TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

Ramming speed Mister Data

Set phasers to cum.

Not just for the ladies either 😏

It me

Tag yourself. I'm "large, rolling rock"

Is that an extra nacelle or are you just happy to see me?

For the record, Wasp violates rodenberries fairly arbitrary rules for feddie ships in that it has an odd number of nacelles.

BT jumpships have a cool design, with a HUGE deployable solar sail to recharge their capacitor bank for the next Kearny-Fuschida jump. I'll grant you that they aren't much to look at.

https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Invader Is the most common type.

No flared base though, might get stuck up there.

Ship shape!

It's the ideal form!

Not aerodynamic enough for space travel

It's there, it's the blue streak about 2/3 down. That's a Medical ship so it wouldn't need as large or sophisticated of a deflector as a capital ship or science class.

It’s the blue bar thing that looks like a forced smile.

A sphere is the ideal shape to distribute the force of the atmosphere inside the ship on the hull. A cube would not distribute the forces evenly and would need to be re-enforced in places.

There are the considerations with exterior aesthetics, but it's also about being able to maximize interior space and meet design criteria. A change in doctrine after Wolf 359 was to leave as small of a target profile/silhouette as possible, so ships started becoming more streamlined. This also lead to ships being able to travel faster because that lead to creating a more efficient warp bubble around the ships.

Out of universe, Roddenberry said the nacelles need to see each other, operated in pairs, and the bussard collectors (glowy red parts in front) need to have unobstructed view so they could collect materials from space.

According to the technical manual, the Enterprise-D looked aerodynamic because it made the warp field more efficient.

But yeah, as others have said, the rule of cool always applies.

I am not sure about how this phenomenon works in context of the warp drive where space-time itself is warped around the ship, but in universes with more conventional FTL mechanics where objects are contradictory to special relativity just accelerated to speeds beyond the speed of light, yes, aerodynamics do actually kinda come into play again.

Space isn't really a vacuum, it just is empty enough ao that we can mostly treat it like one. But space still contains a lot of particles, dust or debris for example, that with higher speeds, there is something very similar to an air reaistance, drag and all that.

However, there may be other factors that can be more important for a space craft design. If you are into absolutely overthinkinh such things, I can recommend Isaac Arthur on Youtube.

Not if it never encounters an atmosphere, but many sci-fi ships are supposedly capable of planetary landings.

The honest answer: Aerodynamic ships look cooler