re: Reprogramming
It's true humans "reprogram" themselves all the time and are ideal to face unexpected situations.
But when Voyager 2 got to Saturn and the arm containing the camera got stuck, engineers managed to reprogram the probe and also because of the lighting conditions near Uranus, pictures needed a diferent kind of exposure and timing. Voyager 2 became better with the years.
Galileo also, with its partially deployed antenna, had to be reprogrammed.
Those things were not envisaged in the beginning of the space age.
Raoul