"Best Fighter Launch System" Topic

So I'm watching B5 again and had some thoughts on what was the most practical method for launching/recovering fighters.

I personally like the B5 method the best. Easy maintenance and refueling. Quick Launch. Not sure about recovery yet. I don't think they ever showed how to load the ships back in.

BSG launch tubes are probably second best but the recover is clunky.

Star Trek seemed to forget that fighters where a viable option in warfare.

Star Wars is kinda boring but practical.

So what's your favorite fighter launching system?

B5 by Far.

B5 followed by BSG.

robotech veritech, nostalgic, still a favorite

B5 always felt "right" to me. The whole unit is deployed within seconds, yet it's behind armor and maintenance crews don't have to worry about being somewhere they would drift away, even if they still need suits.

The Star Wars system is predicated on force fields which can hold atmosphere.

BSG … well I guess the point is the fighter doesn't need to use fuel to accelerate.

Then again, manned fighters are silly in my head-universe. There, automation is such that battleships have bomber sized crews(mostly to operate round the clock on extended missions), fire ultrasmart missiles and have ultrasmart point defense drones. And big guns. Really big guns.

B5

Don't forget Space: Above and Beyond, with its "elevator" cockpits. I'm still not sure how good of an idea that is (can the lower level ship bay be filled with atmosphere for maintenance?), but it did have the advantage of allowing immediate access and launching/docking of individual craft without having to evacuate and depressurize an entire bay. So you could launch or retrieve all at once or piecemeal as needed.

B5 should have been even better. The Omegas were supposed to launch their fighters from the ends of the carousel and only recover through the bow, but the modellers didn't have time to sort that before the first scenes where launches were needed so alas it was dropped.

How about the drop cradles from B5:Crusade? Those were cool.

A second nomination for S:AAB.

I don't remember how crusade did things. I'll get to that series in a few weeks once I work through the first 5 seasons :)

Found a video of it. It's about 25 seconds in on this one. Warning loud music.

YouTube link

It does look cooler but not sure it's better then the original as far as functionality. Depends on the internal structure. It's probably rather difficult to reload the ships and they are probably stored/maintained in a different location.

I also can't figure out why B5 did the Star Trek move and forced the flag officers to lead combat wings. They also seemed to have a lack of ready fighters or CAP for the station. That much traffic would need to be monitored. The station would probably also have smaller Coast Guard cutter like destroyers assigned to it.

Well, there's always carrier decks and catapults.

YouTube link

YouTube link

It really depends on the rules of the particular universe. In reality the best launch is to open a door and the fighter accelerates a little to get clear. On the trip back the fighter comes in so close to the speed of the ship that it just nudges back in as well – or an arm could grab the fighter and put it in place.

The Star Carrier books had an interesting take on this and why the system works the way it does.

Finally there is Star Wars, the original flying right out the force field is best. (the prequals with their insane oversized doors are another matter.

I like the launch system for Jovian Chronicles. BIIIIIIG 'railgun' cradles to give the smallcraft some free Delta-V, and recovery is drive close and on parallel or slightly-converging vectors over an open hatch in the zero-gee part of the ship.

Bab5's recovery gets a bit interesting, because you need to rotate the recovering fighter at the same speed as the rotating section. That *is* probably the best option for a permanent space station, though.

I remember a Timothy Zahn book. Angel something. Had a sentient nebula cloud in it. A warship entered one of the systems and used its railguns with special pods to launch fighters out the back at the same speed the ship was cruising at. Delta-V was 0 and they stayed on station at the gate to cover it. If I remember right they where chasing someone into the system or trying to stop someone from leaving the system.

It was a unique use of a BSG style launch.

B5 is the best launch system. It's fast, and there's no vulnerable focal point for launching -- it's a distributed system, so even if you get surprised and launch under fire, unlike BSG's launch tubes, there's nothing to get blocked off by debris. Oth, BSG's system would give an nice initial velocity boost for launch.

And since Star Trek has a completely different type of tech focus, it's not a good comparison. In ST only a Starship is large enough to mount the powerful warp drives and antimatter engines needed for high speed maneuvers, and mount defensive energy shields -- a shuttle-sized fighter is simply too small to be effective in that universe.

B5 seems the best, but for coolness I always liked TOS BSG's launch tube.

And since Star Trek has a completely different type of tech focus, it's not a good comparison. In ST only a Starship is large enough to mount the powerful warp drives and antimatter engines needed for high speed maneuvers, and mount defensive energy shields -- a shuttle-sized fighter is simply too small to be effective in that universe.

Depends on the version of the Trek canon. In the SFB/Franz Joseph Designs version, fighters aren't ship killers (barring a couple exceptions) but they are quite capable of really messing up a ship courtesy of how they do damage in smaller bites rather than one huge hit. Still no shields, but they're reasonably tough and pack a huge payload. Late-war fighters could carry 6 antiship drones, each 50% more damage than a single photon torpedo. Thing is, drones can be shot down by phasers.

The fighters that CAN really punish a ship are the Hydrans, with a gatling phaser and a pair of (overloaded) fusion beams. Hydrans live on the far side of the Klingons, towards the Rim. A flight of 4 'Stinger' fighters (the fighter complement of a destroyer) is capable of shattering a D7's rear shield and pretty well gutting the D7 (IIRC, 26 points of damage max, without the phaser, per fighter. The phaser adds another 16 points). Not enough damage to blow up the D7, but easily enough to take it out of a fight for months.

Given space-fighters 'realism factor' of -10, I would imagine the 'best' launching method is whatever seems 'coolest' to the gamers/audience in question.

B5 never really did show how the fighters were reload except in one scene where two fighters where being moved in the dock bay on a platform elevator. Thought that's how they we reloaded.

ST:DS9 did start use a type of fighter in the show. Thought it was funny as this was the same time that B5 was on TV. That ST had to catch up to B5 in space battles scenes as just having two ships frightening looked boring.

As to BSG giving velocity to launching fighters, what if that veloctiy is in the wrong direction? These aren't airplanes you know.

I think the Bab5 'drop' system looked cool, but the logistics were never properly explained. Reloading must have taken forever.