We see bridges on almost every sci-fi spaceship, usually somewhere high up with big windows looking out into space. It looks cool, but how much sense does it actually make, especially on a warship?
Putting the bridge on top of the hull gives the crew a good view (big quotation marks needed), but it also makes it a pretty obvious target. Wouldn't it make more sense to put the command centre somewhere deep inside the ship, where it's better protected? You could still have sensors and cameras to see what's going on outside.
Then again, maybe having a good view is more useful than I think, or perhaps the ideal layout depends on what the ship is supposed to do.
The ship's role matters too. A simple sightseeing spaceship could have big windows because the passengers want to enjoy the view. But on a battlecruiser, you probably wouldn't want windows made of glass, or windows at all. Why create another potential weak point when sensors and cameras can do the job? Would you design a warship's bridge differently from a civilian ship's?
And what about the hard sci-fi side of things? Space isn't completely empty. Even tiny micrometeoroids can hit a spaceship at very high relative speeds. How well would a large glass window actually hold up against that? Would you need several layers of transparent material, or could materials such as fused silica or transparent ceramics offer a better solution? Maybe the windows could have armoured shutters that close during combat, or perhaps the ship wouldn't need windows at all and could use external cameras protected behind armoured housings.
There are other ways to approach the problem, too. What if the bridge had a direct view only when the ship was in a safe environment, with displays and sensors doing the work during combat? Could you have small, heavily protected observation ports instead of huge windows? And if the ship relies entirely on sensors, what happens when those sensors are damaged or jammed?
There's also the question of whether a spaceship should even have one main bridge. Putting all your command staff in one room sounds like a pretty bad idea if a single hit could take them all out. Would a realistic warship have several command centres distributed throughout the hull, with the crew able to take control from different locations?
Where would you put the bridge if you were designing a spaceship? Would you keep it high up, hide it inside the hull, or go for something completely different? And should a spaceship even need windows on its bridge, or at all really, in the first place?
What's the best designed spaceship bridge you've seen in sci-fi? Why is it Battlestar Galactica's one?
Bonus points if you can explain why putting the Star Destroyer's bridge on top of a giant tower is actually a good design decision.