Stop Making Spaceships Aerodynamic

Avi Love
Avi Love
Jul 10, 2017 · 2 min read

I know I’m not the first person to say this, but fuck it. It’s driving me insane. Why do all of our sci-fi epics look like they were filmed within Earth’s atmosphere and then superimposed over a black starry background? There’s no air in space. I understand concept artists aren’t scientists, but please absorb the fact that it doesn’t make an ounce of difference to a ship’s movement whether it has wings or a front-facing cockpit. In fact, it strikes me that most of these things would represent a severe disadvantage in space combat.

I imagine the sphere would actually be the most popular shape for combat spacecraft (were there to even be such a thing) as it allows you a quick omnidirectional view of your surroundings. It seems likely the seat in such a single-occupancy vessel would also be on a 360 degree swivel of some kind. Space dogfights on film should be vomit-inducing. Combat ships should never be facing a direction. That’s a useless concept in space, where there is no gravity to make directional combat matter.

The geometric constructs that are worthwhile within an atmosphere and gravitational pull of a planet are not even close to the same constructs that would be beneficial in the 3-dimensional void that is space. I can’t for the life of me figure out why combat ships insist on pursuing each other from behind when it’s just as easy to go under or above. The idea of five ships flying in a single formation on the same plane is so stupidly absurd that I can only imagine the enemy commander laughing and promptly launching a device with appropriate radius to take them all out at once.

I just don’t understand why it seems like no one has thought outside the aerodynamic spacecraft since the tie fighters on Star Wars Episode IV.

Avi Love

Written by

Avi Love

Writer. Sexuality educator. Nonbinary queer nerd. Pronouns: They/Them

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