the SpaceX Navy has grown by one we're
talking about that coming up
Hey guys, TORY here from Overlook Horizon
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SpaceX's newest addition to their naval
fleets which is GO Ms. Chief. Now you
might be thinking wait a minute what
does SpaceX need a naval fleet for well
SpaceX utilizes a number of different
ships and vessels for their recovery
efforts during their Falcon 9 and Falcon
Heavy launches probably the most
well-known of those is their autonomous
spaceport drone ships of course I still
love you and just read the instructions
those are the drone ships that float out
in the middle of the ocean that actually
catch the Falcon 9 first stage booster
when it returns back and does an ocean
landing in addition to those ships
though they also have some support ships
like GO Searcher, GO Navigator, GO Pursuit
they perform things like crew support
operations as well as payload fairing
recovery for when they soft land the
payload fairings in the ocean now
speaking of payload fairings they don't
always soft land them in the water they
also have this gigantic boats formerly
known as mr. Steven and now known as go
Ms. Tree the idea of reusing some of
these payload fairing has been around
since about 2017 for SpaceX but they
started doing their first catch attempts
in 2018 they tried a number of times
unsuccessfully they also upgraded and
increase the size of the net on mr.
Steven but still couldn't get a
successful catch just earlier this year
in 2019 mr. Steven actually suffered
some damage while at sea going out to do
a payload fairing recovery but before it
could do the recovery attempt it suffered
some damage to its arms, had to return
back to Port Canaveral and seemingly
needed to be repaired but mr. Steven
actually spent months in Port Canaveral
with no movement and no signs of repair
in fact when I was down there for CRS-17
back in April it was still in port
unrepaired and it had been that way
since February so a lot of people
including myself thought that maybe
SpaceX was giving up on this payload
fairing recovery idea at least as far as
the net catch is concerned it seemed
like they might be able to get it to
work but after those arms were damaged
it seemed like maybe they had given up
in fact on the second
Falcon Heavy flight which was for Arabsat
6a they soft landed both halves of
the payload fairing in the water and
then did a water recovery for them with
go searcher and go navigator SpaceX also
announced after that recovery that they
were gonna reuse those payload fairing
house for a future Starlink mission so
again thought maybe they were done with
this but despite my thoughts and the
thoughts of many others it was repaired
and they brought mr. Steven back out
with a name change GO Ms. Tree now GO
Ms. Tree is not actually owned by SpaceX
it was formerly owned by a company named
SeaTran Marine they ran into a bit of
financial trouble and had to sell it off
to Guice Offshore I think that's how you
say it guess? guice? gwuice? gweese? juice? I don't
know I'm gonna go with Guice now the
previous name of that ship mr. Steven
was after the CEOs father for the former
company so it only made sense to kind of
rename the boat and that's where
Ms. Tree came in all the Guice Offshore
boats start with the acronym GO (G.O.) for
the company name with a new name and
those arms repaired Ms. Tree headed out
to sea for the third Falcon Heavy
flights and performed a successful
payload fairing half recovery where it
actually landed and parachuted into the
net on the back of that ship this was
pretty incredible it finally proved
their concept that they could do it but
now the question was consistency could
they do it again and they did prove on Amos-17 that they could do it again
because they had another amazing catch
of a payload fairing half in the back of
the Ms. Tree boat so with SpaceX getting
some consistency behind these payload
fairing catches they're now going to
utilize a second ship to catch the other
half of the payload fairing and that is
where our new ship GO Ms. Chief comes in
GO Ms. Chief was also previously owned by
that other company SeaTran Marine
they sold it off to guys off shore it
was previously named Captain Elliott and
it's now renamed to go miss chief now
it's estimated that it cost SpaceX about
three million dollars to operate each
one of those boats so operating two of
them is gonna be about six million
dollars per year incidentally those
payload fairing actually cost about six
million dollars so just a single catch
will break even for the entire year. If they
can catch more than that - gravy! now it's
gonna be a little while before we see
miss chief in service miss chief is a
nearly identical boat but it doesn't
have the arms or the net yet so question
of the day how long do you think it's
gonna be until we see Ms. Chief in
service?
when will we see a catch are we talking
weeks months a year let me know you guys
think in the comments section down below
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watching we'll see you in the next video
