There is too many different versions of starship troopers to have a meaningful conversation about the logistics of how they travel. But there are transport bugs capable of interstellar travel. The first one was located on Pluto, so they were already in our system. Depending on which version of Starship Troopers you bring up Buenos Aires was either attacked directly by the bugs or had a meteor destroy it.

And the bugs have to have some sort of FTL travel since the humans followed the first transport bug back to the Arachnid homeworld. If that would take billions of years then the humans wouldn’t have been able to follow them back after they left Sol.

Starship Troopers is full of plot holes and inconsistencies that would, again, likely prevent us from having a meaningful conversation about the logistics of the Arachnids.

The bugs colonized entire planets and has an empire that rivals the humans. That is far from being a mindless, non-sentient creature. If anything that screams they are more intelligent than humans because the bugs just shoot massive spores into space to accomplish all that.

Okay, sure. But how is the bugs attacking first unlikely, when they are able to calculate that kind of interstellar trajectory to colonize all the other planets in their empire? They shoot spores into space and hit other planets to colonize.

Why could the bugs not have shot a colonizing spore at earth, or another human controlled planet, and that was perceived as an attack? The bugs empire rivaled the human empire after all.

Or am I missing something obvious here?

So, I have read and been told this many times before. Some times I will rewatch the movie to try and see that narrative. And I’ll admit, I’m and idiot. But I can’t get past the idea of: Bugs are just icky, no matter the size. Remove at all costs.