The first moon landing would have failed three times over if it had not been manned.
Like many things, landing on the moon is so much more difficult than the untutored would even imagine. IIRC, only four countries have been able to do it, while several others have failed. For a private company to do it - even if only 90% perfect - is flat amazing.
They encountered a navigation issue just before the planned landing orbit and decided to delay it by one more trip around. In that one hour - half of which the craft was behind the moon and completely out of contact - they wrote new navigation software, figured out how to replace it in the craft's computers without also losing control, uploaded it, and gave the irreversible command for the craft to autonomously make the landing try. What they did in that hour would normally take weeks or months to achieve. Once they issued the "go ahead" command, they had no further control of the lander at all. Nothing but fingers crossed, nail biting, breathing hard, and sweating suspense.
I have heard, although not so sure how true it is, that the onboard computers on the moon missions had much less capability than a now antiquated HP41 calculator.
