Fairing

**Parts Expansion Required**

*Some or all of the parts and/or features on this page require the **Parts Expansion** in-app purchase.*

## Fairings

All fairings in-game as of November 25, 2022

### Separation force (kN)

Varies between size and width

**Fairings** are lightweight aerodynamic parts. They are mainly used to increase aerodynamic effectiveness of payloads like rovers, satellites or space station modules by encasing them. They can also prevent overheating of payloads during ascent to space.

Fairing shells can be deployed by tapping on them. They open in the middle and detach both sides from the spacecraft.

There are fairing parts with 5 primary skins and 3 secondary skins available for all fairings. The first four colors available to the player are (in chronological order): Metallic, Orange, Grey, and Black. The three secondary skins are (also in chronological order): Fairing, Flat and Riveted.

In version 1.5, 6 long fairings and 1 large cone were added. In a later update 5 more fairings were added with a height of 3 meters. In an even later update, rounded fairings and an option to enable fairings to adapt to fuel tanks were added into the game.

Large fairings are part of the Parts Expansion. Small fairings are free.

## Uses

* Encase payloads.
* Act as lightweight nose cones.
* Act as tunnels in space stations.
* Rotated fairing parts can make differently shaped fairings.
* In 1.4, landing legs are too short for Titan Engine, Frontier Engine, and the Hawk Engine. You can place a fairing extending from your fuel tank to your engine, place a 1×1 structural part at the bottom of the fairing and attach the legs to it.

## Building uses

* Rotated fairing shells can be used to make aesthetic parts like satellite dishes.
* Low-friction coating: Covering a non-aerodynamic rocket (for instance one with solar panels or RCS thrusters) with fairings can reduce aerodynamic drag.

## Trivia

* From version 1.35 onwards, fairing shells are attached to any part directly beneath them. Tapping to open them will make them detach from anything between them, but not beneath, and attaching the same object to both will effectively prevent them from opening (unless you turn on the "Detach Edges" option (1.5.3 and onwards only)).
* The "Detach Edges" option allows a player to separate fairings even if they are attached to the object underneath them.
* Fairings can adapt to fuel tanks.
* There is a 14-wide variant of the fairing. This is the only instance of a 14-wide part.
* Prior to 1.5, there were 4x3, 6x3, 8x3, 10x3, and 12x3 fairings. They can only be obtained from Blueprint Editing or updating from older versions.

## History

In 1.4, fairings were disabled, meaning they did not increase the aerodynamic effectiveness of rockets. However in 1.5, fairings were enabled, so they can increase the aerodynamic effectiveness of rockets.

Until version 1.4, there were two fairing adapters, that connected fairings of different sizes. In 1.4 and above, fairings can now connect to others with similar widths like fuel tanks, making adapters redundant, so they no longer exist.

In 1.5, the 4×3, 6×3, 8×3, 10×3, and 12×3 fairings were replaced by n×2 and n×4 fairings, and the 10×4 fairing was re-added.

In 1.5.5, more fairing sizes were added. They are 6×6, 8×6, 10×6, 12×6, 14×2 and 14×6 respectively.

In 1.5.9, rounded fairings were added.