And here's a modern example of our soon to be robotic overlords, with the awsome and terrifying name of "Mutliple Kill Vehicle". Notice how they already have to keep it in a cage.
Calling it "Lunar Lander" does'nt make it land on the moon, my observation was after watching a documentary on BBC or maybe ITV, sometime ago where they said its still in experimental stages to land a rocket like vehicle vertically.
XFY Pogo, is a different design altogether.
But its good to know how much Im "loved" around here
Robots are faaaar away from being "self thinking and regenerating" overlords, Robotics is struggling to help make a Robot identify an Umbrella, with a variation in its colours, design, sizes and states (open or close), let alone going out and taking over the Planet on their own!
Robots are just advanced, 21st century Puppetry. The puppet Master is still very much in control.
Ok... Why dont they use the same Lunar Lander, to take off from Earth? Why all that platform and 3 booster rockets to carry enough fuel to travel the distance?
Because of how dense you are, Derv. Your sheer stupidity creates a massive gravitational pull, so they need more thrust to achieve orbit. This also explains how it's easier to take off from the moon.
XYF Pogo is very stable design. It has the engine (propeller) mounted on top, like a Helicopter, just that the torque is balanced by the 4 horizontal fins. Whereas the Lunar lander has none of these, plus the blast engine being at the bottom can make it very unstable at take off and landing, hence the rocket like vehincles are launched from launch pads, while helicoters and aeroplanes can take off and land anywhere, except that for high speed jets, it has to be smooth surface.
Same thing as difference between airplanes which has wings mounted on top of the fuselages e.g. Hercules are more stable (pendulum effect) compared to aeroplanes with wings attached under the fuselage e.g. Spitfire. Relatively less stable provides for higher Agility. You can check that with any Aviation enthusiast.
Ok.. but would'nt you need the same when taking off from Moon and making the journey back to Earth?
Why they have to be dropped in a sea with parachutes, why cant you land them back on Earth? Just like space shuttles, Discovery etc, which clearly have aeroplane like deisgn.