Why put your ships hangars on the outside? | Science fiction explored 

So, this is to jump in to head off all the inevitable comments talking about anime, mecha or otherwise to add in other properties that use flight pods or external hangar decks. I am aware, but just like how I cordoned off the weebs into their own channel on my discord server, I'm trying to cordon the degeneracy that I am totally not immersed in away from most of the rest of the channel. I refuse to follow the pipeline from mecha or sci-fi anime into slice of life/isekai trash into vtubers. I will not let myself fall to this degeneracy. (but thanks for posting those examples anyways, I'll check them out)

"Danger pylons." Sir, that's the most accurate yet hilarious description of missiles I've ever heard. Bravo.

One big advantage of the Battlestar style hangar pods is that they separate launch and recovery operations. Fighters can be rapid deployed into the fight via the launch tubes and the actual hangar pods are then free of waiting craft and optimized for recovery, such as how Battlestars use high power magnetic pads to pin each viper into place as it comes in, thereby reducing collisions (for the most part).

In terms of canon, your flight pods can only hold a minimum of fuel and ammo for loading out whatever is being prepped to launch in a small cache. The majority can still be held behind strong armor inside an internal magazine like ypu would see in a WWII battleship's main gun magazines. With that, you can create suspense as fighters need extra time to be reloaded... or drama as someone breaks protocol to get more ordnance in position... a team sneaking into the main ship body with unused equipment being recycled into the magazine on a mission to detonate the magazine.

Navy guy here, the meme with the tug shooting water at the burning ship is doing his job correctly. They spray the hulls to in a attempt keep the internal temperature cool enough in that area to keep the fire from spreading.

Babylon 5 had a good reason why human ships didn't have flight pods. The used the inertia of the rotating gravity sections of their ships to fling fighters out into space. No need for a catapult or any other fancy equipment when you can launch a fighter at speed just be releasing it. But as for the hanger pods, another advantage of them with the fly through variety is that if you're launching/recovering from the rear opening, you can use the ship itself as cover for the craft that are going in and out, like APCs with rear hatches for troops so they can exit the vehicle without being in the direct line of fire

The "swarm of fighters attached to a ship's exterior" is called "Parasite Docking" if I recall correctly. It tends to be an exceptionally practical way to carry bulk fighters if your pilots are either already wearing e.v.a. suits standard or don't need an atmosphere because you need only magnetize the hull to keep the fighters from drifting off, use some inductive-charging magic to keep the fighter's batteries charged, and suddenly anything with the capacity to refuel and re-arm a single craft outside of combat and the hull-space to park is now a full-on carrier-ship. It's also how everyone moves multiple ships with only a single pilot in Space Engineers before they build a dedicated carrier (assuming they ever actually build one instead of just going "meh, good enough" with the parasite shenanigans). As for full on hanger-pods instead of an internal bay... a bay makes sense for something small that needs a utility craft (e/x: the heli-pad on the back of a lot of naval ships), but if your going to ignore the logic of how battle-ship/carrier hybrids tend to end up doing both jobs poorly (and it isn't specifically a plot-point that something is being used in a way it wasn't intended), then you're probably already well in to rule-of-cool territory and pods or not you should just go with what looks good.

For those of us who actually build our own idea of SciFi craft, such external structures are a godsend, since as you noted, it is VERY easy to modify existing items to perform an alternative role. Personally I'd be overjoyed if at least one of the major space based SF series was to model an entirely modular "base craft", that was then seen to be quickly adaptable to a myriad of roles. We see this happening with current, "real" military systems, so it would add reality. Having the "bare bones" vessel under construction, or just being shuttled around would look good too, with all the fixture hard points clearly visible - gives a sense of anticipation as to what the ship could end up looking like.

Before watching. Fuel, ammo and stuff explodes. Hangars are often targeted so taking those out is a good tactic. Intentionally placing them farther away saves the rest of the ship if they blow.

