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The Titan submersible was crushed by intense water pressure beneath the North Atlantic Ocean in the summer of 2023. A catastrophic implosion instantly killed the four passengers and pilot, Stockton Rush, who was also the CEO of the company that owned the vessel. Two years later, the U.S. Coast Guard released a lengthy report saying the disaster could have been prevented, but deeply flawed safety procedures and efforts to avoid oversight had effectively doomed the vessel and all aboard. Things to know about Titan: What was the Titan? Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic shipwreck since 2021. Owned by OceanGate, a company based in Washington state, the final dive came on June 18, 2023. The submersible was reported overdue that afternoon, and ships, planes and equipment were rushed to the scene about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. Johns, Newfoundland. The Titanic rests on the ocean floor about 12,500 feet (3,800 meters) below the surface. Experts had cautioned that the submersible’s hull could implode under intense pressure at extreme depths. The craft’s design OceanGate touted Titans roomier cylinder-shaped cabin made of a carbon-fiber, although experts say it was a departure from the sphere-shaped cabins made of titanium used by most submersibles. A sphere is a perfect shape because water pressure is exerted equally on all areas, said Chris Roman, a professor at the University of Rhode Islands Graduate School of Oceanography. Titan had made more than two dozen deep-sea dives, which put repeated stress on the hull, said Jasper Graham-Jones, an associate professor of mechanical and marine engineering at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom. Investigators also found that Titan was stored outdoors over the Canadian winter, where its hull was exposed to temperature fluctuations that compromised the integrity of the vessel. The water pressure at the Titanic is roughly 400 atmospheres or 6,000 pounds per square inch. Arun Bansil, a Northeastern University physics professor, likened the pressure to the force of a “whale biting on somebody. The passengers probably would have had no idea what happened, Bansil said in 2023. What investigators said OceanGate had a culture of downplaying, ignoring and even falsifying key safety information to improve its reputation and dodge scrutiny from regulators, Coast Guard investigators found. OceanGate ignored red flags and had a toxic workplace culture, while its mission was hindered by lack of domestic and international framework for submersible operations, the report says. Numerous OceanGate employees have come forward since the implosion to support those claims. By strategically creating and exploiting regulatory confusion and oversight challenges, OceanGate was ultimately able to operate TITAN completely outside of the established deep-sea protocols, the report found. In addition to Rush, the implosion killed French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British adventurer Hamish Harding and two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood.
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E-Commerce
Shares of Palantir Technologies sailed past previous record highs Tuesday after booking its first $1 billion sales quarter and raising its performance expectations for the year. The stock rose above $170 on Tuesday after breaking previous records four times this year in the global artificial intelligence race. The previous high for the stock was set just over a week ago when its stock closed at $158.80. Since going public in 2020 when it posted a $1.17 billion annual loss, the artificial intelligence software company has swung swiftly to a profit and sales are booming. Profit rose 33% to $327 million in the second quarter. Its $1 billion quarterly revenue haul was fueled by a 53% spike in government sales, despite massive spending cuts under President Donald Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency, once led by the worlds richest man Elon Musk. DOGE has had zero negative impact on Palantirs U.S. government business, which achieved its fastest growth rate since the second quarter of 2021, wrote William Blair analysts Louie DiPalma and Bryce Sandberg. Palantir is clearly benefiting from AI industry momentum across its government and commercial customer bases. The company also recorded a 93% jump in business sales. Overall U.S. revenue surged 68% to $733 million. Late Monday, Palantir raised its annual revenue expectations to between $4.14 billion and $4.15 billion. It also raised its U.S. commercial revenue guidance to more than $1.3 billion, which would mean that Palantir achieved a growth rate of at least 85%. This was a phenomenal quarter, CEO Alex Karp said in a statement accompanying the earnings release. We continue to see the astonishing impact of AI leverage. Karp believes AI will benefit everyone, saying during a call with industry analysts on Monday that Palantir is, bullish on all aspects of American life, including and especially people in the blue collar.” He said Palantir wants to arm the working class or blue collar workers with AI agency enhancing skills, and said that the company will reach out to labor leaders to help familiarize workers with the technology. People with less than a college education are creating a lot value and sometimes more value than people with a college education using our product, Karp said. Palantir, headquartered in Denver, specializes in software platforms that pull together and analyze large amounts of data.
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E-Commerce
NASA wants to build a nuclear reactor on the surface of the moonand fast. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who is also serving as NASAs interim administrator, has issued new directives at the agency to speed up the timeline for a fission reactor designed to power human activity on the moon, even as the space agency faces deep cuts to other parts of its budget. The plot beat is straight out of sci-fi, but its also key to unlocking humanitys future on the moon, where two weeklong long lunar night cycles make storing solar energy a challenge. To properly advance this critical technology to be able to support a future lunar economy, high power energy generation on Mars, and to strengthen our national security in space, it is imperative the agency move quickly, Duffy wrote in an agency directive sent out late last week. Under Duffys more aggressive plan, NASA has been directed to put out a broad call encouraging private companies to craft designs for a powerful 100 kilowatt reactor that could be ready to go by 2030. Politico first reported the expedited plan for a lunar reactor, which a senior NASA official characterized as a priority for winning the second space race. NASAs lunar fission dreams The U.S. space agency has been working on designs for an energy source that could power lunar development for a few years now. In 2022, NASA doled out three $5 million contracts for concept designs for small nuclear fission reactors that could be used on the moon and adapted for future Mars exploration. Those designs each weighed under six metric tons and were capable of producing 40 kilowatts of electricity, ensuring enough for demonstration purposes and additional power available for running lunar habitats, rovers, backup grids, or science experiments. A demonstration of a nuclear power source on the Moon is required to show that it is a safe, clean, reliable option, director of Technology Demonstrations for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate Trudy Kortes said of the initiative, called the Fission Surface Power Project, last year. The lunar night is challenging from a technical perspective, so having a source of power such as this nuclear reactor, which operates independent of the Sun, is an enabling option for long-term exploration and science efforts on the Moon. Other nations plans The U.S. isnt alone in its ambitions for a sustainable source of power on the moonnor is its timing a coincidence. Russia and China are working together on a joint lunar program that could include building a nuclear reactor on the moons surface as soon as 2033. Russia’s former head of Roscosmos Yury Borisov said last year that Russia was seriously considering a projectsomewhere at the turn of 20332035to deliver and install a power unit on the lunar surface together with our Chinese colleagues. The project is viewed as a precursor to lunar colonization for both countries, enabling power production greater than what a solar array could generate. While that plan appears intact, Borisov was fired from his position earlier this year. Russia maintains ambitious plans for exploring the moon with an aggressive timeline, but the countrys space program faced a devastating setback when its first moon mission in almost 50 years smashed into the lunar surface. Beyond China, Russia is also partnering with North Korea, another U.S. adversary, when it comes to space. Former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned in January that Russia planned to share advanced satellite and other space technology with Pyongyang, an extension of the new military alliance between the two countries.The Biden administration maneuvered to block Russian plans to place an anti-satellite nuclear weapon in orbit, though that weapons program may be derailed for now after suffering a technical failure in April.
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E-Commerce
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