In most cases that would indicate an organizational failure. However, if something is trillions of miles away, and wrong commands could break communication etc, I'd probably just stick with the most experienced person as well.
Yeah, I'm scheduled for surgery, so my insurance carrier says it's outrageous for the surgeon to come into the O.R. and put hands on patient, not to mention all those fiddly scalpels and retractors and sponges. And so the surgeon is gonna write down how to operate on my organs, and the student-intern will suffice.
I think it's incredibly naive to assume there's not documentation. Maybe look into NASA and the Voyager 2 program a bit.
Experts aren't made from reading a data sheet or process doc. Competence in performing a critical task comes from actually doing the task in practice and for real.