Sylvia Else wrote:
kT wrote:
Brian Gaff wrote:

You don't want to be recovering complex engines from the sea though,
so you would need to launch them from a place where the recovery
could be inland.

Eventually they would be recovered at the dry land launch site two
hours after launch, but you want everything right away, dontcha!
Impatience!

Tin hats anyone?

Boeing has already successfully demonstrated the water recovery of an
SSME.

Did they launch a shuttle with it afterwards?

No, they test fired it to their satisfaction.

The entire point of the SSME commercialization exercise is to jump start
the high performance COTS sector. The engines are going to be retired.
It doesn't matter if you leave them in orbit, or dump them in the ocean,
you're still going to get a guaranteed 15 flights until you run out of
engines, and even when you run out, you still have 15 engines to use.

In 1973 we retired the J2. Now we're bringing them back.

You figure it out.