Additional:
There have been many stages in the evolution of the human race. From the primordial soup to the modern age of space travel. Their evolution of space travel is no different.
Ancient Earth had a slow start on it's search of the cosmos. Originally spurred on by war, and the desperate urge for one nation to hold something over another, Earth spent almost a century working with simple rockets and shuttles. Things started to change once Luna had been populated, Earth had another base to launch from, one that had no atmosphere, and less gravity.
At first, ships were functional like the previous years rockets and shuttles. They were also very small, leaving the crews to live in close quaters with each other, in their tiny little bunks. Then artificial gravity came along. Once people could freely move around a ship in their own artificial gravity field, ships had to be bigger. The problem was that the designers had no feel for design, and most ships just looked like giant blocks stuck together. This carried on until the development of the faster than light drive. Once the FTLD had been developed and there was an actual chance of us meeting another race, the Space Corps. decided to get real designers in to work on the aesthetics of space ship design.
The "Glory Days" refer to the days when the designers went nuts. Things were great for the human race; they'd been instrumental in the formation of the GSF, they'd finally created the slipstream drive, people actually liked humans. To celebrated the Space Corps. commissioned a fleet of ships to be designed and built, no restrictions on design or cost. Some see this as a problem, some see this as a little harmless fun. The main problem was that most people that when into designing the look of star ships had ideas on what they thought a star ship should look like. Most of these people had been brought up on Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and every other science fiction film and television show Earth had ever created. I'm sure you can see the problems.
The glory days were short lived. Things stared to slow down for the human race; the GSF was stable, slipstream was now mainstream, and humans were just, humans, nothing special. That and the galaxy was getting fed-up with humans flying around in their own star ships pretending to be egotistical, slimey, womanising Captains. That. Couldn't seem. To speak. Without. Leaving many. Short. Pauses... Between words.
