For the first time in my timezone, SpaceX completed 9 launches in a month. Previously, if you were based in Europe, you saw 9 launches in a month a few months ago. At 9 launches/month that is a current rate of 108 launches/year, making SpaceX’s goal of 100 launches this year a possibility.

They had a lot of trouble getting this flight off today as a recent hurricane is still affecting the weather some. They got around this by having a 5 and a half hour launch window so they just waited a few hours until the weather was clear for several minutes and they launched!

They were supposed to launch today from California as well but weather stopped this and they will be launching from California… More.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is set to lift the next batch of 22 Starlink v2 Mini satellites into orbit at a 43 degree inclination on a southeastern trajectory from SLC-40. The window opens August 31 at 7:31PM EDT and closes at 01:01AM EDT.

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SpaceX set a new record and did a launch at the same tower only 3 days, 22 hours, and 33 minutes after the last launch there. And this was after the launch was rescheduled due to bad weather.

If SpaceX could maintain a pace of once every 4 days for all 3 towers, they would be doing about 274 launches/year! While they clearly won’t launch that fast in the near future, they are gaining steam. And they are working on activating a fourth tower!

Finally, on the last Falcon Heavy launch, this complex beast had to abort the launch because a part had failed. SpaceX swapped out the part and then launched two days later. Imagine how long a regular space organization would have taken to swap out a part!

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was set to launch the Starlink-96 (6–8) mission on Monday, August 7, 2023 at 2:41 AM (UTC).

Proof that there are still important things that humans can do but AIs can’t!

He might not be running on Dunkin’ anytime soon, but Australia’s James Webb set a new world record after devouring 59 and a half donuts in eight minutes at a competition in San Diego on Friday.

The event was part of National Donut Day World Donut Eating Championship on the USS Midway and a sanctioned Major League Eating event.

The previous standing world record was a mere 55 donuts in eight minutes, which Webb smashed through. The next closest competitor, Nick Wehry, could only manage 54.75 donuts.

I had a tricky systems administration problem and couldn’t find anything with Google search so I spoke with ChatGPT and was given an answer as shown in the screenshot above.

Note that regular ChatGPT isn’t smart enough to answer this question but ChatGPT Plus (GPT-4) is.

In case anyone is wondering how advances like ChatGPT are possible while Moore’s Law is dramatically slowing down, here’s what is happening:

Nvidia’s latest chip, the H100, can do 34 teraFLOPS of FP64 which is the standard 64-bit standard that supercomputers are ranked at. But this same chip can do 3,958 teraFLOPS of FP8 Tensor Core. FP8 is 8 times less precise than FP64. Also, Tensor Cores accelerate matrix operations, particularly matrix multiplication and accumulation, which are used extensively in deep learning calculations.

So by specializing in operations that AI cares about, the speed of the computer is increased by over 100 times!

A massive leap in accelerated compute.

With Starlink now profitable, SpaceX’s need for launches is now virtually infinite. So they just got permission to create a fourth tower for Falcon 9 / Falcon Heavy which means that at least one more drone ship is under construction.

Col. Rob Long, Space Launch Delta 30 commander, signed a statement of support on April 21, 2023, granting SpaceX permission to lease Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) for Falcon rocket launches.

SLC-6 previously supported the Delta IV vehicle family and has remained vacant since the final Delta IV Heavy launch on Sept. 24, 2022.

The decision is the result of SLD 30’s launch pad allocation strategy, which is a process to evaluate the suitability of various launch sites for different types of rockets and payloads. The process is critical to ensuring that launches are safe, and that the selected launch site can accommodate the unique requirements of each mission. This was the first round of launch pad allocations, and additional rounds of allocations will occur in the future after further operational analysis.

SpaceX just did their second launch of V2 Mini satellites. Their first launch was two months ago and some satellites were lost as their new tech didn’t work on all satellites. Well, SpaceX has solved the bugs, and launched a second batch. Once the bugs are 100% solved, all future Starlink launches will only contain these new satellites.

These higher capacity satellites service about 33% more customers per pound of satellite than the V1.5 Starlink satellites.

SpaceX launched its second batch of upgraded Starlink satellites after some of the first version 2 (v2) buses deorbited earlier than planned. Liftoff aboard a Falcon 9 rocket occurred April 19 at 10:31 AM EDT (14:31 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

This mission launched 21 of the Starlink v2 satellites into low Earth orbit. In December 2022, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gave SpaceX approval to launch up to 7,500 next-generation Starlink satellites, known as Gen 2. That’s still a much smaller number than the original 29,988 the company originally requested.

These upgraded satellites will eventually be operating in circular orbits with altitudes of 525,530, and 535 km and inclinations of 53, 43, and 33 degrees, respectively, using frequencies in the Ku-and Ka-band.

One thing that is not really making the news is that South Korea is becoming a major military power. For example, France has recently committed to providing 2,000 155 mm shells to Ukraine per month, as reported at https://kyivindependent.com/france-to-double-supply-of-155-m…o-ukraine/. Meanwhile, South Korea has just committed to providing 500,000 155 mm shells to Ukraine in one big batch as reported at https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/south-korea-to-lend-500…r-AA19LIgJ. (They are giving the shells to the U.S. who will then give the same quantity of shells to Ukraine.

By Hyonhee Shin SEOUL (Reuters)-South Korea has reached an agreement to lend the United States 500,000 rounds of 155mm artillery shells that could give Washington greater flexibility to supply Ukraine with ammunition, a South Korean newspaper reported on Wednesday. The DongA Ilbo newspaper cited unidentified government sources as saying South Korea decided to “lend” the ammunition instead of selling, to minimise the possibility of South Korean shells being used in the Ukraine conflict.

Quantum networking uses subatomic matter to deliver data in a way that goes beyond today’s fiber-optic systems. Amazon wants to grow diamonds which would be part of a component that lets the data travel farther without breaking down.

Pretty futuristic!

Amazon.com Inc. is teaming up with a unit of De Beers Group to grow artificial diamonds, betting that custom-made gems could could help revolutionize computer networks.

This is pretty cool, I just learned from our Felix Schlang that SpaceX operates a hovercraft, kinda of like the hovercraft that Luke used in the original Star Wars movie.

SpaceX is using this to get between two locations that are about an hour apart by road, but only 15 minutes apart via sea. A hovercraft hovers over land or water and is ideal for this purpose.

Here’s a short video of the hovercraft in action:

Here’s Felix’s video that mentions the hovercraft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiYCL-sgPDA

The morning ride from South Padre Island to SpaceX build site in south Texas.
Dec 7, 2022

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