I was thinking that fame for crew is a bit odd, i could imagine a lot of people just wanting to quit their jobs and going on the high seas.. ah space.
As such my suggestion is that the fame system be linked to the amount of crew points you can command over all of your ships.
As such a certain amount of fame = command points and you use those command points to be able to build cockpits/control room/bridge. it would limit the amount of crew you need. And it wouldn't seem so odd to be able to build massive ships without the limitation of crew to man the stations.