It's really hard to control these things remotely. If you use remote control you have to worry about latency, which can make recovering from bad situations impo

It's really hard to control these things remotely. If you use remote control you have to worry about latency, which can make recovering from bad situations impossible. And if you rely on auto-pilot you are testing both a vehicle and its autopilot at the same time. For a highly experimental vehicle this is extremely risky. The reason you need to test the vehicle is because you don't know 100% for sure what it's going to do. And if you don't know, how can you design an autopilot that brings it back every time. Consider what happened with SS1 when it started rolling uncontrollably: http://gfycat.com/GargantuanRecentJackrabbit http://gfycat.com/GargantuanRecentJackrabbit can you imagine an autopilot that would properly handle this situation? Good thing they had Mike Melvill in there.