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Convair’s Super-NEXUS—a visionary leap into spaceflight—was no ordinary vehicle. This partially reusable, Single-Stage-to-Orbit (SSTO) behemoth was designed to carry an astounding 2 million pounds of payload, making it a true giant of its time. Imagine a colossal structure that stood 400 feet tall, towering over even the mighty Saturn V, which itself reached a height of 363 feet. With a staggering diameter of 150 feet, the NEXUS would have dwarfed its predecessors in both size and capability.

But sheer size is only part of the story. In its largest proposed variant, the Super-NEXUS would have weighed an almost incomprehensible 48 million pounds when fully fueled—compared to the Saturn V’s comparatively modest 6.5 million pounds. This weight discrepancy highlights the ambitious scale of the project. The NEXUS wasn’t just a bigger rocket; it was an entirely new class of spacecraft, designed to deliver an unprecedented payload of 2 million pounds to low Earth orbit—more than eight times the capacity of the Saturn V.

And the innovation didn’t stop there. Unlike traditional one-and-done rockets, the Super-NEXUS was envisioned as a reusable marvel. It was designed not just to launch and land, but to land vertically on the ocean’s surface after each mission. Once safely aloft, the massive vehicle would be towed back to port by ships, ready to be refurbished and launched again. This ambitious dream, while never realized, pointed toward a future where space travel was as routine as any other form of transportation.

Such a vision was perhaps too far ahead of its time—but the audacity and scope of the Super-NEXUS continue to inspire, underscoring the boundless potential of human ingenuity in the quest to conquer the stars.

Continue reading “Super Nexus: Nuclear Powered Rocket” | >

For the first time in history, scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may have uncovered evidence of dark stars, colossal celestial objects powered not by nuclear fusion but by the enigmatic annihilation of dark matter. If confirmed, these mysterious entities could rewrite our understanding of the early universe and the nature of dark matter.

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TVA has selected the BWRX-300 SMR for potential deployment at the Clinch River Site near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. If the funding is approved, TVA plans to accelerate construction of the first SMR, with commercial operations planned for 2033.

“Nuclear power has a key role to play in reaching a cleaner and more secure energy future,” said Scott Strazik, CEO, GE Vernova.

“Funding from this grant would play a critical role in the path forward, and we look forward to working with TVA and this strong team of utility and supply chain partners to accelerate the roll-out of small modular reactors in the United States.”

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In today’s AI news, a new $500 billion, private sector investment to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US, with Oracle, ChatGPT creator OpenAI, and Japanese conglomerate SoftBank among those committing to the project. The joint venture, called Stargate, is expected to begin with a data center project in Texas.

In other advancements, Perplexity has launched an aggressive bid to capture the enterprise AI search market, unveiling Sonar, an API service that outperforms offerings from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic on key benchmarks while also undercutting their prices. Perplexity — now valued at $9 billion — directly challenges larger competitors.

And, Santee Cooper, the big power provider in South Carolina, has tapped financial advisers to look for buyers that can restart construction on a pair of nuclear reactors that were mothballed years ago. The state-owned utility is betting interest will be strong, with tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft in need of clean energy to fuel AI.

Then, Google is making a fresh investment of more than $1 billion into AI startup Anthropic, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. This comes after Reuters and other media reported earlier in January that Anthropic was nearing a $2 billion fundraise in a round, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, valuing the firm at about $60 billion.

In videos, Indeed CEO Chris Hyams, and Stanford Digital Economy Lab Director Erik Brynjolfsson, join Bloomberg’s Work for a discussion on the key trends impacting employees and employers in 2025 and beyond.

Continue reading “US 0 Billion ‘Stargate’ AI Venture Fund Headed By Oracle, OpenAI, And SoftBank” | >

In a pioneering approach to achieve fusion energy, the SMART device has successfully generated its first tokamak plasma. This step brings the international fusion community closer to achieving sustainable, clean, and virtually limitless energy through controlled fusion reactions.

The work is published in the journal Nuclear Fusion.

The SMART tokamak, a state-of-the-art experimental fusion device designed, constructed and operated by the Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Laboratory of the University of Seville, is a unique spherical tokamak due to its flexible shaping capabilities. SMART has been designed to demonstrate the unique physics and engineering properties of Negative Triangularity shaped plasmas towards compact fusion power plants based on Spherical Tokamaks.

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The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), commonly known as China’s “artificial sun,” has achieved a remarkable scientific milestone by maintaining steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for an impressive 1,066 seconds. This accomplishment, reached on Monday, sets a new world record and marks a significant breakthrough in the pursuit of fusion power generation.

The duration of 1,066 seconds is a critical advancement in fusion research. This milestone, achieved by the Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) at Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, far surpasses the previous world record of 403 seconds, also set by EAST in 2023.

The ultimate goal of developing an artificial sun is to replicate the nuclear fusion processes that occur in the sun, providing humanity with a limitless and clean energy source, and enabling exploration beyond our solar system.

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Astrophysicists have long been intrigued by the possibility of dark stars-massive celestial objects fueled not by nuclear fusion but by the enigmatic energy of dark matter. Thanks to images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the scientific community has perhaps also found signs of such elusive entities. Could these dark stars, which shine billions of times brighter than our sun, rewrite the story of the universe’s infancy?

Dark stars, despite the word “dark”, are hypothesized luminous sources that may have existed in the universe’s infancy. In contrast to traditional stars that work with nuclear fusion, dark stars are speculated to obtain their energy from self-annihilation of dark matter particles.

As a result, energy is released that warms the ambient hydrogen and helium, and this leads the primordial clouds to glow brightly and expand to enormous scale-some up to a million times mass of the sun. These stars may have also been born in “minihaloes”, dense pockets of dark matter in the early universe.

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Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is developing a tokamak device called SPARC. The company aims to demonstrate the critical fusion energy milestone of producing more output power than input power for the first time in a device that can scale up to commercial power plant size. However, this achievement is only possible if the plasma doesn’t melt the device.

Researchers from CFS and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have collaborated on fusion boundary research through a series of projects, including ORNL Strategic Partnership Projects and Laboratory Directed Research and Development projects, work under the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE), and other work in partnership with General Atomics.

Throughout this collaboration, ORNL has developed simulation capabilities required to address critical and time-sensitive design issues for the SPARC .

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