Spaceship Design: What makes sense, and what's nonsense?

[FenrisLoki]

So realism is not really a strong point of Star Wars or Star Trek designs. Those are mostly aesthetic. Swoopy closed shapes are fine, but unless your FTL system has a fluid "drag" in its hypothetical physics, there's no real reason for it. People may decide to build that way, but it isn't a necessity.

Babylon 5 had some of the more realistic designs for space travel with the tech from Earth. Their small fighters had large engines away from the center of mass for rapid turns (not necessarily comfortable for the pilot though). The alien designs were again mostly aesthetic.

A truly realistic design will depend on whether the ship will land. Then wings or a lifting body will be a necessity for reentry and travel in an atmosphere. Otherwise the ship could be just an empty framework.

Transhuman Space has a lot of realistic, hard-science ship designs.