None of the mods I have seen look anything like a Buck Rogers universe. What does the talk about how space ships look have to do with mods? Unless maybe you are confusing
shipsets with
mods?
If you think about it, why would advanced star-faring nations make ugly, purely functional ships? You don't inspire much fear or awe when your ship looks like it is just cobbled together. Further, the added cost of curved surfaces vs. boxy ones would be fairly trivial compared to all the high tech systems inside. I don't think it is reasonable to assume that real spaceships (at the point when we can travel to distant stars quickly and form 100s of planet empires, not in the very near future where it costs a considerable portion of GNP to just get a few spaceships running) will look like box girders or just be modules strapped to a spar.
And besides, there are a ton of SE4 shipsets that have no thought given to aerodynamics, only to aesthetics. But don't
take my
word for it, have a
look for
yourself.
There are some shipsets that look like your model of a spaceship though. 2001, for example.