Totally important question here.
What is your opinion on sub frigate size pilotable or autonomous craft? By this I mean gunships, patrol boats, corvettes, heavy fighters, the like.
The Robberfly Corvette (from Blackrock) in particular seemed to be a very interesting concept, light, manoeuvrable, unshielded, and very small, but with enough weaponry to pose a credible threat to low level freighters. And incredibly synergistic with tactical lasers.
I believe the Mayasuran Navy mod has a ship sized heavy bomber, a novel concept to be sure.
Anyways, it's simply that such things please me for some reason. Aside from that, I feel that shuttles as they are now are just a bit too bulky to be entirely credible, and something smaller would bring much flavour.
This is is so low on your priority list that it's alongside me when I first played Minecraft on creative, accidentally dug through the map into the void, and died. Mods have this kind of thing in spades, and while I feel they have it because it's genuinely cool, and a niche yet to be filled in the base game, they still do have it, so the only thing to contribute would be a canon variant. Not that that's not valuable in and of itself, but it's not on the same level as everything else.
Oh, and don't worry. This is a one time thing, no post pollution. The colony debate requires the majority of discussion, else sifting through all the random sh*t will be a nightmare. Or at least a time/energy sink. Space too, if you think about it.