External hangars make sense if you design a ships interior for space maximization or crew usage and still want to have a means for small craft besides docking rings. Specialized "cargo" bays devoted to small craft allow you to minimize the impact of any catastrophic damage. Especially if you have some sort of external lock that holds the bays to the vessel. Ideally, to me, I'd like an external bay that can be detached or swapped if need be. Something akin to the Galaxy Class swapping saucers to get different capabilities, for example.

I think the BC-304 is one of the coolest ship designs in sci-fi

One potential upside for internal hangers is that they are less exposed. So if you trust your ships armor, and not necessarily the fleet protection, then you put it inside.

I really like the Daedalus design. Back when I was writing more sci-fi I designed a ship like it, except the back platform on it's top extended further out and wrapped around the two pods on it's sides. The enitre pods were modular and could easily be swapped out depending on what was needed. Need fighters and other support craft, we got you covered. Disaster on planet 8674 and they need two emergency hospitals right now, we got that too. Need to put more missiles downrange than your enemy has ships, also covered. Classic flightdeck, easy mode. Transporting a VIP and want an entire miniture ship they can evac onto if need be, poorly thought out but sure why not? Troop transport for planet based fighting, massive cargo holds for supplies, basiclly anything you needed. It was a very versitile vessal, always something better than it for any given task, but can work for many different situations.

Logically, with something like the Galactica, the connecting arms should also have the ability to be completely sealed and separated in an emergency. That would mean if all the fuel and ammunition is about to detonate, the entire hangar can be jettisoned and propelled away from the main ship to prevent proximity damage as well. Something that the launch tubes assist in as well because all fighters can be launched quickly first.

Nailed it on the concept of flight pods! Missed one niche use, depending on the worldbuilding: they can be intentionally separated as life-rafts, "drop hangars", or whatever contrived scenario someone wants to come up with for dramatic/tension/cool factors they might want!

One of the things I love about the Galactica is that it only needs the flight pods extended to retrieve its fighters, It can fight and deploy them all without extending them. Plus the damn thing can tank Nukes like a mother fucker and just say ''I didn't hear no bell mother fucker''. also: Venator's DO have compartmentalization of all its major hangar bays, they can close armored blast doors between each individual hangar sections and can depressurize the central landing strips to make sure it DOSE NOT go up in a fire ball of death.

It depends entirely on the esthetics of a given franchise, but in realistic terms, hanger pods provide additional protection to a ship, since docking in space is one of the most dangerous things a space craft can undertake and because the hanger tends to be surrounded by smaller spacecrafts, fuels and other highly volatile materials, having a space pod ensures any and all possible dangers to be kept to the outside of the ship, in some cases where the pods are modular, the loss or damage of a hanger pod might not be as catastrophic if the hangar was directly connected or internally integrated. That being said, hanger pods may provide additional protection outside of say combat and possibly at points inside of combat, since hangars are the most vulnerable points of a ship, given that they’re the primary means of allowing large numbers of boarders to invade a ship, that being said it does depend on the universe in question, things like teleportation assaults or boarding torpedoes and assault pods can be used as a means of rapid infiltration, famous examples of boarding actions would be the space marines from warhammer 40K where heavy elite squads of terminators armed with tank grade weapons can teleport directly onto an enemy warship or utilize a boarding torpedo to tactically insert a squad or more of marines into an enemy vessel in which their superior strength, speed and firepower will overrun any and all defenders, or as another example the CIS trident class assault ship from Star Wars, used primarily as a means of boarding a ship or fixed enemy positions via its massive drill allowing it to deploy over twenty super battle droids into combat, that being said things like shuttles or assault crafts like the LAAT, would primarily use a hanger bay in order to gain entry into a ship, as for the external pods, it allows a ship to seal the area completely, whilst keeping the enemy away from the inner sections of the ship in which case the pod can be rigged to blow or be jettisoned, leaving the boarding team stranded in space, that being said external hanger pods tend to be extremely exposed and can be easily damaged or even destroyed, resulting in a significant loss of a hanger and access to any fighter crafts, vs an internal hanger which is a part of a ships super structure and there fire can be easily protected from outside threats, not only that but the internal hanger can be significantly larger than that of an external pod all the while heavy weapons emplacements can be used to neutralize any potential enemy boarders, whilst blast doors and internal hanger shields can be used to either contain or prevent an enemy boarding action.

