"No one in the engineering community ever questioned whether it would be technically feasible to land a rocket booster on a barge." I know first hand this stat

"No one in the engineering community ever questioned whether it would be technically feasible to land a rocket booster on a barge." I know first hand this statement is absolutely false. In fact, a GNC engineer in a Large Aerospace Organization That You Would Recognize asserted to me that a booster landing on a barge is impossible. And strangely, he said it just a few weeks before it was accomplished and after SpaceX had demonstrated land landing.