Considering what TZ has said (directly at CitCon) about missions being taken on by NPC’s if no PC player takes them then yeah that may very well be a possibility. Might not be able to Agent Smith to the 315p, but you could trade places with the pilot via EVA and then leave your XO in command till you return.
OK, what TZ is talking about there is a little different. That conversation is around the 9:1 ratio of NPCs to PCs.
A “thing” happens in the world: a war, an accident, a plague, something that changes the economic landscape. NPC corporations react by creating missions like “go mine this” or “bring this medicine here”, etc. These missions hit the boards, but if PCs don’t pick them up in a timely manner, NPCs will pick them up and “do” them behind the scenes. Additionally, if PC pirates don’t attack them, there’s a % chance NPC pirates will do so, again behind the scenes. Then these corps will put out missions for escorts. And so on. If we never log in, the game will play itself in this manner, growing and changing over time, as if we were there and participating, but all behind the scenes on the universe server.
I do not envision that SC will ever allow my NPCs to go off and do missions on their own. In all honesty, and I say this as a “great whale”, that gives WAY too much power to the whales. I’ve 80+ ships, imagine how much money I could make, completely passively, while not even logged in, should that be possible. Even if I’m shuttling Baby Aspirin from Earth to Mars and only making 4% profit, that’s still a free 4% profit, with no effort.
Now, I will loan my ships out to you guys and charge some % of your mission revenue as a “fee”, so I will absolutely have some kind of passive income, but a player is involved, even if it’s not me, so that is OK…even if it’s not OK, it’s completely unavoidable. But me being able to dispatch my cat and an escort of fighters to go do a thing, the send my orion out with another escort to mine, then send my genesis out to shuttle passengers, and my gemini to get fuel, all while I sit in my office, smoking a stogy and having hot babes give me a mani/pedi, that is not a style of play I see CR ever supporting.
But if you are putting together a crew of NPC’s to assist you in flying your Carrack and an NPC is flying your 315 for you as an escort than you are creating a localized mission involving you and the NPC’s you’ve hired.
The only thing that changes in your description is that at one point in order to fly thru the wormhole to investigate you switch places with the NPC escort to go get the data you want and return. At that point you’re giving very specific localized instructions to your hired crew. IMO the possibilities you’re envisioning is where TZ starts talking about customizing mission content as appropriate. Yes he does relate it into the devs creating this content directly however if we are allowed to customize a mission and in turn hire NPC’s using PC assets and specify that you are a direct player in that mission than that is exactly what you’re asking for.
Hey, I hope you’re right, it only benefits me. I have no hard data one way or the other, just hearsay from 3-4 years ago so I can’t argue the point. I love the idea of playing “dispatcher” and just counting money, but that’s just me 
Happy to see this news update for the Idris. Basically if you have the funds then the Idris P can be upgraded to an Idris M