Really Rocket Science

I'm impressed.  Really impressed.  I think this calls for the first space-based human vs. computer chess tournament. Any takers? Check out what our fine computer scientists and mechanical engineers at Los Alamost National Laboratory are cooking up for us: 

Los Alamos National Laboratory has announced funding of a new space payload which dramatically increases on-orbit computational capabilities. The project is jointly sponsored by the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Office of Nonproliferation Research and Development (NA-22), and the U.S. Department of Defense.

The experimental payload will demonstrate and validate technologies offering more than 1,000 Giga Operations-per-second (GOps) processing capability for Software-Defined Radio (SDR) functions in space. SDR is a technology of interest to the military to support tactical communications and to commercial television and radio broadcasting. The payload computer's signal-processing capability of 1,000 GOps is approximately the same as supercomputers of the last decade, which occupied 50,000 cubic feet and used 50 kW of power. This new payload, by contrast, is designed to weigh 40 pounds and consume only 80 watts, a performance which is enabled by state-of-the-art, 90-nanometer Virtex-4 silicon-chip technology from Xilinx, Inc.

Technorati Tags: Los+Alamos computers super+computers space chess

It's not everyday you get to launch a Crayon. Trailer Trash Aerospace (what a name...) gives us the lowdown on how they made this happen:

The crayon came from our "need" for a cheep 4" rocket to test our 54 mm motors, at $6 for the airframe and nose cone the cheep part is covered! It has proven to be very sturdy by landing several times with the laundry still safely tucked in the airframe! The drawback is due to the plastic tail cone, they are somewhat labor intensive to build. Only a couple of pictures were taken of the build, when we make an another one we will shoot more!

So what would you call it if you get all the colors in a Crayola box up in the air at the same time?