[thereisnospork]

>I wouldn't want to go on a craft where [jacking it back upright] was in the top ten on the list of recovery options to get home.

For a counter, I wouldn't want to be on a lander so fragile[0] that being manipulated upright is infeasible. Something will go wrong, maybe not on that lander, but when it does go wrong it'll have to get duct taped together.

[0]Not just mechanically, but in terms of operation scope. Planning that everything must go perfectly or people die is a recipe for the latter.

[toss1]

I deliberately did not say I wanted jacking to be infeasible — but I DO want it quite far down on the options list, as in there's >10 better things to try first.

(And yes, I've done a fair amount of wrangling vehicles, gear, etc. in snow, dirt, mud, & rocks, and eventually it can often be gotten out. But on a different planet/moon, it really should be not be anything close to a primary option. OTOH, if it's got a set of 6+ pop-out lever-legs to upright itself, tested, etc., that's a different solution)

[ghufran_syed]

agree - which is probably why Elon Musk is so obsessive about increasing the efficiency and thrust of the merlin and raptor rocket engines, a huge amount of downstream capability can be achieved by increasing that number (all other things being equal)