Here's How SpaceX Saved $120 Million With (and Without) a Really Big Fishnet
Recovering and reusing one half of one fairing saved SpaceX the cost of building two entire Falcon 9 rockets over the last eight years.
Overview
"Imagine you had $6 million in cash on a pallet flying through the air that's just going to smash into the ocean. Would you try to recover that? Yes, you would." -- Elon Musk, 2017
That's how Elon Musk described the rationale behind Space Exploration Technology's (NASDAQ: SPCX) plan to deploy boats at sea, equipped with gigantic nets, to catch one (or both) halves of the fairings from its Falcon 9 rockets after they detached to deploy cargo in orbit. Each complete fairing, said the CEO, cost $6 million to build -- or roughly 10% of the cost of an entire Falcon 9. (That was back in 2017. Thanks to inflation, the cost has reportedly risen to $8 million today.)
Details
And so, the CEO's plan:
Source
Originally published at www.fool.com.