Quote from: sghill on 03/10/2016 03:47 pmWhy not develop a fairing that peels back like a banana peel and locks against the second stage skin? Kind of like the legs, but in reverse.It could be used as a TPS for the second stage so the stage can be recovered.No need to peel it back if it is taken to orbit. It could be opened right before spacecraft deployment. But the fairing would reduce payload mass.
Why not develop a fairing that peels back like a banana peel and locks against the second stage skin? Kind of like the legs, but in reverse.It could be used as a TPS for the second stage so the stage can be recovered.
Atlas has its 5 m faring attached to the first stage. Something like that might make sense for a reasonable fairing since you don't have to take the whole thing to orbit. It would also protect the thermal protection system on the upper stage from water ingress and condensation while it's sitting on the pad .
Rough numbers but you get the idea;What's F9's payload capacity to GTO? 10,000 pounds?What's the weight of the payload fairing? 5,000 pounds?What's the revised payload capacity if you take the payload fairing along for the whole ride? ?5000? pounds.Substitute in actual numbers and you get actually poor numbers. Weight carried on the first stage is not good. Weight carried on the second stage is really not good.
Eutelsat?
Any guesses about what the white curved structure barely visible in the extreme lower right of the photo might be? If it is not part of the building, it certainly is of a much larger diameter that anything else in the photo.
Autoclaves definitely don't look like that.
Wild-ass guesses corroborated by nothing whatsoever:The observed thrust is venting of the remaining pressure in an N2 pneumatic tank normally used in separation, associated with some safety procedure they're testing for Falcon Heavy, which will drop fairings (or perhaps interstage?) on a trajectory much closer to the launchsite in order to optimize RTLS. They want the chance of ballistically dropping pressurized cylinders near population to be closer to zero than it is at present.The cylinder is either a finished fairing at an angle, or a fairing spray/cure booth. As mentioned upthread, fairings are delivered from overseas rather than manufactured in-house, but the center of the picture indicates they may not be painted when they get here. Alternately, it's possible that it's an interstage or a stage that's simply suffering from some flavor of perspective distortion.