On 03/06/2011 08:12 PM, Snidely wrote:
Jeff scribbled something like ...

says...

How close is ISS to being able to handle a visiting spacecraft's
docking and undocking without ground teams coaching?

Even for completely automated rendezvous and docking, you would still
want to monitor it and have the ability to remotely abort in case
something unexpected happened. Automated systems don't often handle
the unexpected well, because if it really is unexpected, how could the
software developers account for it in the software they wrote?

But you've got people on site to monitor ...

With very limited telemetry from the visiting vehicle, and limited
training. ISS expeditions last six months and during that time the
visiting vehicle manifest can change dramatically.