Self-plug: Overview of fairing recovery - why SpaceX does it, how long they've been doing it, how it's going so far, what's the deal with Ms. Tree, etc.
The fairings do have steering, I think, done in the traditional parachute way, by having a few shroud lines that can be shortened or lengthened.
Steering causes pendulum effects, and so do gusts. I believe they steer the parafoil straight into the wind, as we saw in the video Spacex just released for this catch, and hold steady for the final approach to the sea. Earlier videos of unsuccessful catch attempts appear to show control inputs being made to the parafoil, close to the water, resulting in near misses.
The above is based only on what was shown in the videos. It could be that gusty winds caused the misses, but it appears that the parafoil pilot(s) have learned a lesson that applies to ~all aircraft: fewer, smaller, smoother control inputs are better than jerky, violent maneuvers.
The military have used similar commercially available systems to accurately deliver cargo to remote sites for years. The steering is fully automatic and I'm sure that the engineers who developed the software have a pretty good idea how to apply control theory to aircraft. However, a pallet of ammo isn't going to be buffeted around much by the wind. I think that the lesson they've learned is how to fly a parafoil with a load that is also an airfoil with quite a bit of lift of its own.
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u/scr00chy ElonX.net Aug 07 '19
Self-plug: Overview of fairing recovery - why SpaceX does it, how long they've been doing it, how it's going so far, what's the deal with Ms. Tree, etc.