wrote in message
ups.com...


After troubles like this, I'm even more amazed they launched the
shuttle manned on the first flight.

It wasn't designed to fly and land without someone at the stick. There have
been numerous discussions in these groups about what it would take to fly
the shuttle unmanned. While it can be done, it would necessarily reduce the
reliability of the system. Humans are needed on board to deal with certain
contingencies. Among those are manual closing of the payload bay doors in
the event that they fail to close automatically.

Then there are other (unmanned) operational issues like the lack of an
automated rendezvous and docking capability...

Jeff
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