In the medium configuration, Falcon 9 would be priced at $27 million per flight with a 12 ft (3.6 m) fairing and $35 million with a 17 ft fairing.
They are very much still making them, the tooling and ovens are quite a prominent sight on tours, and there's always a couple halves in work.
Quote from: rds100 on 12/29/2015 07:16 amSo is the fairing that expensive, to be worth the extra effort needed for reusing? I thought it's a fairly simple shell which can be machine fabricated, so shouldn't be very expensive.ULA and Ariane buy fairings from RUAG, a European company. Although the contracts are not super specific, they seem to indicate 5-6 million per fairing.. The post that discusses this is here: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37727.msg1384676#msg1384676 This is not a huge fraction at current prices, but could become so if re-use works as hoped.
So is the fairing that expensive, to be worth the extra effort needed for reusing? I thought it's a fairly simple shell which can be machine fabricated, so shouldn't be very expensive.
So with the RCS visible from the fairings in launch video does it reinforce that GO Searcher is out supporting fairing recovery experiments?
That would be nice. I've heard rumor of jets from the fairing halves in three places now but not seen it. Can someone link the video?edit: suggest we move any fairing discussion if it erupts into the fairing recovery thread that has been dormant for a while. http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37727.0
This video has a good view of the jets:
Puffs from the upper fairing half at 5:20 and 5:27. Discuss, you know you want to.
I could not see the puffs in question. Can you take a screenshot or series of stills to highlight what you believe is puffs from the fairing?? Even better would be a zoomed-in and stabilized GIF or video...
Can't quite understand what you're getting at: If you zoom in *where*, we see a black round *what*?
Those would be separation joints/pushers. It's just your regular eyetar censorship.
Quote from: ugordan on 03/07/2016 08:29 amThose would be separation joints/pushers. It's just your regular eyetar censorship.No, not even that. Proprietary censorship.
Stabilized and close up...