SpaceX’s latest booster back home as company mulls pricing, proof tests

spaceflightnow.com

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The second stage of the Falcon 9, powered by a single Merlin engine, will continue to be expendable on each mission. SpaceX is working on a scheme to recover the clamshell-like payload fairing mounted on the nose of the rocket in a bid to reuse that part along with the first stage.

Recovering the payload fairing seems rather absurd -- that's got to be one of the cheapest parts of the whole rocket. However, if you can recover the fairing, I suspect you could also recover the rocket engine by separating it from the second stage and putting it inside the fairing and then recovering the rocket engine and fairing together. That would require some extra hardware to separate the engine from the stage and then move it into the fairing. None of these things should be hard however.

The faring currently separates during the first 2nd stage burn -- the 2nd stage engine isn't done until a later burn to get the payload into an actual orbit.

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