I think a combination of some level of autonomy and remote control by human works well in this usage. I don't believe the AI technology is advanced enough to handle such a hostile environment. But I believe there are many applications of robotics where full autonomy can be achieved in time.
I don't think a Node fork,even if it is closed-source, is such a bad idea. Look at the rivalry between NPM & Nodejitsu on one side and Joyent & StrongLoop on the other. They are all for-profit companies and pushing things to their advantage. I am not sure if this is all beneficial to the project. I have a project that I was going to use Node but after seeing last week's well publicized incident, I am not so sure anymore. IMHO an alternative independent distribution might just be a good thing after all.