Yup. And in the past they didn’t have as much scientific knowledge as we do now. So past sci-fi has a lot of concepts that seemed legit back then, but later we found out things simply don’t work that way. And there’s also ideas of things that would work, but we found better solutions that are more economically feasible later on.
A shuttlecraft that’s basically a box with some cylinders strapped onto it made sense in the 1960s. Cylinders are like rockets, what we used for propulsion to get to space. Aerodynamics? Who cares?
But knowing what an actual space shuttle looks like makes people more likely to design something closer to that. And there’s a greater understanding of the importance of aerodynamics when entering an atmosphere by everyone so people are less likely to buy into a new design that doesn’t make these considerations unless there’s some nostalgia involved.