JFC....
Was this America's Cup a massive endorsement for us or not? I'm going to go with yes.
I was in the Post Office today chatting to the postmaster of a post office in the middle of dirt worshipper nowhere. He was watching some of it, and was really into it. That is so completely unbelievable to me. While it will be extremely short lived, at least we're being noticed, and NOBODY gave a crap about the AC up until now in the general population.

So the kiss what if there was some auto adjusting trim of the board AoA? What if there was a dumb butt wand doing it like a moth?

I'm with Jake on this, that this is not a case of purely automation making the boat go, but helping it along. Keeeriist, some people just want us to sit in caves terrified of the sun. None of the upper echelon motor sports, (which this is, just not of the internal combustion variety), would be where there are without some sort of automation taking some of the control. F1, MotoGP, WRC, etc... all have something going on to keep it on the bleeding edge. I don't want to see an Airbus either, but I don't see it going that way, and if it did it would be at the events own peril. Completely because it would take the part that makes the viewer and enthusiast interested, and that is humans doing human things. Their trials, tribulations, and triumphs are what make it interesting and engrossing. There's no hero's with two robots duking it out on the course. Nobody gives two shakes of a limp dick about watching two computers play a perfect game of chess in .000003 seconds. I can promise you, that if a fully automated race were even the slightest bit interesting to the general public, we'd be seeing it already in some form or another.

So calm the kiss down, and think rationally, and let's not go backwards.

I can't speak to costs, a half billion dollars isn't **** to more people, corporations, and countries than you can imagine. The AC isn't a game for you or I to play, its for that top 1% who know how to play.