Originally Posted by
ATSA1
Back in the 50s and 60s, automation was in its infancy, computers were crude and unreliable, so sending a man (or woman) up into space was the politically sound option..
Politically a man going to the Moon was an absolute given, regardless of the state of computation/automation, simply because JFK didn't just pledge a Moon landing before the end of the decade, he made a pledge of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely....."
Automation/computation wasn't massively robust in the sixties but it was improving throughout the decade - both the Soviets and the Americans soft landed ( well soft'ish in the Soviet case) automated spacecraft on the Moon back in 1966 (Luna9/Surveyor 1 respectively)....it's perhaps worth nothing that American's were successful at their first attempt and also much around the same time (66-67) they also had a 100% success rate with their five
Lunar Orbiter missions.
Even the Apollo LM was highly automated and there was some debate early on in the design phase about whether there was any reason for allowing any manual input. Fortunately common sense prevailed but the machine was still designed and built to fly by default all the way down to touchdown on automatics unless somebody intervened. As it turned out nobody ever did allow a LM to autoland, I don't think pride would have let any of the six commanders who did land allow such a thing to happen.
You're right though, things have changed but I think there will always a case for a man/woman to be on the spot, but probably not so much to do the flying. In the case of Mars missions because of distances there will probably always need to be a decision maker on the spot, certainly if we ever want to see an end to processes such as geology traverses having to take weeks.... the much bigger question is whether many or any of the future crews will need to be "pilot astronauts".....