Noticed this photo of the inside of the flag half of the fairing for the Iridium-2 launch from Vandenberg.Photo was in a SpaceflightNow Article at https://t.co/IjNnm8ja7Bbut was credited to Iridium [its the 7th photo from the top].https://assets.cdn.spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/25145723/DCySv9CU0AA4XqC.jpgAttached image.Carl
@elonmuskReplying to @BenjaminCoop3Getting closer to fairing recovery and reuse. Had some problems with the steerable parachute. Should have it sorted out by end of year.
I think the recovery half has traditionally been the side with the male latches around the seam. So here i believe we are getting a look inside. but I think the past in flight recovery photos showed two seperate internal plumbing raceways, which at firt glave looks like there is only one here?And no apparent chute bags.Could the stuff near the top be an area for 3 copv to be mounted? Maybe the fab shop made a reusable half but they later decided not to fit it out with all the plumbing.
If they are not recovering iridium's vandy fairing, perhaps the reason is that Go Searcher is on the east coast. That is, perhaps the recovery effort needs a bit of ground support, and it was not (yet?) worth duplicating or not (yet?) operational on the west coast.
FWIW my new conclusion (after Elon's tweet) is that it's not Go Searcher that's holding things up, but instead that the steerable chute folks had to go back to the drawing board for some part of their system, and the recovery tests are temporarily on hold while they wait for the next-gen chute component to be ready. No sense wasting money testing something they (now) know can't work.
Well, at least now they could theoretically use the landed fairings to test the hardware and software for steering the fairings down with a real article. Since those landed ones are not reusable on a mission, they could always drop them from a plane or helicopter with the revised contraption planned for the recovering until they master the job. And they could test over land also, meaning faster recovery and turn around between trials.
NO, I don't think so. But given the cost of a real fairing, I do believe they tested with some substitute. What I meant is, having a real fairing that was to be sea trash available, they can use those to obtain data from the real article.
RUAG just signed a contract for 18 fairings for Ariane 5 for $112M. That's $6.2M per fairing. Especially with booster recovery, that's more evidence the fairing is a substantial part of launch cost, and helps explain why SpaceX is trying to recover them (and makes it seem like it's going to be even harder for others to compete on cost, if they don't follow suit).EDIT: Sorry, this is an old contract. I was confused by the July 3rd date. But the point stands.
Edit: Also, where is it going to housed and deployed from, I can envision several places to store it and have it expand from. The most water proof, to me, would be on the exterior of the fairing, before expanding and enveloping the fairing.
Quote from: wannamoonbase on 07/13/2017 07:34 pmEdit: Also, where is it going to housed and deployed from, I can envision several places to store it and have it expand from. The most water proof, to me, would be on the exterior of the fairing, before expanding and enveloping the fairing.Isn't the Bouncy Castle deployed on surface and the parafoil "flies" the fairing into it?
Quote from: AC in NC on 07/14/2017 12:30 amQuote from: wannamoonbase on 07/13/2017 07:34 pmEdit: Also, where is it going to housed and deployed from, I can envision several places to store it and have it expand from. The most water proof, to me, would be on the exterior of the fairing, before expanding and enveloping the fairing.Isn't the Bouncy Castle deployed on surface and the parafoil "flies" the fairing into it?Yes, this isn't like a Mars landing where the lander has to carry its own bouncy castle/beach ball.