I am wondering whether SpaceX has another idea in mind with this steerable parafoil system. SpaceX had intended to avoid water landings with their manned Dragon by having powered landings. They abandoned that idea when NASA balked at the innovation.
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/news-from-spacex/

One reason for a powered landing was fine control to the landing site. A parachute drifts too much for to land on a specific landing pad, but maybe SpaceX is thinking of developing better control, when landing Dragon-sized vehicles (rocket stages are too heavy for parachute landings to be practical), with parafoils. A dry landing could save quite a bit of money, since recovery ships would not be needed and there would be less chance of corrosion or other effects.

This would not be the first time this idea was tried. Project Gemini experimented with landing on solid ground using a paraglider. The idea did not pan out for NASA, but a few years later people were hang gliding with similar looking wings.
https://www.popsci.com/paraglider-how-nasa-tried-and-failed-to-land-without-parachutes

Back in the 1960s, NASA was willing to be innovative, but they have changed since then. Now it is the current upstart startup companies that seem willing to innovate.

There are probably already people on the SpaceX payroll performing the jobs of – to borrow USN terminology – COMNAVSURFLANT and COMNAVSURFPAC (Commander Naval Surface Forces Atlantic and Pacific, respectively). Soon, there will be a need for a COMNAVSURFGULF too.

SpaceX has already used references to well-known sci-fi works in naming its ASDS’s. To continue SpaceX’s tradition of mixing sci-fi with fun in its naming conventions, perhaps the SRN rank equivalent to Chief Petty Officer could be designated Petty Chief Officer ala Bill, the Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison.

The article concludes that “the economics for fairing recovery seem to make sense, especially since SpaceX launches multiple times a month.” At $6m per fairing and thus > $3m for the active half vs. leasing the ship for significantly less than the $2.7m/year calculated from the $7,500 daily rate, the ship itself would be more than paid for with a single annual recovery. The article goes on to mention additional fees but their “especially since” conclusion is quite different than an “only if” one.

If all depends, of course, on achieving successful recoveries, and on the suitability for reflight of recovered fairings. As with booster recovery, relieving production pressures and thus allowing a greater flight rate is a more immediate benefit of reuse than the simple cost savings.

It will be interesting to see if, once they get fairing recovery working, they will need two ships on each coast to recover both fairing halves. My bet is that by staggering parachute deployment they will be able to recover the two halves a couple of minutes apart, giving them time to lower the first fairing sufficiently and deploy a second net. Still, those fairings a pretty big, as emphasized in this beam on photo of Mr. Steven’s return, and the consensus on forums seems to be that a second ship will be needed to catch the second fairing half.