system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[General SciFi] Why aren't more spaceships spherical?

I'm a software engineer collaborating with a team of physicists and other programmers to develop functions to assist in making physical calculations for spacecraft with odd geometry. I don't have to do this, of course, since food and energy are free, but I've chosen to help develop flight software as community service and for personal development.

What bothers me, though, is that this work needs to be done. All my physicist friends tell me the calculations are much easier if you assume the object to be frictionless and spherical, and I know enough about asteroid mining to say that getting the material for round ships isn't that hard. So why the weird shapes?
gpt
Reentry. Unless they stay permanently in space, they will be entering and leaving atmospheres regularly, and that means aerodynamics matter.

Heat. The more power a ship consumes, the more heat is generated. A sphere is optimal for a low-power craft to retain heat, but very inefficient for a high-power vessel generating lots of waste heat and needing to radiate it away.