Originally Posted by
TURIN
On a spacecraft, nothing is simple.
Some things are simple, even when building spacecraft. Add a hinge at the base of each leg and a simple mechanism, in zero gravity rubber bands would be sufficient, to extend them once on the way to the moon. Worked perfectly well 58 years ago with Surveyor 1 (
https://www.honeysucklecreek.net/oth...ay_26_1966.pdf). Even the Chinese patent, and they seem to be the only ones remaining who still master the art of landing things on the Moon successfully, has expired, so could have been used (
https://patents.google.com/patent/CN102092484B/en).
But of course, if you want to reinvent the wheel by building a spacecraft with a very high centre of gravity and a narrow landing gear, spaceflight suddenly becomes difficult again.