Reading List 10/25/25

Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at jet engine-powered data centers, Brightline train deaths, cracks in a super thin skyscraper, a Chinese particle accelerator, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.

Some housekeeping items this week:

• No essay this week, but a longer piece on how Britain lost its shipbuilding industry will be out next week.

• My book’s Amazon listing is still goofed up (though I’m hopeful it will get fixed soon) — it’s still only available from 3rd party sellers with very long shipping times. I’d recommend ordering from Barnes and Noble or Bookshop in the meantime.

• The book had a nice review in the Wall Street Journal.

Jet engines for data centers

Gas turbine power plants and jet engines share a lot of similarities, to the point where some gas turbine power plants are “aeroderiviatives” which are based on the design of a jet engine. Because the backlog for new gas turbine power plants is so long, and because some data centers want their power now, some data center buildings are turning to repurposed jet engines to supply power. Via Data Center Dynamics:

The PE6000 gas turbines are made through retrofitting old CF6-80C2 jet engine cores and matching them with newly manufactured aero-derivative parts made by ProEnergy or its partners.

To make jet engines suitable for use as power generators, they are modified with an expanded turbine section to convert engine thrust into shaft power, a series of struts and supports to mount them on a concrete deck or steel frame, and new controls. Following assembly, the engines can supply 48MW of capacity.

“We have sold 21 gas turbines for two data center projects amounting to more than 1GW,” said Landon Tessmer, VP of commercial operations at ProEnergy. “Both projects are expected to provide bridging power for five to seven years, which is when they expect to have grid interconnection and no longer need permanent behind-the-meter generation.

Powerships

In other “unusual sources of power” news, this week I learned about powerships, which are basically floating power plants built into the hull of a ship. One such ship, provided by the firm Karpowership, was from 2018 until earlier