like for me, what i look for in spaceship design (unless we are talking something like the 'culture' series where human action / invention is irrelevant) is: if the ship totally loses power and everything goes wrong, how does the physical design aid survival? so like, orienting the ship to travel 'up' is good because if the magic inertial dampeners go offline, we can at least lay on the floor and fly without falling across the decks. so that's why i personally prefer that design. :)
Yeah, that makes sense! I think you can get a lot out of a ‘realistic’ future spaceship in a story, it’s an idea that seems to have enduring appeal - I pointed to it as, like, an artistic constraint, but constraints can often inspire a lot of ideas too?
And like, personally I really enjoy the game of trying to make ‘realistic’, physics-inspired spacecraft and space habitats; I’m personally not so interested in telling more stories of fighter-plane ships reenacting world war II, and like, spin/thrust gravity (and what happens when it’s not available) is more interesting than just handwaving it? Also, often the ‘realistic’ designs can lead to really cool, alien shapes - the Avatar ship, and it’s precursor Pellegrino’s Valkyrie, being great examples.
By the way, you should totally check out @accelerando‘s work for a really cool world of spinning space habitats and cool-looking, well-thought-out designs! She’s got this neat sort of non-electronic space setting, where everything is using physical mechanisms and traditional mechanical drives instead of electricity.
