Has it ever been explained in science fiction how spaceships always seem to encounter each other upright? How come no one has ever seen a Klingon bird of prey come out of warp and into orbit where the Enterprise is and its orientation is all cockeyed?
I’m willing to bet that when dealing with physical models it’s a lot cheaper and easier to have them all at the same orientation.
The delerict in Firefly was oriented differently than Serenity.
Well I seem to recall a note from one of the Star Trek Technical Manuals, to the effect that Federation vessels have some kind of automatic navigational feature that aligns them in the same plane as alien ships, to provide a smaller target profile or some such hoo-hah. Clever.
The real reason, I suspect, has nothing to do with budgetary concerns and everything to do with the perceptions of the audience. We automatically tend to assume that the top of the screen is the “up” direction, so seeing spaceships flipped every which way would just be confusing, although of course there’s no reason why this wouldn’t happen in real life.
Although I’ve never seen the Firefly episode in question, I think the example cited by carnivorousplant provides a good illustration of this principle. I recall an episode of TNG that had a similar scene where Picard and Data are returning to the Enterprise in a shuttle. When they come out of warp they see the Enterprise in front of them…crooked! Right away, you know something’s wrong. Spaceships that are derelict or adrift are evidently immune from the “planar congruence” rule. I think other examples can be found in 2010 (quite a good movie I thought), and also Lost in Space (quite a not-good movie I thought).
Ya know, this seems to come up every other month in some Star Trek or Star Wars related thread. I think that SPOOFE has probably the best explaination of this, that I shall now attempt to repost, whilst mangling it horribly:
Basically, because of the way the galaxy is set up, all the suns are in roughly the same plane, so it’s pretty likely that ships would meet with the same orientation, and not with one flying upside down relative to the other one.
Easiest explanation (easier than the one Tuckerfan reposted, anyway): These ships can see other ships coming a mile away (well, many hundreds of thousands of miles, anyway), and they probably consider it proper etiquette to greet each other from the same orientation.
I mean, we can accept the premise that these ships can travel faster than light, generate terawatts of energy in their reactor cores, and fly around the galaxy for years at a time, but it’s hard to believe that they’re willing to expel a little bit of propellant to rotate around a hundred-eighty degrees?
Their weapons and armor (and defenses) are optimized towards assuming a certain attitude towards enemy vessels.
The writers don’t know any better, and the audiences don’t care.
Firefly was an exception. Another reason why it was the best science fiction show on TV. Also, there was no sound in space, and you could kill a person by just pushing him slowly away from the ship. Without reaction mass, there is no way in the universe to get back, even if you’re just a few feet away.
Which is why I always carry a pocketful of reaction mass.
Can’t you spread your arms and let the solar sail effect push you back to the vessel, if you’re patient?
I personally think it would look dumb without adding a whole lot to the realism of the show to get this point right, so I’m not upset that they don’t bother to explain why ships always meet face-up. However, this explanation won’t work. The plane of our solar system is not the same as the plane of the galaxy, and in general, you’d expect this to be typical.
If you’ve got a couple centuries, sure. 
I suppose you could put forth a safety explanation as well.
If you’re flying close guard duty for a fleet of some 60 rebel ships meeting somewhere in the middle of nowhere and they get surprised by a large Imperial force and the big rebel ships announced that they’re breaking left it pays to know that their left is your left and you’re not about to become a bug on their windshield.
Not specifically related to the Op, but a cool site, nonetheless:
Note about above-mentioned site: I found through Slash Dot so it tends to bog down due to the usual overload associated with that. Give it a chance, though, it is worth it (in a geeky sorta way).