Earths surface is 70% water so if there's an incident then there's a 70% chance you'll be landing in water. Its possible to build a land lander that would not

Earths surface is 70% water so if there's an incident then there's a 70% chance you'll be landing in water. Its possible to build a land lander that would not survive an ocean landing. So if for safety reasons you have to modify the design for water landing, may as well just make a water lander. (edited to add, speed at splashdown for Apollo capsules was about 15 MPH, so accidentally crashing an Apollo into a flat cornfield would feel about like falling off a bicycle... there would be some damage but its rather unlikely to kill the astronauts, so most water landers can safely-ish land on land with an extremely high odds of survival) Also helps that with the implosion of the English Empire the USA ruled the seas. Yes we had/have air force bases everywhere also, but there's just more surface area controlled. If the Soviets had tried ocean recovery it would have been extremely awkward. Very handwavy the Soviets had an enormous number of low quality attack subs and extremely limited surface ships, whereas the USA had/has a huge dominating surface fleet. For better or worse the USA has enormous experience fishing aerospace vehicles out of the water, the USSR simply could not do ocean recovery like we did.