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Comment by tbabb | Hacker News Reader

I do wonder if that fairing endeavor will come out net positive over the lifetime of Falcon. They paid for a specialized boat to catch the things, and iterated on the boat design several times.

Starship is the real reusability project; Falcon is now just holding on to revenue while they get Starship ready to take over the entire launch market (including their own).

The fairing is passive, I really wonder if it would have been more cost effective to try and reduce the fairing cost to a (few) hundred thousand bucks or so instead of going to all the trouble of catching it.

Although maybe this is best seen as R&D cost for the eventual Starship architecture?

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I had read that the fairings were the limiting factor on launch frequency, because of how long they have to be cured for. So it's not just the direct cost that's relevant. Of course it's always possible to build a bunch more curing ovens, but at that point you're probably rearranging the factory layout and so on.

I've been thinking about this, and it seems doubtful. The fairings are under a million dollars apparently, so they'd have to recover many dozens if not hundreds to pay back the investment into all the catching technologies. It's not clear that they'll ever use that many fairings before switching over entirely to BFR.

Fairings are ~6m (i don't recall if that's per half or the pair) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz60GcmKOvc#t=33m28s

No chance of under $1M for both. I heard $5M. They wouldn't go to the trouble they are going to (fish out of water and re-use etc) for a $500K part, but for $5M the math changes.

Fairings cost upwards of $5M per launch. The technology for the boat basically consists of some arms (with shock absorbers) welded to the deck and a big net strung between them. The boat itself is chartered, not owned by SpaceX as far as I know. The only real tech development is in the parachute systems for the fairings, which also aren't particularly advanced.

I can't imagine positive ROI requiring more than 4 or 5 recoveries. Personally, I'm kind of disappointed they didn't go with a skyhook concept, but getting that system to work with something the size and drag of a half-fairing would probably be a nightmare.

I remember reading that the fairing build time is also fairly long (months? but I can't find the reference, it might've been a comment on /r/spacex), so it's trying to minimize the cost + build time.

Wut? The fairings are $6 million. Highly unlikely they spent even that much to develop a little engine and a boat with a net.

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