Imagine your average teenage American kid with their new drivers license, and parents old car, before the oil embargo. Most didn't know how things worked, but t

Imagine your average teenage American kid with their new drivers license, and parents old car, before the oil embargo. Most didn't know how things worked, but they were able to use the technology to go anywhere they wanted. I imagine the same would be true of any sufficiently advanced civilization. The kids, and tourists, would be out and about, visiting the universe. That's how I figure they could traverse light years, but still crash, get shot down, etc. My hunch is that there are a lot of deep and disturbing deliberate and accidental events, programs, etc... that are hidden deep under the covers in the name of "national security", both in the US, and across the world. The truth is going to be much weirder than any of us expect, and simultaneously far more mundane in many cases. I give it a 50/50 shot at this point. I just want my own personal megawatt box if there is alien tech to be had. You can do a lot of nifty stuff with that much power. Grow food and live anywhere on the planet, with almost no need for inputs from elsewhere once you're up and running.