Yeah, Steve worked on it for a while and came to the conclusion that, as much fun as Newtonian mechanics are for space nerds, it didn't add anything to the whole 4X space strategy game thing Aurora is all about besides extra micromanagement. Despite the level of detail, Aurora has never been meant as a hard sci-fi simulator although it's a damn sight closer to realism than, say, Star Trek or something.
That being said, I will say that once you do get into Aurora, you don't really miss the hard sci-fi mechanics as much as you might think. The real meat of the game is in the strategic, operational, logistics, doctrinal, etc. and the tactical parts while quite detailed are really a small part of the whole.