Originally Posted by
unmanned_droid
Yeah, I'd say having to incorporate landing gear into nacelles represents a ground clearance issue and extensive engineering effort in the solution. It sounds like a bad solution to me.
The outrigger gear on the BUFF wingtips are not intended to carry significant load - they are basically there just to support the wing statically - the main body gear are intended to take all the landing loads (they don't even touch the ground unless the wing is carrying lots of fuel). So in short, the structural requirements were not that big of deal - the mass and thrust of the engines was a far more significant design consideration (for example, the gyroscopic loads of a rapidly spinning turbofan engine at rotation are massive).