In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:
:Maybe, but the simplest solution would be to launch the lander without
:any fuel tanks first, and then attach fuel tanks...

And you're back to talking about assembly of pressure fittings in
space. This is almost always a bad idea, particularly for relatively
high pressure fittings like fuel feed lines.

The Russians made it work quite routinely -- untouched by human hands --
for refueling Mir (and, I believe, ISS) from Progress tankers. There's
nothing that hard about it.
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