Interesting speculation from Teslarati that Mr. Steven might be gearing up to eventually execute dual-fairing recoveries. Gotta love Elon's demanding forward thinking. While you're still trying to figure out how to catch the first one, get to work on how you're going to catch the other half! SpaceX isn’t giving up on catching rocket fairings, boat spotted with new net
With Mr. Steven headed to the East Coast now, I wonder if they'll attempt dual recovery for the next FH launch? If they nail all three booster landings AND both fairings that would be a sight to behold haha
This seems likely to work during one of the next few attempts! No doubt they would like to recover both fairing halves. Does anyone know if SpaceX has said how they'd accomplish that? Perhaps invest in a Mr. Steven II ?
I believe the only evidence we've seen so far was the recent spotting of SpaceX practicing with two nets while in port with Mr. Steven. I could definitely see a "Mrs. Steven" being built if two on one boat doesn't work out.
I believe the parasail manufacturer makes them so that they can aim at a specific GPS point. Other then that, we don't know unfortunately.
Thanks for the link. Here’s the tweet by Elon: GPS guided parafoil twisted, so fairing impacted water at high speed. Air wake from fairing messing w parafoil steering. Doing helo drop tests in next few weeks to solve. 9:57 AM · Mar 30, 2018
I was poking around on Vesselfinder and found that Mr Steven finally showed up on AIS again. He's in Gatun Lake in the middle of the Panama Canal. He was out of (free) AIS range for about a week.
This has been mentioned in other threads but since this is the dedicated thread for fairing recovery and reuse it deserves to be re-posted here to discuss the new SpaceX fairing strategy. https://www.space.com/spacex-reuse-payload-fairing-starlink-launch.html
Celebrating this fairing feat with Roy Orbison and his "Ms. Tree Girl" album hit, "You Got It"!...RIP Mr. Steven.
I was thinking about the catch of the one fairing - with this mission, SpaceX now has the option (not previously available) to use the 2 fairing halves to do extensive testing on the two, as well as comparing between the two, with the possible outcome of getting adequate test results to make fairings that have been in the water as usable as fairings that were caught (with a little rinse / wash first). The ideal outcome would be to just fish 'em out of the water, rinse em off, and use em again (I realize it'll be more than a simple rinse - the idea is something fast and easy). And be able to use them on any mission. Most likely, the first user of fairings that have been in the drink will be SpaceX / Starlink launches. My hope is that with some testing and then actual use, the fairing halves being reused (even after a dunk in the water) is as common as first stage reuse is today.
Yes. It landed in the ocean nearby and Ms. Tree picked it up. It was not supposed to get caught. Only one fairing was planned to be caught. Now that it has been done and they have a decent idea of how to do it, then SpaceX will compare the differences between the two and decide whether to get another ship to catch the second fairing.
Thank you for the information. - Do you think SpaceX/Go will have boats both in the Pacific and the Atlantic, so a total of four boats? - I read that Ms.Tree ("Mystery") got a third set of arms and net? Do you know if the the second set was damaged, or it it was replaced by a smaller or a larger set?