oh, sorry about that.
Anyway, I have a little bit more time. I followed Turey's instructions per
this post, and when I ran the FreespaceOpenInstaller.exe, I selected "All features" and then "Let me Choose," and then basically said yes to all, because I was on broadband at the time. After that I installed OpenAL, ran Launcher.exe, got the OpenAL not installed error message, then I got some error about my Video Card, and a link to the OpenAL website. My specs are as follows:
Amd Athlon64 4000+ San Diego
ATI Radeon x850 XT PE
Onboard sound
DFI Lanparty UT SLI-DR Expert
Windows XP Pro, nothing extra running in the background.
Need anything else, lemme know.
EDIT: I rebooted my computer, ran the launcher once, nothing happened. I pulled up Task Manager to see if it did anything when I ran it, and when I tried the second time, it worked. Odd.
Edit x2: It gets better. After getting it working once, I clicked around, and clicked the "Get additional voices" button. The launcher closed, nothing else happened, and I CANNOT get it to come back up again.

Would this be a bug?
Worst part is, launcher crashes when I hit the "report bug" button. Also, it crashes consistently when I select the "video" tab, and intermittently with EVERYTHING else. It's working off and on now.
3rd edit: Well, I (somehow) got the launcher working pretty consistently. Except now, every time I start the game, it tells me I don't have OpenAL installed (which I most definitely do, ran the installer a ton of times now), and tells me to go download it. When the game plays I have no sound whatsoever.