Month: July 2022

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

It's been quite a while since we last put together a desktop PC-building guide, partly because trying to fight your way through bots and scalpers to pay twice the retail price for a graphics card was a miserable experience that we wouldn't want to inflict on anyone.

But even as 2022 has made most things more expensive, PC builders have lucked out. CPUs and motherboards are in stock and easy to buy, DDR4 memory is actually cheap, and you can head online to Amazon, Best Buy, or Newegg and find virtual shelves full of GPUs at prices that, while still somewhat inflated, would have seemed miraculous six months ago.

Overall PC demand is expected to fall quite a bit in the coming months, but if you've been waiting patiently to build your first desktop or replace an existing build, this is probably the best time to build a PC since mid-2020.

Enlarge / SpaceX's Ship 24 rolls to the launch site in South Texas this week. (credit: SpaceX)

Welcome to Edition 5.02 of the Rocket Report! Just as a heads up, I would like to note that it is now more than just theoretical that SpaceX's Starship and NASA's Space Launch System rocket could make their orbital launch attempts during the same month, August 2022. While I would not say it's likely, both rockets presently have notional launch targets within three weeks of one another next month.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

A Minotaur rocket explodes after launch. A Minotaur II+ rocket exploded 11 seconds after launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Wednesday night, Noozhawk reports. (The rocket's impact with the ground made a rather spectacular fireball, per an eyewitness source). There were no injuries in the explosion and the debris was contained to the immediate vicinity of the launch pad, Vandenberg officials said early Thursday. An investigative review board has been established to determine the cause of the explosion, Vandenberg officials said.