Elon Musk's latest SpaceX idea involves a party balloon and bounce house:
Elon Musk took to Twitter Sunday night to announce a new recovery method for an upper-stage SpaceX rocket. A balloon — a "giant party balloon" to quote him directly — will ferry part of a rocket to a bounce house. Seriously.
[...] This isn't the first time a balloon has been used to return a rocket. Legendary programmer John Carmack's rocket company attempted to use a ballute in 2012 to return a rocket body and nose cone. It didn't work as planned and, according to officials at the time, the rocket made a "hard landing" around the Spaceport America property in New Mexico.
SpaceX has yet to recover the entire Falcon 9 fairing despite adding a parachute and positioning a boat to catch it.
The TESS launch has been delayed to Wednesday.
Also at Engadget and Space.com.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 18 2018, @03:41AM
BFR won't have a disposable fairing AFAIK. Any success in recovering fairings or second stage of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy is icing on the cake for the company, assuming recovering and refurbishing it doesn't cost more than the money spent on the component.
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