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by ohyes 3809 days ago
They want to be able to relatively quickly send it back into space. If they have to pull it out of the ocean and dry it out/fix it, I assume this makes their turnaround time less than ideal. Think what you do with a 747, it lands, a technician checks it out, it gets refueled, it takes off again. We'd be able to build things in space so much faster with that sort of round-trip lifting capability. I assume there are also implications for exploring other planets. This is my guess as someone who has not studied the issue closely.