My headcannon for this is that spaceships in that universe are to those people what cars are to us. If you know the basics of driving a car, you can drive most cars, though the bigger ships might get more complicated (I've never seen one of our heroes try to back up a star destroyer into a starbase to help with their buddy's move.)
You assume there's lots of chemicals, but did you check? The process of canning food doesn't necessarily require a lot of chemicals: a lot of canned food is cooked in the can, after it's sealed, which kills most of the microbes that might spoil the food and make you sick. And because it's sealed, no microbes can get in, either.
They may have been referring to the cartoon. The car in the cartoon did some ridiculous shit, such as tires that inflated like balloons and made the car extra bouncy.
It's not density, it's mass. A mass of 1kg compressed to the density of the Sun's core would pull the Earth with just as much force as a 1kg ball of styrofoam.
People complain about the total cost too get everything in The Sims, but I don't remember anyone complaining about the total cost of every song in Rock Band.
I only take medicine when the symptoms literally prevent me from functioning or threaten my life. With fever, I actually wrap myself up to keep warm, which lets my body "rest" instead of working to raise my temperature. This approach appears to have helped me get through many infections quickly, though I admit this is anecdotal.
Wouldn't want people to start calling her a maverick. That doesn't usually go well for candidates.