I know this is how people in the 80s and 90 imagined the future and a lot of concepts were probably too far fetched for them.
BUT... why arent they using drones to explore planets? why are there not more drone-spaceships? why does enterprise need a crew to begin with? Why is there so little automation? Why so few uses of AI in general?
I am saying this as a star trek the next generation person. I'd also expect them to have full video and sensory streams of any surface mission teams.
Actually... That kind of backup may be possible... 🤔
I mean, if they can accidentally backup real humans (second Riker, Scotty in the transport buffer, Broccoli turning himself into a super computer, etc), surely they could purposely backup the android. lol
The one time they purposely "backed up" a human via the transporter it took up so much space they had to dump the backup into the holosuite and it still nearly brought the entire station's computer to its knees.
To be fair, that was Cardassian technology. Maybe the Federation's stuff is better.