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SpaceX successfully catches both fairing for the first time
- speedgoose 6y agoThis website is not trustworthy and doesn't respect GDPR as it redirects to https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId Engadget, stop this nonsense and change the responsibilities of the team who decided to put this into production.
- mschuster91 6y agoProbably that decision was a c-level one, overruling at least the objection of the developers.
- StavrosK 6y agoI'm not sure why you were downvoted, I hate sites where the only option to "do you want to be tracked?" is "yes" too.
- oh_sigh 6y agoThere's always the ctrl-w option. It seems better that you have to consent rather than them just assuming you consent since you opened a link.
- StavrosK 6y ago> There's always the ctrl-w option. That is usually what I resort to. > It seems better that you have to consent rather than them just assuming you consent since you opened a link. Yes, but one of the two is completely illegal, and the other is slightly illegal.
- lucideer 6y agoWhile I fully agree with this sentiment generally, I wonder what people think of NPR and WaPo in comparison (both give much less choice than Engadget). I seem to see this complaint on every Verizon-property article posted, but NPR and WaPo get excused? I wonder is it just a UX difference?
- a_imho 6y agoEuropean here, the NPR plain text site is a joy to use and I consider it one of the best and most compliant solutions, If I accidentally click a WaPo link I just navigate away from the paywall. Same with TechCrunch.
- MayeulC 6y agoI agree. I can read NPR. uMatrix prevents that website from loading at all, so I never read the article. A noticeable chunk of the Internet is now inaccessible to me, and I believe it's actually not for the worse...
- the-dude 6y agoTechcrunch : https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/20/spacex-successfully-catches-both-fairing-halves-for-the-first-time-on-its-latest-launch/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/20/spacex-successfully-catche...
- rmccue 6y agoThis article just links to https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1285338582849208320 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1285338582849208320 and adds a bit more context, if you don't want to blindly accept the Verizon GDPR wall.
- Shivetya 6y agoI am just amazed that NASA turned around a shuttle in 54 days, I don't even recall it. Apparently these were the first two missions flown[0]. However I also read almost suffered Columbia's fate on one of its flight due to a large loss of tiles [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Atlantis#Flights_listing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Atlantis#Flights...
- redis_mlc 6y ago> I am just amazed that NASA turned around a shuttle in 54 days It's disgraceful, actually. The Shuttle was sold as being "reusable", but it turned out to require remanufacturing after each launch. A lot of them took a year to prepare, with majors requiring 2 years. From the very first launch, there were missing tiles. The result was the cost per launch being 10x that of regular rockets.
- forgotmypwbctbi 6y agopage is just blank for me...
- noughtme 6y agoTry enabling JavaScript.
- forgotmypwbctbi 6y agono thanks
- dylan604 6y agoThat's some top notch developing to not be able to display anything for non-JS enabled viewers.
- drcross 6y agoBy viewers you probably mean "people they aim to track"
- ncmncm 6y agoDon't understand why they don't just use an inflatable parachute with a radio beacon antenna sticking out the top. Then they could just drive up anytime and fish it out of the water. Would immersion in salt water for a few hours damage a fairing?
- nordsieck 6y ago> Would immersion in salt water for a few hours damage a fairing? Yes. They haven't been very public about how much refurbishment is required for fairings that they fish out of the ocean, but they've managed to use them on Starlink launches.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoOr grab them with a hook dangling from a C-130 like the film from old-timey spy satellites.
- kazagistar 6y agoApparently thats been considered, and you still might see another company like electron try it. It's just a bit harder to do safely and some other limitations.
- Robotbeat 6y agoOne of the main reasons they aren’t doing it is that the fairing halves are so far out to sea (about 800km down range) that no helicopter could have the range with a fairing dangling down to make it back to land (the Sikorsky Skyhook, for instance, only has a range of 200nmi or so... maybe you could get a specialized helicopter to do it with heroics like drop tanks, but the cost would be much higher), so they’d need to land on a ship after capture anyway. By catching the fairing halves with ships directly, they save the substantial costs of also having helicopters. Notice that with RocketLab reuse, the helicopter is staged from a ship at sea. However, probably can save more money by recovering a RocketLab Electron first stage than half of a fairing (you’d need one helicopter per fairing halve but only one helicopter for Electron... Electron also has a much smaller and less awkward aerodynamic cross section than a F9 fairing halve). See: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=enndCzvZpZk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=enndCzvZpZk
- chasd00 6y agothere were a couple guys using acrobatic parachutes and some control code to fly high power model rockets back to the pad saving an hour walk. I wonder if SpaceX could use the same technique and fly the fairings to the ships.
