Month: May 2022

Enlarge / An artist's rendering of Star Harbor Academy in Colorado. (credit: Star Harbor)

A group of astronauts, engineers, and business executives is betting on a vibrant space economy by launching a new initiative called "Star Harbor." Among several planned activities, this spaceflight campus would train future astronauts and make facilities such as a neutral buoyancy laboratory and high-gravity centrifuge publicly available.

Star Harbor has already acquired 53 acres in Lone Tree, Colorado, for about $25 million, said Star Harbor founder and Chief Executive Maraia Tanner in an interview. The company plans to open the mixed-use development campus, just south of Denver, beginning in 2026.

The centerpiece of the new development will be Star Harbor Academy, Tanner said, estimating its development cost at $120 million. The Academy will include the capability for microgravity flights, a neutral buoyancy facility, high-gravity centrifuge, land based and underwater habitats, hypobaric and hyperbaric chambers, a human performance center, and more.

Enlarge / Three new, yet largely familiar, GPUs are now available from AMD. (credit: AMD)

Starting today, AMD and a number of GPU makers will begin rolling out three new graphics cards in the Radeon 6000-series lineup. These new products add a "50" suffix to existing model numbers, and if you've followed AMD over the past few years, you can probably guess what that means.

The RX 6950XT, RX 6750XT, and RX 6660XT are heading to retailers today at suggested minimum prices of $1,099, $549, and $399, respectively. Each GPU comes with nearly identical specs to their "00" suffix predecessors, with the only difference between each being a factory-level boost to clock speeds and memory speeds.

Infinity Cache again—but also, very finite clock tweaks

In a press briefing ahead of today's announcements, AMD reps suggested that the gains are in part thanks to touch-ups on both the silicon and software levels, though for two of the GPUs, a wattage jump factors in, as well. The 6950XT now demands 335W TDP, up 35 W from its 6900XT predecessor, and we're at 180 W TDP for the 6650XT, which is a 20 W jump from the 6600XT.