prb@access.digex.com (Pat) Pontificated: 
What I was getting at in my post is whether or not it might be
possible to put enough brains on board future deep-space probes
for them to automatically avoid such things as looking at the
sun or going into an uncontrolled tumble.  

I heard once that the voyagers had a failsafe routine built in
that essentially says "If you never hear from Earth again,
here's what to do."  This was a back up in the event a receiver
burnt out but the probe could still send data (limited, but
still some data).  

Since this would be a shutdown that may never be refunded for
startup, if some type of cosmic BEM took out the probe, it might
not be such a big loss.  Obviously you can't plan for
everything, but the most obvious things can be considered.
