throwaway2037 • yesterday at 7:18 AM

I never heard about this experiment before your post. An interesting quote from that Wiki page:

    > During those same flights, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center also developed the remote piloting techniques necessary for the Boeing 720 to fly as a drone aircraft. An initial attempt at the full-scale test was scrubbed in late 1983 due to problems with the uplink connection to the 720; if the uplink failed the ground-based pilot would no longer have control of the aircraft.

Think for a moment how hard it was to fly that aeroplane as a remote control drone in... wait for it... 1984! Computers were so primitive in the 1980s.