- vikramkr 6y agoThat's what they already do. It's a steerable parafoil. How would they be expected to get the ship lined up underneath the parafoil in time to catch it otherwise?
- raducu 6y agoI think those guys fly in much better weather conditions than the returning fairings. If those guys miss by 50 meters, no biggie, they just walk and pick the rocket up. If SpaceX misses by 5 meters, the fairings could end up in the salt water. Landing on a moving ship is much harder.
- pjc50 6y agoSo are the fairings passively falling, or are they guided to the ships in some way? Ships are very slow compared to even a parachuting object from the sky.
- ceejayoz 6y agoThey use steerable parafoils.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoDo you know how the steering is being done? Is it controlled from a computer on the fairing or is it remotely guided?
- gt565k 6y ago"Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, told reporters last year that the fairing costs around $6 million." Pretty good if they can recover them and refurbish them. Could save a few million dollars per launch, even more if they can be re-used more than once.
- JshWright 6y agoPerhaps even more importantly, they are a big bottleneck on their flight rate. They require a massive autoclave (for curing the composites), and it wouldn't be practical to scale up their production significantly. Even if it didn't save them a penny, my guess is it would still be a priority.
- SEJeff 6y ago^ This. The second stage (which is not reused on a Falcon 9), the fairings, and the grid fins are three of the longer lead time items for the Falcon series rockets. Reusing as much as possible helps keep their crazy launch cadence up.
- SEJeff 6y agoFWIW, this isn't the first time they've caught the fairings, it is the first time they've caught both of them. They've actually reflown 4 fairings now however a few of them they fished out of the ocean and had to do further inspections and refurbishing due to salt water corrosion. Go to https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#reuse-fairings https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#reuse-fairings for some more info.
- exabrial 6y agoDumb question I'm sure has been asked... we've been throwing stuff into the sea for awhile then going and picking it up later as it's bobbing gently in the waves. Why not just have some inflatable buoys that deploy in the water and have it float? Catching it seems pretty difficult, albeit pretty sweet.
- wittyusername 6y agoI think the salt water even for brief periods even surrounded and raised up a few feet by bouys is a corrosive disaster. Maybe reusable a few times but not the long term solution if they want to reuse them 10's / 100's of times.
- blackrock 6y agoPerhaps their next move is to build another machine to spray some kind of rubber sealant foam on it, immediately after they capture it, in order to minimize and prevent the spray of ocean water and air, on the surface of the fairings. Then, when it returns to land, someone can peel off the rubber sealant, do some quick quality control inspections, and authorize the fairing to be reused on its next launch.
- jzoch 6y agoor just have it land on a docking pad :)
- 2trill2spill 6y agoMy guess would be to avoid the salt water. NASA had to make significant changes to the Solid Rocket Boosters because they landed in the water[1]. [1]: https://llis.nasa.gov/lesson/836 https://llis.nasa.gov/lesson/836
- Robotbeat 6y agoFirst: saltwater damage. Ever tried to run a car or a laptop or an airplane after it was dunked in saltwater? Hardening for saltwater immersion isn’t always practical and will always add some weight. Second: They already do float. They recover them quickly (& sometimes reuse them) if they miss the catch. But the fairing halves are 800km down range. You need to have a boat nearby anyway, so might as well try to catch it before it lands in saltwater and screws it up.
- praveen9920 6y agoDid they ever try catching it mid air? Something like a hook to helicopter perhaps? $6 mil is big number not to try.
- NortySpock 6y agoDepending on the launch trajectory, these fairings come down between 40 km and 1400km offshore. So you either need a helicopter with incredible range and dwell time, or a boat with a helicopter pad AND a place to put the fairing if you catch it. Say you catch the fairing. Great, now you have a giant composite/plastic sail, the size of school bus, bouncing around in your rotor downdraft. Not exactly the safest thing, and you're over water so you can't just put down anywhere. So, it's complicated, and SpaceX decided to go with a boat rather than a helicopter-and-a-boat. https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-mr-steven-renamed-falcon-heavy-fairing-catch/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-mr-steven-renamed-falcon-he... https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/8/21213917/rocket-lab-rocket-electron-helicopters-reusable-mid-air-catch https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/8/21213917/rocket-lab-rocket... Rocketlab first stage catch demo; they've got a heavy stage to catch (with heavy engines at the bottom to act as a counterweight) and it's not nearly as big as the Falcon 9 booster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3CWGDhkmbs&feature=emb_title https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3CWGDhkmbs&feature=emb_titl...
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoBalloons! But yeah, the boat is probably simpler / cheaper.