>I mean, I don't like the whole retro-tech thing in general...The result,
>by all logic, would be a tortured creation of 'modern' technology
>forced into ancient forms, like building a modern warship in the shape
>of one of Nelson's Ships of the Line. It would be either a cripple, a
>joke or a monstrous money pit.

Consider your typical fighters built by spacefaring races, accustomed to set-piece battles between fleets fought in the voids between worlds. They'd be highly optimized for fighting in a vacuum, with just enough atmospheric capability to usually avoid crashing when landing on a planet.

Then along come designs optimized, in the pressure cooker R&D environment of Earth's Cold War, for atmospheric combat. With appropriate tech upgrades, they can hold their own in vacuum--after all, in space nobody cares if you're a cube--but down in the soup, nothing built primarily for space can touch them.

An in-story parallel would be the steam technology of Ishiyama, where they've taken something largely abandoned on Earth by the late 20th century and advanced it to the point where it can power starships.

That's how I envision the whole "RetroTech" thing springing to life. "Y'know, those crazy Earthers did things with aerodynamics that nobody else thought to do, simply because nobody else thought it was important. Maybe we can, um, 'borrow' some of that work."