DART was the only attempt in history (as far as I know) of a truly autonomous rendezvous. The Russians use a sort of monitored autonomous rendezvous. (It's not entirely autonomous, in other words, and they can and do hand pilot the spacecraft remotely.)<br /><br />It should be possible to make a system to dock the Orbiter the same way (by remote control). However, there are some things to consider. Firstly, the Orbiter is very massive. As bad as the Progress/Spektr collision was on Mir, an Orbiter/ISS collision could be much worse. So the system has to be very reliable. Secondly, the Space Shuttle is not highly efficient in terms of system mass to payload ratio. Even unmanned, you'll be carrying a lot of dead weight. Basically, it would be a compromise between developing an ideal large unmanned ferry craft and getting something flying quickly. I think it would probably be a good compromise, although the costs of launching the Space Shuttle would need to be factored in and carefully considered. I couldn't speculate accurately as to which way the cost/benefit analysis would go. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>