A better analogy would be "the trebuchet for computers".

"but when there's hundreds of kilometres to cover in a short amount of time, the trebuchet is clearly the correct choice."

you point it in the rough direction and distance you want to go, pull the lever, see if you hit your mark, adjust, pull the lever again, etc.

And once you have dialed in the variables for that particular piece of rock that one time, you write it down in a "skill.md" file and announce to everyone on the team "this trebuchet has been carefully calibrated. Trust it with your other rocks too."