Originally Posted by False Capture
Wow, great video canyonblue737.
clearly someone in the program would know the real answer but the sense i get as an outsider watching closely is after STS-3 and a few more less ambitious tests they kinda said, "well, let's just have 'em fly it and quit messing around with this system which while it "works" clearly isn't as good or safe as the guys up front just hand flying."
it seems however the autopilot does a great job of doing the S turns on the RCS jets during the initial entry interface so seldom if ever do the guys hand fly that. when columbia was lost it was on autopilot till it rolled out of control where the command went to manual and still couldn't recover it.