a laser to a ground receiver over a distance of 5 kilometers (3 miles). There are still several hurdles to overcome: For one, it's still significantly cheaper to deploy solar panels here on Earth than to send them into space. And the ability to send power wirelessly from orbit down to our planet's surface is still in its infancy. Other companies are attempting the same feat. Aetherflux is also pursuing a laser-based approach. Others like Emrod and Orbital Composites/Virtus Solis are developing microwave-based power transmission, which sends energy wirelessly using a different portion of the electromagnetic spectrum than Aetherflux and Overview....
Crusoe will buy 29 of Boom's 42-megawatt turbines for $1.25 billion to generate 1.21 gigawatts for its data centers. Boom said it will announce more details about a turbine factory next year, with first deliveries occurring in 2027. To commercialize its Superpower stationary turbine, Boom raised $300 million in a round led by Darsana Capital Partners with participation from Altimeter Capital, Ark Invest, Bessemer Venture Partners, Robinhood Ventures, and Y Combinator. It's an arrangement that Scholl likens to SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation. The satellite internet service is reportedly profitable, helping the company to bankroll the development of its rockets. 'I've been kind of keeping my eyes open for 10 years for what could be our Starlink,' he said. 'I said no to a thousand things because I concluded they were distractions. This one we're saying yes to because it's so clearly on path.' Boom said Superpower and its airborne engine called Symphony share 80% of their parts. Earlier this year, Boom's XB-1 demonstrator was the first civil aircraft developed by a private company to break the sound barrier....
In December 2011, the CIA lost control of a stealth drone near the Iranian city of Kashmar, about 140 miles from the Afghanistan border, and it wound up in the regime's possession. On state television, the Iranian military displayed the boomerang-shaped craft like a trophy. Triumphant banners beneath its 30-foot wings said, in Farsi, THE US CAN'T MESS WITH US and WE'LL CRUSH AMERICA UNDERFOOT. The cause of the crash was a mystery. Had the Lockheed Martin drone'a multimillion-dollar RQ-170 Sentinel'simply gone off course' Or had Iranian hackers commandeered the aircraft, demonstrating the prowess of a growing cyberarmy that had already alarmed U.S. officials' Just over four years later, in April 2016, a known Iranian hacker group named Parastoo'the Farsi word for 'swallow,' the small bird'posted its email address to a cybersecurity message board, inviting journalists to ask it about what had happened to the drone. In my experience covering national security, people who claim to have 'the real story' are usually quacks or kooks. Still, I figured it was worth an email....
The suspected drug traffickers, the lone survivors of a U.S. airstrike, were sprawled on a table-size piece of floating wreckage in the Caribbean for more than 40 minutes. They were unarmed, incommunicado, and adrift as they repeatedly attempted to right what remained of their boat. At one point, the men raised their arms and seemed to signal to the U.S. aircraft above, a gesture some who watched a video of the incident interpreted as a sign of surrender. Then a second explosion finished the men off, leaving only a bloody stain on the surface of the sea. Footage of the two men's desperate final moments made some viewers nauseated, leading one to nearly vomit. 'It was worse than we had been led to believe,' one person told us. The video was part of a briefing that Admiral Frank 'Mitch' Bradley, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, gave lawmakers yesterday about the September 2 attack. Bradley told legislators that, after consulting military lawyers, he authorized the follow-on strike, judging that the men still posed a threat because of what they could have done: radioed for help or been picked up with what remained of their cargo of suspected cocaine. The video suggested they didn't actually do any of that, but Bradley defended his decisions in the first episode of the Trump administration's newly militarized counternarcotics campaign....
