From: tl@none.invalid   
      
   JF Mezei   wrote:   
   >Exposed film was spooled into one of 4 returning capsules which when   
   >full, would be commanded to detach, deorbit and deploy parachute. And   
   >they were able to succesfully capture the dropping capsuled with planes   
   >before they reached ground. 75 of the 76 returning capsules were   
   >succesfully captured in flight by the planes (one failed to deploy   
   >parachurte and was recovered from bottom of Pacific Ocean (though no   
   >usable imagery)   
   >   
   >SpaceX had tried to recover fairings as I recall and abandonned it. This   
   >was "routine" back in the 1970s and early 1980s while this program lasted.   
      
   IIRC a recent flight they mentioned that it was the first time a   
   fairing half was on on it's 10th flight! Some of the early ones were   
   in fact caught in nets before they switched to exclusively "wet"   
   recovery. They were fairly good at catching them by the end.   
      
   Fairings are pretty much very large sails so it's VERY different from   
   catching a dedicated recover capsule. Yes, they gave up on dry   
   recovery because even with the additional refurbishment it was cheaper   
   to just do a wet recovery (especially since they needed two boats, one   
   for each fairing half).   
      
   AFAIK no one else has even tried recovering a fairing yet? and the   
   ones that plan to try are all pretty far in the future.   
      
   Likewise many are planning to TRY to recover their booster sometime in   
   the future, Electron will likely be first (and soon) but that is a   
   MUCH smaller rocket, IE 300kg to LEO vs 22800kg to LEO, both   
   fully-expended/non-recover numbers. Or 549T vs 12.5T at launch.   
      
   And while they initially wanted to catch it with a helicopter and did   
   even catch one but had to release it for safety reasons, they've now   
   switched to a similar "let it splash down in water and we'll recover   
   and refurbish".   
      
   Rocket Lab could of course change their mind later (though propulsive   
   landing is never going to be possible for a rocket that small) but   
   AFAIK most of their plans beyond this is centered around their   
   significantly larger Neutron rocket (slightly smaller than Falcon 9,   
   15000kg LEO expended).   
      
   Rocket Lab Neutron rocket is notable in this context for how it   
   handles the fairing, it's the only rocket proposal I can think of   
   where the fairing is actually integrated into the first stage,   
   basically the second stage "fly out" of the first stage & fairing   
   assembly. And they plan to recover booster with fairing similar to how   
   SpaceX recovers the Falcon 9 booster (IE, downrange landing with some   
   payload loss, return-to-launchsite with larger payload hit)   
      
   Meanwhile SpaceX has one Falcon 9 booster that has done 15 successful   
   landings and several others are not far behind.   
      
   204 landings out of 215 attemps (both are higher now) is an   
   astonishing record for something pretty much every expert said   
   couldn't be done when they announce their plan. And almost all these   
   failures are early failures, it was a while since the blew past 100   
   successfull *successive* landings. For a secondary, non-mission   
   critical step...   
      
   Yes, a lot of SpaceX's development times ended up being on "Elon time"   
   (IE ~3x early on, the factor goes down as it's get closer to launch).   
      
   But lets be fair, are there even one entirely new rocket in the last   
   two decades that WASN'T massively behind the schedule? It's not even   
   restricted to the US, Europe, Russia, India and China is just as bad.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)