[Paleo Conservative]

"So you have a detachable engine pod in some kind of re-entry survivable form?"

Dunking SSMEs into salt water voids the warranty. You'd have to seal them somehow in a water-tight way.

Why would they have to land in the ocean? If the engines were not detached till after the payload module acheives orbit, one could choose just about anywhere in the world to land them by parachute just by waiting for a suitable orbit to fire some retro rockets. Probably the ideal place to recover the engines would be in a desert like Death Valley, Callifornia where Edwards Airforce base is located. Also, considering there would be no live passengers aboard, it would not be necessary to worry as much about limiting the g forces it is subjected to during a re-entry and parachute landing.

[Anteater_4]

I think your unmanned disposable orbiter idea is excellent. The major advantage of the current shuttle platform is that it is the world's only system for launching unusually large and heavy satellites. Since the manned orbiters are laid-up indefinitely, in order to keep the shuttle contractors in business, the unmanned orbiter should be looked into by NASA.

The MAJOR operating cost the manned orbiter is the fact that it has to support human life. By building a substitute disposable system that's inexpensive enough, NASA (or preferably someone else) can remain the business of launching very heavy payloads for communication companies, etc...

[boris]

"Why would they have to land in the ocean? If the engines were not detached till after the payload module acheives orbit, one could choose just about anywhere in the world to land them by parachute just by waiting for a suitable orbit to fire some retro rockets. Probably the ideal place to recover the engines would be in a desert like Death Valley, Callifornia where Edwards Airforce base is located. Also, considering there would be no live passengers aboard, it would not be necessary to worry as much about limiting the g forces it is subjected to during a re-entry and parachute landing."

Rocket engines are pretty delicate and if you bumped one hard you'd probably need to tear it to bitsy pieces and re-assemble. Also, we will paint a big "X" in Death Valley and let you go stand on it to watch as the package comes in. Deal?

--Boris