Das Ding hält den Abstand, das Tempo und die Spur.

Das klingt nach Autobahn. Da mag das noch ganz passabel funktionieren, aber fahr mal auf ner richtigen Landstraße. Also ohne Mittellinie. Viel Spaß dabei.

So richtig lustig wird das erst, wenn die Karren mit dem Scheiß alt werden und die ganze Dreckssensorik nicht mehr sauber funktioniert.

Ist doch das normalste Ding seit Menschengedenken. Sobald eine Protestbewegung eine gewisse Größe erreicht, oder danach aussieht, kommen die Tankies und die Opferolympiade-Befindlichkeitsmaxxer und unterwandern die, bis sie zusammenbricht.

nicht alleine und unerfahren umgehen muss.

Die Erfahrenen sind wahrscheinlich aus der falschen "Generation" und dürfen deshalb nicht mitmachen.

Das kommt halt davon, wenn man diesen dummen, spalterischen amerikanischen Generationenmüll bis zur letzten Konsequenz durchspielt.

Maybe one could use the resulting gases as a means of propulsion to speed up the transit?

This time, it wasn't the Simpsons that predicted the future, but Futurama!

At least it’s unlikely to side with the enemy.

Is it, though? Just look at recent events.

but we are not in charge at the moment.

Will you ever be back in charge in the foreseeable future, though? I have my doubts and my fears for you guys. You are currently governed by an executive branch that openly disregards court orders and legislative decisions, and that already has instituted purges in many authorities and institutions that could be employed to make them obey the law. It is very hard to come back from that.

More spending doesn't automatically equal stronger. Especially if you're spending that money on highly complex equipment produced by an openly hostile third party, which can end its supply of spare parts at any moment and therefore render the capabilities purchased with that equipment all but useless.

Y’know, it would have been such a differently horrific world if they actually had started using nuclear weapons for shit like that.

They were actually used, and widely deployed by both sides of the Cold War. Just never fired in anger, only ready to be fired at a moment's notice for decades.

Regarding nuclear surface detonations, there were so many above the ground tests, (some tests were even conducted in space) to the point that you need to drag up old shipwrecks that sunk before August 1945 from the ocean floor, whenever you want to build a highly sensitive radiation sensor and need steel for it that isn't contaminated with the fall-out from all these nuclear explosions since then, and will therefore make the sensor give false readings...

Neither is the voting populace electing said government repeatedly.

Mikroplutonium sehr gut, ja.