[blowfish]

Yeah, the fin is not retractable.  In the Bastion Mainhall IceyJones posted, you can see the fin o that Herc sticking down through the platform.

[Flipside]

NASA actually asked JMS if they could use the Starfury Design for future Spacecraft. JMS (AKA God) agreed on the condition that they called them Starfuries

any link to this information?

He metions it in one of the Babylon 5 comentry tracks - cant remember the episode though. I think he also mentions somewhere on "The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5".

Also here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfury

There could, quite possibly, be nothing cooler in the world than being able to say 'This is Starfury One, launching from station now...' and be telling the truth.

[NGTM-1R]

But the Herc is capable of atmospheric flight if the FS2 intro is to be believed, and if it can fly, then I think you'll have a hard time saying most of them can't.

1. The FS2 intro is full of inconsistencies, as mentioned on the wiki and in this thread.
2. Where exactly does the Herc fly in an atmosphere? I only saw it crash into an atmosphere.

It takes off.

And inconsistancies or not, it's in the game, it's as canon as it gets. You can't pick and chose your canon.

[Retsof]

I'll give you a scenario.  Say that you are separated from your fleet, the node back is collapsed, and you only have your wingmates for company.  So what do you do?  You can't survive long in your fighter.  So you find a nice cozy planet to resupply on, or, if you've given up on getting home, to settle on.  Right?

[blowfish]

How often has the node back collapsed?

Anyway I doubt landing gear was something [V] took into consideration when designing the ships.

[Retsof]

It collapsed in Homesick...(I hated the ending, by the way).  And I guess it makes sense for  not to consider landing gear in a game with no planetary battles.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Well since the fighters can slow down and maintain 0 forward velocity very quickly I don't think they would need landing gear.

[Nuke]

one thing is we still dont know how the artificial gravity on freespace ships works. it may only be effective for a few feet above the floor. and the gravity on the platforms can be switched on and off at will. the jacks and clamps on the platforms look adjustable enough to accommodate many fighters. it might just be switch off the gravity, retract the clamps and light the engines.

the cranes look like they were designed to move cargo and ordinance around. notice how shiny the floor is under the bombers, yet then closer to the screen its rougher and less polished. the floor might be glossy to reduce friction and the gravity on that section might be reduced, so that the bombers may just slide across the floor.

thing is though freespace didnt put much thought on how a launch bay should work. its not as thought out as galactica's launch tubes or b5's cobra bays (though i always questioned how they got them back in). in a fully zero g environment id personally want to capture ships in robotic clamps and keep em suspended that way. with non-rotating artificial gravity, id probibly want a runway and gear/skids.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

But the Herc is capable of atmospheric flight if the FS2 intro is to be believed, and if it can fly, then I think you'll have a hard time saying most of them can't.

1. The FS2 intro is full of inconsistencies, as mentioned on the wiki and in this thread.
2. Where exactly does the Herc fly in an atmosphere? I only saw it crash into an atmosphere.

It takes off.

And inconsistancies or not, it's in the game, it's as canon as it gets. You can't pick and chose your canon.

It does? Where? I only see it appear. It doesn't take off just because there is a planet in the background, you know. It could have been launched by the Orion or by another destroyer in-system as well.

[Commander Zane]

(though i always questioned how they got them back in)

So have I...especially with the Victory destroyers and those emergency launchers they have for the Thunderbolts.

[Flipside]

I'm with FreespaceFreak here, I don't remember seeing a Herc taking off in the introduction at all, the chances that it launched from the Orion that was destroyed are far higher than the possibility that it launched from the planet itself.

[Jeff Vader]

But the Herc is capable of atmospheric flight if the FS2 intro is to be believed, and if it can fly, then I think you'll have a hard time saying most of them can't.

1. The FS2 intro is full of inconsistencies, as mentioned on the wiki and in this thread.
2. Where exactly does the Herc fly in an atmosphere? I only saw it crash into an atmosphere.

It takes off.

And inconsistancies or not, it's in the game, it's as canon as it gets. You can't pick and chose your canon.

What the hell are you going on about? Crashlanding on a planet is hardly 'atmospheric flight'. And just because a Herc appears on-screen during the intro accompanied by some heroic music doesn't necessarily mean it 'took off'. Where are you saying it even 'took off' in the first place?

And, if crashlanding on a planet equals atmospheric flight, we might then just as well say that the Hades is capable of atmospheric flight; after all, we can see it crashed on the very same planet as the Herc.

[lostllama]

I've always wondered why the Orion has a runway, or something that looks a lot like one in front of the hangar bay. Maybe the Herc in the intro cutscene took off from that? I can't see how though. Maybe it's just there to help pilots on finals.

In the FS2 mainhall  there's a Myrmidon that gets picked up by a crane and taken off-screen to the left, perhaps to some launching mechanism we don't see. The FS1 mainhall (the Bastion's one) has a crane and a Star Wars-like hanger opening (iirc), or what looks like one. Maybe craft just hover their way out of the hanger.

Can't say I'm an aeronautical genius but to me the Herc looks like it would fly like a brick in an atmosphere. Still, that pilot in the intro seemed to survive the crash for a while so maybe he had some control, like in the form of an anti-gravity device... or maybe ships like the Herc (that have no wings/control surfaces) have, I dunno, an 'emergency atmospheric entry thruster system' that, rather than letting the pilot fly properly in an atmosphere, allows him to use vertical thrust (?) to cushion the impact of a crash landing. I can of course only speculate about such stuff. 

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Or maybe he just lost his nav system but still had shields when he hit the planet.

[NGTM-1R]

Or maybe he just lost his nav system but still had shields when he hit the planet.

He wouldn't have needed shields to survive reentry. His hull's enough. We know the GTVA has antigrav technology, Volition's even said as much (Aldo wrote a whole damn thread about it, I think).

[FreeSpaceFreak]

The FS1 mainhall (the Bastion's one) has a crane and a Star Wars-like hanger opening (iirc), or what looks like one.

I wonder how that works. Take a look at the technicians under the first Herc, and the guy behind the desk. They're not wearing any protective clothing. So something must be in that opening. A shield is very Star Wars, but I'm afraid that it's the best bet we have.

Maybe craft just hover their way out of the hanger.

Possible, or they're picked up by the crane-like thing above the Ursa and dropped near the opening.

[lostllama]

If there's a shield covering the hanger opening.... how could the GTA have that kind of thing on an Orion prior to the Shivans appearing (which the GTA reverse-engineered shielding tech from)?

Or perhaps it's not a defensive shield, it's just for holding the air in... and maybe that type of shielding, for screening off a vacuum, was available to humans prior to the Great War. Hmm.

[karajorma]

Exactly. I suspect the GTVA had shields before they met the Shivans but they weren't capable of warding off even laser fire let alone missiles or bombs.

[Jeff Vader]

Sounds plausible. It would explain how the GTA was able to reverse-engineer the Shivan shield technology so fast. They already had some basic ideas about force fields, so studying Shivan tech merely gave them some additional information, that helped them to develop defensive shields in addition to the hangar fields.

[Koth]

The Terrans certainly had some kind of prototype shield array which was used for testing at Outpost Riviera in Ross 128. The capture of the Shivan shield prototypes seemed to helped them refine the technology and made it possible to be carried by fightercraft.