SOP,
I hope your Rosetta example was deliberately ironic - I'll credit you with having your tongue in cheek. But for those who would argue this as a good example of automation over human pilots, then consider that it was a failure - Rosetta died within 24hours of landing because the automation screwed up and allowed the craft to bounce off, twice, and land in the wrong zone where it gets no light. That decision to have automation was made of necessity - had it been possible to have human operation by some fantastic faster-than-light remote control or an astronaut, then no doubt the mission would have been saved, just like Armstrong saving the Apollo 11 mission by manual intervention, and Lovell saving Apollo 13... Even then, the automation had to be commanded and updated by a whole room of warm blooded humans to even get Rosetta to make contact with the asteroid, an amazing feat in itself that is testomony to the abilities of humans, not computers.