isn't it 12 hours?

But yes, I would +1 to this

12 hours is generally considered bad etiquette. A 24 hour period between badges is generally a more acceptable period between badges.

I understand that... but if the game adds a 24 hours indication instead of 12, the game will have to keep track a seperate set of data, I don't think there is enough justification based on etiquette alone.

And the OP's words(wasting energy etc) makes it sounds like he thought badge time was 24.

But I would be happy either way, I'm not at the lvl where giving a 24 "cooldown" would take away too significant portion of my targets

As far as I know, change the system to keep data on 24 hours of stuff(outside of archive sections that is) will require about 1.5x more overhead(CPU-wise) per badge check at least, and a 20-30% increased dataload(alternatively, it can be a 2x overhead but no increase in dataload)
That's the most efficent methods I can think of~
Showing badge on opening ship will likely increase badge check requests by 5-10 times at least. I dunno how many % of the server load is from badge checks, but I do think this(increased overhead) might be the biggest hurdle in the way of making this suggestion come true, the coding should be relatively simple.