Quote from: nadreck on 06/03/2015 10:04 pmQuote from: douglas100 on 06/03/2015 10:01 pmI think a re-usable fairing only makes economic and technical sense as part of a re-usable upper stage, maybe like the Kistler K-1. Bottom line, a re-usable fairing is a non-starter for current vehicles. The extra complexity for little economic return makes it not worth it IMHO.Since a fairing carried to orbit is going to cause a large payload hit, it only makes sense for a much larger re-usable vehicle.And if the initial investment in each fairing is $1M and the cost to recover and recommission is $500,000 you wouldn't do it?Not unless you could demonstrate these numbers are real.
Quote from: douglas100 on 06/03/2015 10:01 pmI think a re-usable fairing only makes economic and technical sense as part of a re-usable upper stage, maybe like the Kistler K-1. Bottom line, a re-usable fairing is a non-starter for current vehicles. The extra complexity for little economic return makes it not worth it IMHO.Since a fairing carried to orbit is going to cause a large payload hit, it only makes sense for a much larger re-usable vehicle.And if the initial investment in each fairing is $1M and the cost to recover and recommission is $500,000 you wouldn't do it?
I think a re-usable fairing only makes economic and technical sense as part of a re-usable upper stage, maybe like the Kistler K-1. Bottom line, a re-usable fairing is a non-starter for current vehicles. The extra complexity for little economic return makes it not worth it IMHO.Since a fairing carried to orbit is going to cause a large payload hit, it only makes sense for a much larger re-usable vehicle.
The issue for SpaceX is their ability to make enough fairings. They are currently ramping up their flight rate very quickly. Even with a decent number of future launches being Dragons (i.e. no fairing), they are still going to need a whole lot more of them per year in the near future. What is their manufacturing capability? How expandable is that capability? What is the cost comparison between having to open additional production lines vs. investment to make them reusable? etc.
I obviously was not succinct. Please perform the thought experiment: imagine that each fairing costs $1M to produce and the amortized cost of the equipment to make them reusable, the use of the craft to do the recovery, and the recommissioning expense adds up to $500,000. Now having considered that, would you go ahead with the project to recover them?
All you're saying is, if it saves money, wouldn't you go ahead and do it? In my original post I gave the opinion that recovering the fairing from current vehicles (specifically F9) wouldn't save money and therefore I wouldn't do it.By all means argue the point, but please back it up with facts or a technical argument rather than pulling numbers out of the air and calling them a "thought experiment."
Quote from: nadreck on 06/03/2015 10:17 pmI obviously was not succinct. Please perform the thought experiment: imagine that each fairing costs $1M to produce and the amortized cost of the equipment to make them reusable, the use of the craft to do the recovery, and the recommissioning expense adds up to $500,000. Now having considered that, would you go ahead with the project to recover them?All you're saying is, if it saves money, wouldn't you go ahead and do it? In my original post I gave the opinion that recovering the fairing from current vehicles (specifically F9) wouldn't save money and therefore I wouldn't do it.By all means argue the point, but please back it up with facts or a technical argument rather than pulling numbers out of the air and calling them a "thought experiment."
....Given that your opinion as most recently expressed is that it will cost more to recover a fairing than to manufacture a new one then my question was irrelevant.
....If (and it's a big if) the fairing halves survive up until impact in a reusable state, my guess is that recovery isn't all that hard, theoretically, nor would it be much of a mass penalty. For example, add a GPS beacon and a small drogue on a long line, and use a helicopter to grab it. Hrmmm... fly the helicopters off an ASDS?
(snip). Hmmm... fly the helicopters off an ASDS?
I might be a bit off base here, but it occures to me that the Fairing reuse may not be just for launches from Earth. On Mars, fairings are dumped for each lander. This is material that has cost quite a bit of money to launch to Mars. As larger landers will likely require larger heat shields and fairings, recovery of these could be QUITE useful as building materials. As heatshields have a curved surface, epoxying a number of them together to create a geodesic dome, would not be all that difficult and could provide fairly decent surface storage facilities after a few landings. Any uppe fairings could also be made somewhat curved or simply used as is, if the fairing is large enough.
Is the 175' wide by ~250' long deck big enough for landing (dockside or at sea) and take-off, even without hanging fairing halves?
Quote from: douglas100 on 06/04/2015 08:16 amAll you're saying is, if it saves money, wouldn't you go ahead and do it? In my original post I gave the opinion that recovering the fairing from current vehicles (specifically F9) wouldn't save money and therefore I wouldn't do it.By all means argue the point, but please back it up with facts or a technical argument rather than pulling numbers out of the air and calling them a "thought experiment."Here's a rough guess I made when fairing recovery was only in L2, which I've fixed since I had the wrong launch rate for Ariane 5:From "RUAG Space wins major Ariane 5 payload fairing contract " http://www.ruag.com/space/media/media-releases/news/ruag-space-wins-major-ariane-5-payload-fairing-contract/c1d44492a47610accba20f7849f17843/ , the contract is for $100M (one swiss franc is about a dollar), signed in 2014, and runs through 2019. Assuming they did not wait until the last minute to sign this, I'm guessing through 2016 was in the prior contract. Then this would be roughly 18 fairings (6 per year for 2017, 2018, 2019), or about $5-6M each.SpaceX makes them in-house, so they might already have a cost advantage. But if they can recover and refurbish a fairing for $1M, then they've got a $5M per flight advantage over Ariane and Atlas V (which use the RUAG fairings). When you are trying to drive the cost down to a few 10s of millions, that helps considerably. To be competitive on cost, Atlas VI and Ariane VI will now need to be cheaper than SpaceX, not just equivalent.
Video is really breath taking. What are the objects that keep showing up? Sun obviously. Moon? Second stage firing? other fairing half? Planets? Stars?Matthew