There's no real world precedent for them
There is no real world precedent for combat spaceships, turbolasers, Force chokes and moon-sized artificial stations. What was your point ?
It is obvious that many real world rules don't apply to SW. Rule Of Cool, however, does.
Even though I think uglies are kind of a fun detail of SW goofiness, I see where Buggula is coming from here. Stuff like The Force, hyperdrives, lightsabers etc. violate the laws of the real world very explicitly and sort of automatically engage the suspension of disbelief. Uglies, though much more plausible than these other things (a spaceship can be any shape after all), just kind of clash with the "this would work" area of my brain on a much more mundane level, so it's a different kind of wonkiness from the usual sci-fi/fantasy "just take this for granted" requirement. That's my theory anyway.
Fortunately, anyone who still likes SW after having seen the prequels has already demonstrated the capacity to ignore aspects of it that they don't like, so I'm not too worried about losing a big chunk of our audience over this