It is falling from over 100 km up and is ‘floppy’. A 50km dispersion doesn’t sound crazy to me given upper altitude winds and such.
As far as I am aware the cold-gas thrusters on the fairing halves are solely for orienting for re-entry, and the fairings cannot 'navigate' themselves outside the atmosphere (and with only the limited-reservoir thrusters and no real motors, any translation capability would be minuscule even if exo-atmospheric GNC were added). Thus, from the moment of separation until the moment the parachutes deploy the position error can only ever increase, not decrease.
You might wreck the parasail, but it's probably not reusable anyway.
Quote from: ejb749 on 06/21/2018 08:57 pmYou might wreck the parasail, but it's probably not reusable anyway.You may also due to the large, un-aerodynamic poorly balanced load crash the helicopter.
Quote from: speedevil on 06/21/2018 09:28 pmQuote from: ejb749 on 06/21/2018 08:57 pmYou might wreck the parasail, but it's probably not reusable anyway.You may also due to the large, un-aerodynamic poorly balanced load crash the helicopter. This is not new tech. they've been doing it since the 60's
Why don't they just use a helicopter to grab it? The net seemed silly at first, and now it seems 4X sillier.Take a helicopter out on the ship. Take off from the ship when the rocket is launched. Hook the parasail. If it misses, just try again until it's hooked.Lower the fairing onto the ship. Land the helicopter, and head for the port.No silly net needed. You don't even need a fast ship.You might wreck the parasail, but it's probably not reusable anyway.
Quote from: ejb749 on 06/21/2018 08:57 pmWhy don't they just use a helicopter to grab it? The net seemed silly at first, and now it seems 4X sillier.Take a helicopter out on the ship. Take off from the ship when the rocket is launched. Hook the parasail. If it misses, just try again until it's hooked.Lower the fairing onto the ship. Land the helicopter, and head for the port.No silly net needed. You don't even need a fast ship.You might wreck the parasail, but it's probably not reusable anyway.I'm 100% sure that, at least initially, when they were thinking about recovering the fairings, SpaceX considered Mid-Air Retrieval (MAR) with helicopters and had it as an option in their trade space. I don't know exactly why they chose ships over that option, but I feel confident in assuming it wasn't due to frivolousness or lack of reason. Maybe it will turn out that their underlying thinking/assumptions which supported choosing fast ships over helicopter-based MAR are unfounded and they eventually switch to that method. I don't know. But even after seeing that their first set-up was proving insufficient, they chose to go with 4x bigger net area on the ships instead of pivoting to the helicopters. To me, that indicated that whatever reasoning they had for going that direction initially is likely still in effect.
SpaceX appear to have done some sort of test with Mr. Steven involving an aircraft on June 28th. Unlikely that Mr. Steven's new net is finished, but maybe they just let there to monitor the test. NRC Quest was also sent out.Two NOTAM's were filed with one on the 28th and one on the 29th. Mr. Steven did not head out on the 29th and the second NOTAM was taken down, so the 29th may have been a backup day.Video of Mr. Steven's movements: https://twitter.com/CowboyDanPaasch/status/1012478077446782977I've attached a screenshot of Mr. Steven's position and the NOTAMs.
Article by Eric Ralph/vaporcobra:SpaceX’s Mr Steven gains upgraded arms to catch its first Falcon 9 fairings
And is the ring entirely unrelated.Could this be the much famed 'bouncy castle' ?- it is smaller even than the existing net though, which doesn't make a lot of sense.Could it perhaps be a recovery aid, to be dropped around a floating object?