>casually

The mission was rushed, politically motivated, and a failure. There was nothing casual about it. After the 60s the USSR space program was a mess of failures and catching up to NASA.

>because astronauts lobbied against any and every automation for fear of being made redundant.)

Well, when you don't live in an autocratic state, you actually get a say on what gets done especially when its your ass on the line. Perhaps fears were overplayed with the auto system dropping landing gear and killing everyone, but a simple compromise was reached: a cable (which every compatible STS shuttle had) would be plugged into the landing gear and then the computer for full automation. Frankly, I wouldn't trust 1970s era automation to land the spaceship I'm in.

Considering the massive bodycount of the USSR space program (Soyuz 1, Nedelin catastrophe, Soyuz 11, etc) maybe erring on the side of caution made sense instead of risking life and limb on "firsties." US Astronauts were very aware of the early Soviet deaths and failures and wanted nothing of them. Cosmonauts on the other hand, had no choice but to obey their communist masters unless they wanted to spend the rest of their lives in a gulag. Komarov walked into Soyuz 1 knowing he would die, for example. Polyus project managers knew it wasn't going to work because top leadership rushed it and wanted to 'show up the Americans,' etc. Environments built on fear perform sub-optimally.

edit: driveby downvoters, my comment is factually correct, please explain yourselves.

edit2: cant post a new item right now so my reply to the parent below:

The era I'm discussing was prior to the Challenger. The US casualty numbers was well below USSR numbers at the time (its a stupid comparison anyway considering how many more people the HUGE STS could hold). Those astronauts knew those numbers. They didn't want to take changes like the risky and deadly USSR approach. That's why we didn't automate the Shuttle. NASA had a lower tolerance for risk because it respected the lives of its astronauts. In an autocracy you just throw bodies at the problem until you get the desired results.

>the Nedelin catastrophe, which was completely unrelated to the space program

It was a rocket explosion at the Baikonur Cosmodrome using the same staff/crew/engineers as the space program. The USSR didn't separate their military and civilian space program, so yes, its perfectly appropriate to hold them accountable for their lax safety standards that killed over 100 people! Hell, the Soviets even buried it and tossed these poor people into a mass grave and told the West that Nedelin died in a plane crash! So yeah, they saw it as part of their space program and it shamed them enough to lie about it.

In that era, NASA had First pilot-controlled space flight, first orbital solar observatory, first geosynchronous satellite, first satellite navigation system, first geostationary satellite, first Mars flyby, eight-day human spaceflight record, first orbital rendezvous, first 14-day human spaceflight record, first spacecraft docking, first orbital ultraviolet observatory, first humans on the Moon, first mobile rover driven by humans off earth, first spacecraft to orbit another planet: Mars, first human-made object sent on escape trajectory away from the Sun, first mission to enter the asteroid belt and leave inner solar system,84-day human-crewed space record (skylab 3), First Jupiter flyby, First planetary gravitational assist (Venus flyby), First Mercury flyby,etc. AND THAT'S JUST UP To 1974!

Its clear that NASA was going for scientific and difficult technical achievement and the Soviets were going for propagandist achievements. By the mid 60's the USSR couldn't keep up with NASA's achievements and the USSR space program became a joke with putting guns into space after the US moon landing and of course, the US's STS which changed the game in regards to human spaceflight from a crew/mass perspective. The ISS wouldnt be possible without its lifting and cargo capabilities.