Why do sci-fi artists design aerodynamic spaceships like mother ships that are never going to land? Aerodynamics really doesn't matter a whole lot in space.
Also, why would these ships need a discernable top and bottom? There is no real up or down for most of your interstellar travel.
Personally, I blame Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers
Theory: aerodynamic-appearing is strongly correlated with "visually attractive".
It's visual language for "we can spend money on excitingly curved hull plates and unnecessary fairings, etc., just so we don't have to look at a starship that looks like a boiler factory had a terrible accident when attempting to mate with a steamroller".
(Which in turn is symbolic language for "we are rich and have a high culture, unlike you primitive savages from beyond the Marches".)
Today, for example, we put curved, as anti-industrial/functional-as-possible-looking cases on all manner of things that aren't intended to ever move, because good-looking can sell a million units.
Apple spent _decades_ beating the entire market and turning Everything Is An iPod In The Future into a trope by turning "humans are basically magpies where sleek, shiny things are concerned" into their core marketing strategy.
Side note: one factor in naval architecture is trying to minimize the number of curved hull plates needed, because they're more expensive than flat, and increasing the number of curve dimensions increases the cost disproportionately.
In the #eldraeverse, the IN uses sweepingly curved hulls and elaborate brightwork to make a deliberate statement of "If we had budget to spare for *this*, just imagine what the working parts are like."
Naked frames and greebles look cheap.
@cerebrate @nyrath @JeremyMallin thinking back to wooden ships, straight beams and planks are a lot easier to cut from a tree than curved ones.
@SkipHuffman @nyrath @JeremyMallin
Same with steel ships. I believe the current standard is to try to keep the percentage of curved hull plates required down to 15% of the total or less; and within that percentage, to strongly prefer simple curves (i.e., those which can be made through line heating and rolling) over complex, multi-dimensional curves, which are much harder technically to achieve.
@cerebrate @nyrath @JeremyMallin At this point we don't really know what the economics of space/microgravity industry will be. I suspect "optimize for low mass" is going to be an overwhelming consideration.
@SkipHuffman @nyrath @JeremyMallin
On the one hand, in the near-future with current-type drives, that's certainly true; on the other hand, as drives get more and more SFnal, it becomes less of a consideration.
On the gripping hand, though, I observe that _even though_ painting an airliner imposes real additional fuel costs to operations, airlines don't choose to save money by flying naked hulls. Even freight-only lines like Amazon Air. Evidently branding gains outweigh fuel costs.
@cerebrate @nyrath @JeremyMallin at that scale and range, yes. But we don't see a lot of branding (other than painted names) on large freighters. Cruise ships yes, but not 20k TEU container ships.
Maybe local ships will have enormous inflatable outer mylar hulls at .01PSI pressure
@SkipHuffman @nyrath @JeremyMallin
So I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that not-all-that-far-into-the-future Interplanetary Express will happily eat the resulting fuel costs of shaping their Whipple shields into a fastest-rocket-in-space look and painting racing stripes on them _if_ it makes them stand out to people looking out hab windows, standing in boarding galleries, shipspotters, people looking at their brag sheets, etc., etc.
Branders gonna brand.