One more tidbit just came through. Accuracy was about 4 miles from target.
They could just use a speedboat with a winch on the back.Hook on the the para-foil harness and bring it back like a para sailor.
F9-FE? Don't make up new abbreviations.
Quote from: Lars-J on 05/14/2017 12:31 amF9-FE? Don't make up new abbreviations.Is there already an accepted abbreviation for this? If not, I don't see what's wrong with this. How else are new abbreviations established?
Quote from: Doesitfloat on 05/01/2017 09:08 pmThey could just use a speedboat with a winch on the back.Hook on the the para-foil harness and bring it back like a para sailor.This startling, state of the art digital rendering, along with the screen name "Does It Float" gets a like and a comment.Matthew
Moonlight Sonata
We did recover the fairing. It has onboard thrusters for positioning in space during reentry and a GPS guided parachute is deployed once it enters the atmosphere
I like the idea that they built a cheap but heavy fairing .... knowing that eventually they would reengineer it with more expensive but lighter materials... more expensive ONCE, yes, but since now it's recoverable (the mass savings is used for whatever the recovery mechanism is), actually LESS expensive iff they mostly get it back.they were thinking ahead.People focus on SpaceX changing plans but they miss that they also have been taking the long view here for a long time.Also I don't see the need for a lot of heat shielding (said upthread a lot).... These have very low density so terminal velocity is low.
Quote from: Lar on 02/24/2017 08:02 pmI like the idea that they built a cheap but heavy fairing .... knowing that eventually they would reengineer it with more expensive but lighter materials... more expensive ONCE, yes, but since now it's recoverable (the mass savings is used for whatever the recovery mechanism is), actually LESS expensive iff they mostly get it back.they were thinking ahead.People focus on SpaceX changing plans but they miss that they also have been taking the long view here for a long time.Also I don't see the need for a lot of heat shielding (said upthread a lot).... These have very low density so terminal velocity is low.Not sure why I was reading page 30 of this thread earlier this week... but this is contradicted by the video below. Elon explicitly says it's engineered to optimize for mass and claims it may even be the "lightest-weight fairing of its kind."
You do realize that this is a 7 yr old video, right?