Apropos death-avoidance reflex, that pesky Mars probe(s) would never have crashed, would it have cross-checked any ground-originated course correction suggestion against any resulting in dire outcome (like shooting way by planet target, or crashing into atmosphere way outside the aerobraking corridor).
Faster, cheaper, better? Maybe, but certainly not (much) smarter.
Not that rudimentary navigation wasn't already there (especially if tracking any impulse change, since beiing in direct neighbourhood of the logic controlling the thrusters), or that orbit mechanics would require serious MIPS resources to burn. Puzzling.
Zeb Haradon writes:
> would crush him. His constantly running death-avoidance mechanism calculated
> that the best way to avoid death was to step out of the way, then sent the
> instruction to his legs." But why *should* you get out of the way? Why