What obvious example am I overlooking?

[james_davis_nicoll]

I'm trying to think of a good example of an SF story with a crewed exploration vehicle armed with a large flotilla of robotic probes (The idea being the meat stays where it's safe, but close enough to the remotes not to have significant time lag).

Comments

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I think the implication was that meat was in fact less vulnerable, the magic nanotech wasn't magical enough, and if the objective was to get the information back to the crew, that wasn't working by remote.