[alkonaut]

Rockets have always been able to land in the ocean more or less intact (i.e. without disintegrating). However, if the rocket is dipped in salt water, the restoration would be enormously expensive, so it needs to stay dry to be re-used.

Of course, you could just try to land it vertically on the water on some cushion and have more cushions deploy to make it tip over horizontally and float (all the time staying above the surface of the ocean). Such a solution isn't as compatible with recovery on dry land. If you want to do e.g. space tourism missions and land on dry land, the vertical landing seems better.

[zardo]

Rockets have always been able to land in the ocean more or less intact (i.e. without disintegrating).

No they haven't. SpaceX started doing that in 2013 before the barge landings. I don't think anyone had ever even tried to land(sea?) a liquid fuel booster before that.

You may be thinking of the STS solid boosters, but solid boosters are really a different game. They can be built sturdy enough to hit the ocean at 60mph, but they couldn't possibly be simply refueled and reflown.