On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:16:52 -0500, in a place far, far away, Michael
Gallagher made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 14:05:03 -0600, kT wrote:

That defeats the purpose of single stage to orbit (SSTO) spaceflight, in
which the core stage is delivered to orbit ....

??? On the issue of recovering and using compelx engines frome a
coastal launch, TSTO and SSTO both work.

You don't even need a coastal launch, if the vehicles are fully
reusable.