Quote from: Toast on 03/24/2017 07:39 pmQuote from: intrepidpursuit on 03/24/2017 07:10 pmReferring to fate seems to indicate something experimental. Relaunch of a first stage is experimental.It's almost like you and iamlucky13 have no idea of who Musk is. When Musk is given an opportunity to double down, he does. No way he's just a referring to reflying a stage.
Quote from: intrepidpursuit on 03/24/2017 07:10 pmReferring to fate seems to indicate something experimental. Relaunch of a first stage is experimental.
Referring to fate seems to indicate something experimental.
My original post implied that stage reuse was not experimental. They can't consider it very experimental since they have a paying customer's payload on top. No, Elon has something else planned, and I don't think the roomba is exciting enough to be it.
A K-max helicopter should be capable of capturing the fairing half. It's $5m, plus operations. But they're relatively affordable to operate. If based from an ASDS, they wouldn't need to fly much.But I think SpaceX could build their own, short-range electric drone capable of capturing a fairing half for about $1 million.
Or the fairing half is the drone.
Zero evidence for this, but splitting the fairing into four would simplify things a fair bit.
Quote from: Kaputnik on 03/28/2017 06:56 amZero evidence for this, but splitting the fairing into four would simplify things a fair bit.The washering, flanging, and hardware for the joint adds a lot of weight.