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

[Michael Thayne]

A key problem with a lot of fictional spacecraft designs is that they have bilateral symmetry, instead of being either radially symmetrical or having two planes of symmetry intersecting at the center of thrust. On Star Trek, the Stargazer is a rare example of a ship that more or less does the two planes of symmetry thing right. Bilateral symmetry only makes sense for spaceplanes, and wildly asymmetrical designs almost never make sense. (Technically, you can get away with a lot as long as your axis of thrust passes through your center of mass, but engineers will usually find that trying to satisfy that requirement with an asymmetrical design is more trouble than its worth.)