Well, as Keith said, you have to know your characters and get inside their heads, understand the REASONS for their technology. The story is what drives the design, unless you're designing a product purely for sale to other artists (who will use it to create their own stories.)

Also, you have to think about how true to life you want to be. We accept certain sci-fi conventions because they are familiar, not because they are accurate. Just about every spaceship in every movie has gravity. But where does it come from? (Hint: it has to do with the fact that the movie is being filmed on Earth.) If you assume that they've developed some kind of gravity generator in the future, that assumption leads to certain conclusions and, frequently, inconistencies.

For example, why would a ship that could generate a gravitational field ever have conventional rocket-style engines when they could simply project a gravity well of immense strength in front of the ship and let it "fall" all the way to its destination? Why would they fight with lasers (or "phasers") when they could simply use the gravitational field generator to crush their opponents into a singularity? Control of gravity implies a paritcular level of technology and a particular set of capabilities, but these capabilities are seldom used for anyting more than creating 1 gee for the crew of the ship to walk around in while they are indoors. And don't even get me started on how you can hear the lasers (a silent weapon) as they fly through space (an airless medium.)

If you really wanted to do due diligence, Wertu, you would determine how your future society deals with gravity, and proceed accordingly. If they can control it, that creates one set of assumptions. (Would they have chairs or beds? Aren't these effectively "anti-gravity" devices? How would their ships be shaped if they could put gravity in any location, direction or strength they wanted? Would there be such things as "floor", "wall" and "ceiling"?) If they can't control it, that creates another set of assumptions. (Weightlessness at all times, with attendant problems, or the need to accommodate structures that can create fake gravity, such as a giant centrifuge.)

BTW Keith, thanks for pointing out that more modern jets have far fewer controls. I had noticed that myself while looking for images, but didn't bring it up as my posts tend to be too long anyway :-P

• Jimdoria  ~@>@