23.01.2018

Spacex has leased the Mr Steven boat and has it docked with it’s other support vehicles in the Port of Los Angeles. The Mr Steven has been outfitted with large arms to transport the fairing cover after it is recovered after a launch. Chuck Bennett/Daily Breeze/SCNG

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It could double as a Star Wars grappling fighter-ship or an ocean-going Transformers’ Rescue Bot.

A strange-looking SpaceX ship parked on the Los Angeles waterfront has four articulated arms almost as long as the boat deck itself, reaching upward like a giant claw.

“We do see a lot of bizarre stuff (on the waterfront) but that’s gotta be one of the stranger things around here,” said Steve Gilbert, yard foreman for neighboring U.S. Water Taxi & Port Services. “When it first pulled in, it didn’t have the arms and we just thought it was going to carry supplies.”

SpaceX leases land and adjacent berthing areas from the Port of Los Angeles for its West Coast rocket-recovery operations along Miner and 22 streets in San Pedro. The leasehold is used to offload recovered Falcon 9 rocket parts and Dragon spacecraft, remove any leftover fuel or other hazardous materials, and prepare the equipment for transport.

The 205-foot-long vessel, named Mr. Steven, arrived at the site in late December. It’s now parked behind Marmac 303, a barge used to land and carry the Hawthorne company’s rocket boosters and spacecraft returning from orbital missions.

The modified claw-like ship is being used to salvage rocket nose-cones, or fairings, that are guided back to specific locations on Earth after missions, according to a Port of Los Angeles report.

“Mr. Steven (is) dedicated to recovering the fairing portion of rockets, which protect the spacecraft and reduce drag during flight,” states the report, which was issued when SpaceX requested permission to expand its leased waterfront area.

It’s not clear how the fairings will be picked up by the boat. But SpaceX fans speculated on a Reddit.com forum that the arms are used to hold a net that collects and cradles the fairing halves.

Fairings protect payloads at the top of rockets, and they break in half and are released when satellites are delivered in orbit. SpaceX has attached thrusters to direct them back to specific locations on Earth. A parachute allows the fairing pieces to fall without being destroyed.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said he intends to make all SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets almost immediately reusable to drastically lower launch costs. The company has successfully brought back 20 Falcon 9 boosters, and reflown several of them. It’s also reflown two Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station.

But it has struggled to reuse fairings.

Musk announced in March 2017, when the first preflown rocket booster was launched for a second time, that the rocket’s fairing had been delivered safely back to the Atlantic Ocean and recovered. But, since then, no progress has been announced.

The new fairing-retrieving ship arrived at the Port of Los Angeles in December, after SpaceX secured approval to expand its 4.6-acre leasehold by about 35,000 square feet — mostly to install a “submerged land parcel” for the vessel.

Added land also was provided for SpaceX to park shipping containers and store rocket equipment out of public view, according to a Port of Los Angeles report. A rocket-support pedestal, office trailer, guard shack and portable restrooms also are at the site.

“SpaceX’s premises are utilized to berth vessels that recover expended rockets and capsules from over 100 miles offshore and return the respective equipment for land-based transportation to various locations,” the port report states.

“The extended area will allow a better layout for its operations and allow SpaceX to remove equipment on top of their sea vans (shipping containers) as much as possible, and better contain their equipment behind the perimeter fencing, away from public view.”

Late last year, SpaceX also obtained approval to erect a 20,000-square-foot storage tent behind a fence on Terminal Island, an industrial island between San Pedro and Long Beach.

Quelle: PT