The humans are the aliens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szzOTftmOUk

My comment:  Instead of stories about aliens, I think you should write about real humans facing ordinary problems like bureaucracies, greed, corporate narrow-mindedness, trash, bad education systems, gross gross gross inefficiency, corruption, and terminal callous disregard for the value of human lives by neglect and oppression. Making a ship perform is just mechanics and control systems. But getting a human world to work well takes skill and a bit more. Can you teach a poor country to pick itself out of the gutter and walk and live and work with dignity? Or a rich one to not act so stupid when it thinks too highly of itself? You can still have your fusion warp engines and faster then light communication system, true AIs that really care about humans and themselves. Kind of like the one in this story, but work constantly and independently on their own, not waiting for a human to ask. A real partner.