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....

As U.S. electricity demand rises and technology companies seek to build more and larger data centers to drive artificial intelligence systems, the main question arising is how to generate all that power. According to the International Energy Agency, large-scale data centers around the world used about 460 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2022, a figure that analysts expect to continue rising years into the future. One potential solution being proposed is nuclear energy ' produced by existing large-scale nuclear power plants, reactivated old ones, new ones that might be constructed with government subsidies, and other, smaller types of nuclear plants that are in development and not yet available. The discussion around powering AI data centers, in particular, has involved a type of nuclear power plant called a small modular reactor. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are about 70 different designs being researched and developed around the world, including reactors that could one day serve small or remote communities, military applications and even ships at sea or spacecraft....

Every year, companies and space agencies launch hundreds of rockets into space ' and that number is set to grow dramatically with ambitious missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. But these dreams hinge on one critical challenge: propulsion ' the methods used to push rockets and spacecraft forward. To make interplanetary travel faster, safer and more efficient, scientists need breakthroughs in propulsion technology. Artificial intelligence is one type of technology that has begun to provide some of these necessary breakthroughs. We're a team of engineers and graduate students who are studying how AI in general, and a subset of AI called machine learning in particular, can transform spacecraft propulsion. From optimizing nuclear thermal engines to managing complex plasma confinement in fusion systems, AI is reshaping propulsion design and operations. It is quickly becoming an indispensable partner in humankind's journey to the stars. Machine learning is a branch of AI that identifies patterns in data that it has not explicitly been trained on. It is a vast field with its own branches, with a lot of applications. Each branch emulates intelligence in different ways: by recognizing patterns, parsing and generating language, or learning from experience. This last subset in particular, commonly known as reinforcement learning, teaches machines to perform their tasks by rating their performance, enabling them to continuously improve through experience....

Livestreamers who watch SpaceX's Starbase complex closely caught the explosion in the pre-dawn hours Friday, around 4:00 a.m. local time. Other creators in the area have since captured photos that offer a closer look at the damage. Unlike the more fireball-type explosions SpaceX has dealt with while developing its rockets in the past, this one appears to have blown out an entire side of the lower section of the booster ' and left the rest of it standing. It also happened very early in the process. The booster didn't even have rocket engines installed yet, according to Ars Technica. The booster was the first major piece of what SpaceX is referring to as Starship version three, or 'V3.' Starship V3 is supposed to be larger, more powerful, more reliable, and capable of docking other Starships in orbit around the Earth ' a crucial piece of SpaceX's plan for getting to the moon and Mars. (The company flew the final V2 design in October.) The company has been aiming at a very busy 2026 for Starship. That includes demonstrating the ability to transfer fuel to Starship from a 'tanker' version of the rocket while in orbit. SpaceX needs to prove that capability to NASA before it can proceed with crewed missions to the moon, which it is reportedly targeting for 2028....