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"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 th
by 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.