On the transferral of the external payloads brought along by the Dragon to the external platforms on the ISS:
But don't forget, this launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9, with the lowest prices in the american launch market.
A question is how accurate are the landing zones for the F9 first stage.
Should the re-ignition of the engines fail or the guidance go wrong, there is a high chance that the rocket would crash into the ship and a few tons of metal at 600 km/h can easily sink even an armoured ship.
As Urwumpe said, landing on a pitching and rolling ship would not likely be successful. Not much point. Even if a stage can soft land in shallow water near shore, that would be an incremental success.
Reasons why we don't send people to the ISS with a Dragon, even if we don't like the Russians, volume 7.
They'll fix it. At least it wasn't a Liberty Bell 7.
One day, SpaceX will also lose a crew
Of course. Riding a barely controlled bomb and subsequently slamming into the atmosphere at 8 Km s^-1 is never going to be an entirely risk-free proposition.
For stable landing platform for ocean landings perhaps SpaceX could rent Sea Launch's Odyssey platform:
Rocket-carrying Odyssey platform sailing to launch site
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: May 12, 2014
http://spaceflightnow.com/sealaunch/eutelsat3b/140512departure/#.U3n-l_ldXbg
It is based in California for sea launch from the Pacific so it would be quite a steam to bring it to Florida. Still, considering Sea Launch's current shaky financial status they would welcome some more cash from the rental...