It is worth noting that typical modern fighter aircraft are in the range of 20 tons, not 500, so the crew requirements for "fighters" in Aurora are reasonable given this. On the flip side, it is also worth noting that while modern combat fighters are always single or dual seat craft, this has not always been the case historically as, e.g., WWII bombers could have crews of 5 to 10 depending on the plane and mission role.
A 500t fighter in Aurora is not actually comparable to a 500 metric ton ship in terms of size... it actually is more like 500*14=7000t sea going ship... so more like a Wet Navy destroyer rather than a anything else.
Now... one can obviously role-play this to be whatever they wish... but to me it makes allot of sense that ships are quite big as they are not really in any way shape and form comparable to a flying air-craft versus a ship, they all fly through the same medium using the same engines and fuel.
I rather think that missile fighters requires too little crew versus beam fighters for example. I think that small crafts should require allot more crew and larger ship a bit fewer. The larger a ship is the more crew can be cross trained and perform tasks allot more efficient, crew simply should be less the more a ship would "normally" require. A ship with say 15 engines that each require 10 crew should not require 150 crew to operate them, they probably could make due with 120... while a ship with only one engine still need the full 15 crew to operate that single engine. The simplest thing would be to just reduce crew requirements the more crew a ship require... I also think that deployment time also should reduce crew requirement to some degree like it used to, that also make some sense... but at the expense at much longer battle repair checks.