Babylon 5 - The Starfury (Aurora & Thunderbolt) 

Finally, the rite of passage for RU-vid scifi-talking-guy-persons is complete. I have made a Starfury video. Patreon: patreon.com/user?u=98553222 (Give me money, or dont. We're cool either way) Twitter: twitter.com/MacsLore (Feed my Social Media Influencer Ego to the point where I start thinking I can walk on water.) Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/macslore.bsky.social (Also feed my Social Media Influencer ego)

What I love about the star fury is unlike most sci-fi craft its design actually works with real life physics.

Ah yes, the mass production Gunstar.

'what is built and what is loved, endures' True words said well, one the many reasons why I love Babylon 5 and grateful to be one of its many fans.

Just to add to the solidity of the ship design, NASA asked Strazinsky if they could borrow the concept for near earth vehicle in the nineties. Massive budget cuts to NASA from Bill Clinton prevented the ship to be completed. Strazinsky agreed to allow free use of the design at the sole condition that the spacecraft would be named Star Fury!

Holy crap, so much amazing original CGI

Oh for goodness sakes. Do you know I JUST realized they are called cobra bays because they actually LOOK like cobra heads?

The Aurora is the perfect fighter and by far the best designed one in sci fi which almost invariably goes for "space fighter plane" look. This thing actually makes sense and would be incredibly manoeuvrable. Well done to the design team because this was a masterpiece of design.

AINT NO WAY! Whoever your animator is needs a raise for putting Kongou from KanColle on a Starfury!

Best designed sci-fi fighter craft, fight me.

My favorite space fighter, only second to the Starfury Thunderbolt

That cockpit is also rather tough! It juts out quite a bit, and is probably very very thick. In some battle scenes during the Earth Alliance Civil War, we see Starfuries take direct hits head-on to their cockpits from the pulse cannons of other Starfuries, and actually survive.

Fine, guess its time for the annual Bab5 rewatch.

All started with Kongou pin-up, completely cultured person.

With the light of my waifu on our side the Shadows have no hope

02:39 just noticing how much the escape pod looks coffin shaped as the Shadows come into view... nice touch

Absolutely love this. The Starfury gets a lot of love here and its well deserved.

A nice tribute video & lore for the great Starfury - thanks!

A vehicle designed for space movement rather than atmospheric maneuvering. I loved this show for things like that.

The Starfury Aurora is like grandpa Buff, they are eternal. It might not be you dad's Earth Force, but that could be his Starfury.

It is always great to see Babylon 5 getting some love. Amazing editing and visual effects.

The Aurora has two big advantages over the Thunderbolt in a duel. 1) The cockpit of the Aurora is almost bang on the ship's center of rotation. This means the pilot experiences minimal travel during those high-G pivots and spins, and therefore has a lower apparent G-load. The Thunderbolt cockpit, being way out there on what is essentially a big lever out front, whips the pilot around much more forcefully and creates a much higher apparent G-load in the same maneuver. So (given two pilots of equal G-tolerance), the pilot of the Aurora will always be able to turn faster than the Thunderbolt pilot. 2) That same difference in cockpit location gives the Thunderbolt a significantly larger target profile, and it's much more likely the cockpit will be hit causing pilot injuries or fatalities versus the Aurora, who's cockpit is unlikely to ever be directly hit except from head on.

Since the Earth Alliance didn't have artificial gravity or inertial compensation like Mimbari vessels is why the Aurora pilot is basically lying down on the job. The means it's easier to keep blood flowing within manageable rates to a from the brain, preventing or reducing black outs and red outs from high G manuvers. A lot of thought went into its design and how Newtonian physics effects the vessel and pilot. One of the most impressive things about B5 compared to other Sci-fi shows of the same time. The only Sci-fi TV show I know of since to put that much thought into physics and realism is The Expanse.

Beautifully, just beautiful the video bright tear to my eye. Though the Omega class Destroyers rotating section was originally considered to be able to launch Starfuries, but both in the B5 universe and behind the scenes of the production of Babylon 5 decided against it. due to the fact that you'd have to not only go through the entire length of the rotating section but machinery would have half to be built into those asccess ways in order to get the fighters there.

