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The purpose of Air Force is to monitor the skies, project power at a distance, and provide air superiority.
The purpose of Navy is to put a floating fortress off your shore and bombard your cities, carry around materiel, men, and aircraft, and patrol a vast volume of ocean.
So Navy structures fit the mission better, and this has been true since early SF.
Theyβre called βspaceshipsβ
Or spacecraft commonly, as well.
Because space is an ocean.
Seriously mate, you didn't warn about the TVTropes link? Some of us need to go to bed!
You must suffer with me
I think it often has to do with the scale of the ship. Operations on a starship with crew numbering in the dozens to hundreds might be closer to operations on a naval vessel than aviation. We don't have aircraft with that scale of a crew or aircraft that operate away from base for such a long period of time.
The other thought is, uh, well that's what Star Trek did.
The most crewed aircraft doesn't even have the crew size of a British sloop!
A notable exception is the Stargate franchise, where Earth's spacecraft are largely run by the US Air Force.
It also makes sense to not focus on the naval aspects of space flight when you almost never actually fly through space, and almost all your potential theaters of war share a common border (the stargate).
It's a ship. You use ship terms.
I'll agree with the other posters that being on a spaceship maps better to being on a ship than it does being in an airplane, but I would add to it one other maybe overlooked factor: Robert Heinlein served in the navy and clearly had a massive hard-on for it and included all sorts of pro-war and pro-military themes in his work, and that all came from the POV of the navy and included lots of specifically naval elements to what was presented, and he was a big enough presence in the field that it left a mark that lasts to the present day.
Aviation and marine vehicles are both flying, just in different fluids.
I guess the idea is that as in plying the oceans, you are looking at lengthy journeys in space requiring large vessels that can stock whatever supplies you need while protecting you from harsh elements with thick hulls. And they do talk about space fighters, which is more of an aviation term, but these are typically launched from the space equivalent of an aircraft carrier.
In addition to all the other reasons offered re: functional analogy, many of the aviation terms themselves come from naval / boating / sea-faring. Pilot is a good example, previously having been used in the sense of "riverboat pilot," etc.
I wonder if it has much to do with the USAF being a relatively new service with a proportional cultural impact, coming into being as a service in 1947. Up until then, combat aviation was subordinate to the Army and Navy. This would point to a preponderance of Army/Navy WWII vets among the show's consultants and audience.