Why do missiles have fins, while modern space rockets don’t?
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Depending on how you wanna classify things, it could be the other way around. Example: the Saturn V rocket of the Apollo missions (before the Space Shuttle took over) had no fins on the space-faring parts. The only part with fins was stage 1 which separated at 67 km (not a hard edge to the atmosphere, but space is widely considered to ‘start’ at 100 km). That should tell you that the reason for fins has something to do with how much air the vehicle is intended to encounter.
Meanwhile, the starship SN-15 was the most recent launch video linked on the Wikipedia page and it does have fins. Buuuut that test was not technically in space either. However they are designing and testing a ‘starship’
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