What is the point of buying new Jump Ships?

They're just "hats".

But in addition to being cosmetic, they serve the social function of letting people know you're not a noob on the way to missions.

In both the Strike missions and the PvP missions, success is dependent on being able to work with your teammates. In Destiny there is no text communication and voice communication is not built in very well. This means that when embarking on the Strike missions in particular a player can only evaluate their randomly assigned teammates by looking at their gear. The ship and emblem they're using are both part of that gear and while they are not items that affect the actual gameplay, they are social indicators for the amount of time and experience someone has with the game.

Because of this some people may drop out of missions early if they believe that it is not in their interest to spend time playing with someone who has not yet learned the ins and outs of the Strike missions or PvP.

I actually wrote a little about this today. I think jumpships are a value add for players that are basic visual customization, but they're a unique tool for Destiny to use to make a player actually like the loading screen experience of the game.

Summary: You get your jumpship early on in Destiny, and that jumpship sticks with you. You acquire a warp drive for it, and suddenly, you’re seeing your jumpship between every stage. Getting to the tower or another planet is a cinematic of your jumpship in travel. What it also is… is a loading screen. What it isn’t is a blanked out screen with a texture or spinning icon that says — LOADING. That’s not necessarily something brilliant, but then Bungie went and added player value to make you actually like the loading screen.

Starting with the original acquisition of your jumpship, you’re investing time and value in to an in-game object that you’ve acquired. Immediately from that point you have some affinity to seeing the jumpship as an achievement of your progress. Then, subsequently, Destiny adds further value by actually allowing the user to spend their in-game currency on more unique and visually detailed jumpships. Essentially — you can customize your loading screen. Of course, this is an in-game object so the motiviation to do so is actually there. No differently than gear… a player sees the opportunity to improve their jumpship and says… “Yes, I will make this ship fucking baller.”

My full post: http://offworlder.com/on-destinys-attention-to-the-loading-experience-aka-jumpships/