On Wed, 9 Oct 2013 07:45:59 -0400, Jeff Findley
wrote:

In article , says...

In message
Rick Jones wrote:
I was assuming "ocean landing" was really "sea-barge" - does one
really want to be soaking a booster one expects to re-use in salt
water? Of course, I suspect that means *three* sea-barges for an F9H,
probably each some reasonable distance apart because you don't want a
fubar with one arriving booster taking-out the other two.

That's what I'd understood as well. The platform for the core stage will
be further down range than the ones for the side boosters anyway, and
you might be able to get away with a single long platform with some
superstructure acting as a blast shield between two pads as the stages
ought to be running on fumes by then. It will probably come down to
running costs for two platforms compared to replacement cost of an
occasional first stage.

You'd have to do a detailed analysis to find out what is cheaper in the
long run. But I'm guessing that comparing the relatively low fuel costs
for flying the stages back versus the cost of building, operating, and
maintaining such a mobile ocean going landing platform is going to yield
a very clear answer.

I would think fuel cost is in the noise compared to say the cost of
refurbishing components touched by salt water.