It's not yet a "fact" that they can reuse fairings that fell in the water, but may be possible if they retrieve them quickly. Perhaps they will add a coating which adds minimal weight to protect them more.
Irene Klotz, Aviation Week: Okay. Thanks very much, appreciate that. And for Hans, two questions. The first is how far off was Mr. Steven from payload fairing half splashdown?Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX: Yeah, thank you Irene. So I don't know how much we missed it by on this particular flight this morning. Or this afternoon, rather. But this is actually an older version of the fairing. There's an upgrade that we had. And that upgrade will make it easier for Mr. Steven to find the fairing. But I can't answer your question because I was just running out before I got that. However, I do know that we have some really awesome footage of Mr. Steven on the webcast. So it's definitely worth taking a look at that.
NASA Social Media: Hi, I've got two questions that came in for Hans on twitter. The first one is, you mentioned an upgraded fairing earlier, do you mean a different upgrade from the one that was used the first time in February on the PAZ mission?Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX: I think it is the same upgrade. This is, I could have said it the other way around, that we used an older version instead of that, but I think that is the upgrade. It's mostly related to recovery, nothing on the fairing itself.
Matt Haskell, The Aerospace Geek: Hi, Matt Haskell with The Aerospace Geek. My question is for Hans. With regards to the fairings, when they don't land in the net, and they land on the salt water softly, as referred to with today's recovery, what is the capability of reusing those? Is it possible to refly those, or is the salt water damage too much?Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX: Uh, we're actually looking into this. It depends, we're basically so close now to the place where they go into the water, it's something we can now look closer [at], and I'm not sure what's going to happen with that, but that is certainly a possibility.
Add inflatable floaters to fairing: kiss way to minimize wetting and to dampen water impact.
[url]https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-ceo-elon-musk-new-falcon-fairing-reuse-strategy-mr-steven-missed-catch/[url]Teslarati article about new faring approach.It’s a lot simpler if it works this way. They would have needed a second Mr.Steven to get both halves and would still have missed some.
Quote from: Ludus on 12/04/2018 03:14 am[url]https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-ceo-elon-musk-new-falcon-fairing-reuse-strategy-mr-steven-missed-catch/[url]Teslarati article about new faring approach.It’s a lot simpler if it works this way. They would have needed a second Mr.Steven to get both halves and would still have missed some.Beyond Musk saying they could reuse the splashed down fairings, the article is pure speculation.I don't understand the rush by people to assume that SpaceX is "giving up" catching the fairings. Just the morning of the launch SpaceX tweeted they were going to *try* to catch the fairings. At the CRS-16 presser Hans said they have upgraded recovery hardware that will make it easier for Mr. Steven to catch the hardware and that hardware was *not* on the SSO-A fairings.Why would they try to catch them if they were giving up? Why would Hans mention better recovery hardware if they were giving up?
Why would they try to catch them if they were giving up? Why would Hans mention better recovery hardware if they were giving up?
Quote from: mme on 12/04/2018 03:33 pmQuote from: Ludus on 12/04/2018 03:14 am[url]https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-ceo-elon-musk-new-falcon-fairing-reuse-strategy-mr-steven-missed-catch/[url]Teslarati article about new faring approach.It’s a lot simpler if it works this way. They would have needed a second Mr.Steven to get both halves and would still have missed some.Beyond Musk saying they could reuse the splashed down fairings, the article is pure speculation.I don't understand the rush by people to assume that SpaceX is "giving up" catching the fairings. Just the morning of the launch SpaceX tweeted they were going to *try* to catch the fairings. At the CRS-16 presser Hans said they have upgraded recovery hardware that will make it easier for Mr. Steven to catch the hardware and that hardware was *not* on the SSO-A fairings.Why would they try to catch them if they were giving up? Why would Hans mention better recovery hardware if they were giving up?The article seems to me an accurate analisys of the situation.Is it speculation? Yes, of course...
Quote from: mme on 12/04/2018 03:33 pmWhy would they try to catch them if they were giving up? Why would Hans mention better recovery hardware if they were giving up?They could be trying both. If they catch a fairing in the net then one could call it a class 1 fairing and reuse it directly to customer. Those that hit water ought to be good enough for Starlink. Both ways SpaceX saves money. And after 5-10 uses on Starlink some other customers would probably be interested in the class 2 version if the price is right. SSO-A was probably a fairing 2.0https://twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1069704142573178881
Quote from: cambrianera on 12/04/2018 08:26 amAdd inflatable floaters to fairing: kiss way to minimize wetting and to dampen water impact.Made me think of something like this mickey-mouse MS Paint sketch:A brown package at the base to pop out the blue floater and a scheme (red) to block salt water/spray/rain (conceptualize it as something analogous to "saran wrap"). Float the fairing with the bottom end kept out of the water with the floater, the top curvature balancing out the other side and the saran wrap sealing the insides from salt water, spray, and rain.The red "saran wrap" could be integrated with the parafoil perhaps. Might even be able to obviate all or most of the need of the floater.
The bottom of the fairing already narrows at the attachment point, so keeping it out of the water probably isn't an issue. However some method of sealing the air vents (I don't recall where those are located on Fairing 2.0) to keep out water after landing might be a bigger issue.
Inflatable floaters with a total volume of one cubic meter can keep all the hemi fairing over the water line.
This was the v2.0 fairing, IIRC. I'm thinking their exterior is more hardened to salt water than the older fairings.
Quote from: cambrianera on 12/04/2018 07:38 pmInflatable floaters with a total volume of one cubic meter can keep all the hemi fairing over the water line.And what shape would that be and how would it attach to the outside of the fairing?Seems they've resolved the re-entry and control issues, which is very exciting and maybe 90% of the work.
My question is, if they can reuse fairing halves even after a dunk, why even bother trying to catch them? It has proven a difficult problem to solve. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that refurb after it drops in the water is still significant enough to pay for the crazy ship.It seems they are pursuing a less ambitious goal along with a more ambitious goal. Just seems odd to do both and odd that they didn't go for soft landing in water first before going all in on the ship.