Watching star furies flip isn't quite as exciting as watching the white stars flip. A skilled pilot can power slide those ships.

Amazing work, star fury is one of my favorite fighters in scifi

I look forward to seeing more coverage of Babylon 5 craft & stations.

I just sat down and started watching Babylon 5 again with my family, and I was thinking "I wonder if Mac has done a lore video about the Starfury?" I open RU-vid and there it is, at the top of my suggested feed.

Great breakdown and wonderful animations. Glad to see Babylon 5 still has people that love it this much.

The only real downside to the Starfury is that the nearly flat nose section and short fuselage makes it difficult to give it a shark-mouth paint job. Fortunately, the Starfury Thunderbolt solved that design flaw.

You never really saw the upper cannons fire on screen. However, that seemed to be the case for several B5 designs. If I remember correctly the dots on the side of the Omega were supposed to be missile tubes. But, again never shown on screen.

Major nostalgic moment here I loved this series and even have all 5 seasons of Babylon 5 on DVD

Awesome video! It gives off a bit of the old World of Warship videos that they used to do for new ships they were releasing that actually taught you something about the history of those ships and their capabilities.

One of the best space fighters ever designed

Everything with a shark-mouth wins automatically. The T-Bolt is sexy as hell and so is the "reworked" Aurora with the full glass canopy. P.S.: Long live the Gone Jackals.

Love the paint scheme on that Starfury at the beginning.

Dude the art in this is FANTASTIC. So well done!

Babylon 5 Accept no substitute

Great rundown of both fighters. Seems like there has been a resurgence of interest in all things Babylon 5 as of late, keep it going.

What a great documentary and the animation is fantastic, well done!

Top notch production. Kudos!

Mitchell-Hyundyne Engineer: "... 4x Walters 40mm Plasma Pulse Cannons, mounted on the front underside of the fuselage in a *UNI-DIRECTIONAL* fashion." Earthforce Chief-of-Staff: "So what, they fire straight forward?!" Mitchell-Hyundyne Engineer: "Well really, they'll fire in whatever one direction you want, straight as an arrow... Uni-directionally." Earthforce Chief-of-Staff: "Um yeah, all of our guns already do that." Me: "Still hilarious, even after 30 years! Amazing video BTW! Top-notch B5 tribute!"

Impressive video, and a good tribute.

Enormously underrated channel. Love your videos dude

Love the Starfury design, and all the iterations. I also love that you are still using Klavs' models. They are a great testimony to his skill. The community will miss him greatly.

From what I remember, the ports on the ends of the Omegas centrifuge habs are intended to be missile bays similar to the ones along its flanks. They were never used because of the cost of CGI back then so most Omegas essentially fought "light" engagements with enemy ships.

Just fantastic!

Fantastic video.

Keep Up the Excellent Work!!! 🤠👍

The Star Fury, a sci-fi ship design so good that NASA wanted it.

Only just started watching the video, and already I know you have great taste in shipgirl franchise

I was sent this from a Starblazers discord, I like the presentation and the animation of your video. Have a sub friend

Lets goooooo

Beta canon defined earlier generations of the Star Fury line, and a parallel atmospheric capable line, which combined in the Thunderbolts.

Great video! I miss B5 so much

Nice video!

well done, subbed and liked!

I normally a lurker on many channels, never subscribing to anyone, as majority do cut and paste with little originality to their reviews, but dude you did such an amazing job on this review I not only am leaving you a comment on your fantastic work, but I'm also subscribing and hitting that like button. Well done!!!

Huh. Didn't expect to hear a LucasArts' Full Throttle track here. 0:49: What does JMS think of the X-Wing engines? 2:30: ...I don't think the Shadows are into prisoner relief. Why must the Hyperion-class look similar to certain Galactic Terran vessels in FreeSpace? 3:50: Not the first produced episode though. B5 is notorious for having out of order episodes, like "A Race Through Dark Places" actually happening before "Soul Mates". Meanwhile, the Cobra launching sequence reminds me lots of the Star Wars: TIE Fighter video game's hangar launches. "Badger" sounds more appropriate. "Muskrat" sounds like it's for a lighter attack variant. Quite an envious job, being a Black Omega. No restrictions, no tiresome morals, so many voices worth silencing for the kill tally... *what a dream.* 6:00: Note to Multiversal defense forces wanting to "import" the craft: 'Probably attach magitek to nullify this annoying weakness.' 8:15: Understandable. Forget the Colonial Vipers, this is one peak starfighter, even if it's no Demetrius Zaarin-design TIE Defender.

love it!!

