[QUOTE=Nick;462802]Press article (in English): [URL]http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40513818[/URL][/QUOTE]

I think this is the first mission that will use a solar-electric third stage, though it also has a chemical engine for the Earth-departure and Mercury-capture impulse burns

Monday's scheduled SpaceX includes some High performance computing hardware that is Not specifically hardened for military/space. They plan to run it for a year and see how tunable parameters help resilience/reliability.

[URL="https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/11/why-hpe-is-sending-a-supercomputer-to-the-iss-on-spacexs-next-rocket/"]Why HPE is sending a supercomputer to the ISS on SpaceX’s next rocket[/URL]
[URL="https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/08/11/one-small-step-toward-supercomputers-space/"]One Small Step Toward Supercomputers in Space[/URL]
[QUOTE]The system itself is running standard RHEL 6.8 across its benchmark suite and has features common to much larger supercomputers, including the Infiniband connections. “We went with the 56Gb/s optical interconnect because we imagined with copper, we would get more of a reaction from the radiation and magnetic fields. We also eliminated the spinning rust—there is no traditional hard disk because it would be affected by the same conditions. On each node there are eight solid state disks; four of those are small but fast, the others are large but slow so we can see what effects there might be on one versus the other,” Fernandez explains.

Overall, the miniature space supercomputer is capable of a teraflop of performance—an order of magnitude above anything that is aboard ISS currently. While it is far from a Top 500-class system (after all, this is just two nodes), Fernadez says he can see a future where they scale this to a large number of nodes for more ISS compute capability. The goal for now, however, is determine what (if any) effects real-world applications will suffer in terms of errors in particular.

“We are taking a macro look at hardening a system for space conditions. Traditional hardening looks at a specific type of radiation or magnetic field then analyzes the physics to see what components might be affected to guide the protection or build strategy,” Fernandez says. “There are many knobs to turn that we usually don’t touch in the BIOS, CPU speeds, memory, and turbo modes.” He adds that there are parallel systems at the company’s labs in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin that are serving as the control group to compare HPL and other results with. The systems are running tests in 2.5 hour increments constantly and will continue for the next year.[/QUOTE]

[url]http://www.wftv.com/news/local/spacex-set-to-launch-iss-resupply-mission-monday/590439843[/url]
[QUOTE]The launch window is set for 12:31 p.m. Monday with weather forecasts showing a 70 percent likelihood of favorable conditions during the launch window.[/QUOTE]

Spacex's stage one reentry/landing was pretty coming back to the Florida cape. This url is a jump to that time:
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLxWsYx8dbo&feature=youtu.be&t=1034[/url]

Full video:
[YOUTUBE]vLxWsYx8dbo[/YOUTUBE]

Can some one remind me how many orbital flights Blue Origin has? How many up to 150 miles and landing?

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;465550]Can some one remind me how many orbital flights Blue Origin has? How many up to 150 miles and landing?[/QUOTE]

I believe none so far, though I may well be mistaken. They've focused on developing the reusability technology before scaling that to orbital -- a very, very different approach from the one taken by SpaceX (probably driven by the fact that Bezos was significantly richer than Musk, and still is even, though perhaps by a lesser factor than previously).

Another day, another rocket. Today's launch from Vandenberg and stage one drone-ship landing possibly lost lots of money because it is fulfilling a commitment for a long-delayed satellite launch that was purchased inexpensively and stayed with SpaceX despite scheduling setbacks.

[URL="https://www.wired.com/story/spacex-will-lose-millions-on-its-taiwanese-satellite-launch/"]SPACEX WILL LOSE MILLIONS ON ITS TAIWANESE SATELLITE LAUNCH[/URL]

SpaceX launched, and landed, another rocket today. I guess it's starting to become somewhat normalized.

:smile:

[QUOTE=Dubslow;467352]SpaceX launched, and landed, another rocket today. I guess it's starting to become somewhat normalized.

:smile:[/QUOTE]
Do we know the price per pound to send stuff up? I figure that should be the metric that really tells us how far we're getting. Or, price per kilogram for the non-Americans.

I think someone once said if we can get to below $100/pound, that's when things would really start to take off. But opinions are like buttholes, we all have them and they all stink.

(just added buttholes to the local dictionary, guess I've never used that word on this install)

[QUOTE=jasong;467515]Do we know the price per pound to send stuff up? I figure that should be the metric that really tells us how far we're getting. Or, price per kilogram for the non-Americans.
[/QUOTE]

Depends on the orbit, and currently prices are still mostly flat per mission regardless of customer payload.

But, they can do around 10,000 kilograms to LEO or ~5,000 kg to GTO for ~$60M, though prices may drop in the near future as reuse picks up steam.

The arithmetic is left as an exercise for the reader.

[URL="http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/organizations/space-exploration-technologies/spacex-launches-10-iridium-next-satellites-iridium-3-mission/"]SPACEX LAUNCHES 10 IRIDIUM NEXT SATELLITES ON IRIDIUM-3 MISSION[/URL]
[QUOTE]The Oct. 9 launch was the 42nd Falcon 9 flight since the rocket design began flying in 2010 – the 14th in 2017. It was also the 6th SpaceX mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base, four of which occurred in 2017.

[B]Should the next Falcon 9 launch on schedule, it will fly less than 60 hours later at 6:53 p.m. (22:53 GMT) Oct. 11, 2017, from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A in Florida.[/B] That launch will see the SES-11 satellite orbited for Luxembourg-based SES. Additionally, it will utilize a “flight-proven” booster that was first launched during the CRS-10 mission in February 2017. This will also be the first repeat customer to fly on a reused booster.[/QUOTE]

And they did it again.