SpaceX caught the half of the fairing, or nose cone, of its Falcon Heavy rocket on Tuesday, passing another milestone as the company seeks to consistently reuse an expensive part of its rocket.
Stationed in the Atlantic Ocean, high speed boat "Ms. Tree" caught the fairing half in a net strung up above the boat's deck, CEO Elon Musk confirmed in a tweet. The fairing is the bulbous nose cone on top of the rocket.
SpaceX has attempted to catch the fairing multiple times before. With its boat previously stationed in the Pacific Ocean, the company has been trying to land the fairing in the net since 2017. The boat had several near misses, with Musk noting on a previous attempt that SpaceX missed catching the fairing by only "a few hundred meters."
tombomk22 on June 25th, 2019 at 16:04 UTC »
So now they’re able to retrieve the boosters and the fairings...what’s next?
Primal_Valguero on June 25th, 2019 at 13:36 UTC »
It came back from SPACE! FROM SPACE MARY!
Fucking impressive. Well done. Now launch an other tesla, and catch it with the boat!!! Trebuchet evolved.
WelcomingRapier on June 25th, 2019 at 12:38 UTC »
I love how these guys think. Can you imagine the conversations of the engineers trying to work this out?
"So what we're thinking is that we find a fast boat... Then we take this net..."
"A giant net Dave? You are fucking idiot"
"No, no... I'm telling you. I did the math. The net just has to be THIS big and the boat just has to be able to move <trails off mumbling>"