I feel i see a need for both craft. The Aura is an excellent interceptor, where i see the Thunderbolt as a strike fighter if you will. Especially in atmo.

The best fighter in science fiction. It was also based on a design from the 'Terminator' series. Centurion Hunter Killer.

The space sim we never got in the 90s that we deserved.

the starfury line is easily the best designed si-fi fighter of all time

Ok now this is awesome

That "nose art" isn't regulation at all. But seeing how cool it looks on a Starfury, i'm pretty sure even a stiffer for the rules like Ivanova would approve.

It's so beautiful😢

Perfection

This was a loving tribute to a formative show for scifi fans of “a certain generation.”

Love the design easily one of the most realistic designs in scifi made.

Excellent Mac. Outstanding piece of work. Question are you gonna cover the earth civil war to the end?

Starfuries are among the sexiest starfighters in my eyes. The Aurora is great, but I personally love the Thunderbolt. Never liked the standing cockpit. Sure, in Zero G it's not like it would tire you, but it just looks wrong.

Until watching this, I never thought of seeing a Starfury with an anime girl nose art.

Kickass vid

I always say just how much I love the BSG Viper mkII and B5 Starfuries for the same reason, their crazy maneuverability and off axis attack vectors. Though I think the Viper is faster, the Starfury seems more versatile and I think more heavily armed.

Lovely graphics!!! Must have taken alot of work!

It’s like the A-10 and Corsair. Of the future.

they damn well mean it.... spoken in that dead voice. :D

Would LOVE to see some ranger-version of Starfury. Vorlon organic parts, yet still a cockipit and the famous "X wing" general design.

Starburst rock. I love their design. I was surprised you did not talk about the Poseidon Carriers and their spindle racks for rapid launch of Starfuries.....especially when she held 96 of them. (They were the vertical rack that was usually set for three fighters...though some were four....that would drop out if the hull and angle the top and bottom fighters about 20 degrees off the center ans all three would launch. Poseidons gad 12 racks...and the Excaliber class had 4)

WEEEEEEEEB SQUAD IN THE HOOOOOUSE!

The Fury of the Stars ~!!

Aurora! All the way! Best starfighter design ever.

Star Fury Aurora with an Anime wrap? 👌

Is that Kancolle decal on the intro fighter? XD

To this day the Thunderbolt is still gosh dang sexy for a Starfighter. It looks like an A-10 had a love affair with the Aurora Starfurfy.

that thing would eat any fighter from starwars, or battlestar galactica

What a steaming crock, the Aurura variant served during the dilgar war and transitioned to the nova variant in time for the Mimbari unpleasantness to be succeeded by the T-bolt during the civil war.

Fucking magnificent!!!

wooooo

I would like to see some Star Trek technology on those ships, inertia dampers as well defensive shields would have been nice.

Hi mac!!! I love each one of your videos... Can you make one exploring the strogg species from quake?

makes me want to play a starfury sim now

Is there any model kits of the Thunderbolt? I got a few Starfury's but I don't think I've seen a kit for the Thunderbolt

If they ever make a Babylon 5 Game i want a Acecombat style Game flying a Starfury

When I first saw the Starfury all those years ago, I thought it was a cheap knockoff of the X-Wing. Boy, was I stupid back then. B5 was a masterpiece.

I hope to see another video or two on the babylon 5 Earth Civil war. As its hard to find such good analaysis type videos on its events as they kinda get muddy at points as you jump between certain things & the end feels kinda rushed (like in a single episode feels missing not a whole lot just I felt like the end of one episode doesn't fully flow into another)

Sadly, the plans to launch a B5 Video game in 98/99 got cancelled.

Excellent modeling and production skills. What software were you using?

The closest I've got to simulating newtonian physics in a fighter was the Independence War games. Does anyone know any other good ones? Or is there a sim of the craft in this video? I think Jumpgate was like that too.