Your talk at the end about the “Enders Game crates of drones, and Star Wars droid fighters walking on ship hulls” kind of makes me wonder what your take is regarding the Necromonger Conquest Icons from The Chronicles of Riddick?

I'm surprised the SDF-1 didn't make it here. It is space battle fortress with an aircraft carrier and a assault carrier for arms. Also, when you think about it, when in drydock, they can probably exchange a flight pod for upgraded one or a new flight pod.

6:05 Babylon 5 had it shown wrong in the show. The fighters were supposed to be launched from the rotating section (using the rotational force to eject them from tubes like in Battlestar), and only land on the bow mounted bay. But in the show the launch from the rotational section was too costly to animate, so they made the fighters also launch from the bow, instead of using it only as a landing bay. With the engines in the rear, the bridge inside one of the heavily armored rotating sections, it seemed rather feasible to have the fighters stored inside the ship. You could argue the B5 Omega class had one center mounted flight pod, which happens to continue seamlessly into the main hull.

I highly recommend the Honor Harrington novel series by David Weber and to check out his LAC carriers. Some amazing Sci-Fi space fleet thinking going on in those books. He also predicted the USAF Rapid Dragon program 20 years early as well. “Roll Pods” became the scariest thing an enemy fleet could hear. A lot of missile vs fighter debates going on the later novels.

In 2001, the hangar was in the hub of the space station. That would be correct. But, at the time of docking, the Pan Am shuttle began to dance the Blue Danube, when the correct solution was to rotate the hangar in the opposite direction to the space station. I always reproached Arthur C. Clarke for allowing Kubrick to get away with the space ballet...

Kinda sad that Macross wasn't mentioned, considering that they've used flight pods extensively. Even the original version just bolted on an assault landing ship onto the exterior as an emergency measure and used it as an impromptu flight pod. Then there's the Guantanamo class that's basically just a flight pod with its own engines and bridge. I mean, it's introduced in Macross Frontier as literally just using each of the surfaces of its rectangular body to launch space fighters, and being too small to serve any other function. Actually, thinking about it, Gundam's hero ships are basically this as well. Most of the time the hanger and launch bays are an exterior feature as well, though they don't launch fighters most of the time.

shout out to the Ender's Game crates... reading about that rewired my brain about what a spacecraft can actually be.

The venator kind of sucked as a battlecarrier. It did indeed sacrifice firepower for capacity. You can only cram so much power generation in when most of your ship is used for carrier operations. The lucrehulk on the other hand, had ample empty space for things to be crammed in. It already had its propulsion handled, all that had to be added was weapons generators. It also could handle being uparmored, in addition to the upgunning to be brought to battleship tier weapons. Shame they didn’t use lucrehulks more. They would have been perfect for the resistance fleet.

In the fifth Wing Commander game Wing Commander: Prophecy, the Midway-class carriers were designed quite different from the older WC carriers which were pretty much a ship built around a hangar bay. The new ones were designed to prevent the lone-cat suicide bomber from crashing into the hangar and taking the ship with it, or at the least destroying flight ops capability. To do this they used two separated landing bays in the lower-rear of the ship. The fighters were then moved by cranes into the service and prep areas. For launch the pilots hopped in and then they were craned again via an arterial system to one of six launch tubes at the bow. No single weapons hit to the carrier could disable flight ops and so long as one launcher was working they could (slowly) get fighters into space. Modular design is a great idea for a warship like a cruiser or battle-wagon, but for a carrier I think WC really hit one of the best ideas home.

Not to mention the flight pods can be set up to be ejected if need be. You can also set them up to be fly through so to speak. they land at the rear and launch out the front so they can land, load, and go.

The fact that I can name the SG-1 // Atlantis episodes the screenshots were grabbed from is kinda scary and made me realize that I might have seen them too many times. I agree though those ships are awesome. Those front shots of the Mercury class 7:39 is so menacing and badass, I love it. Also please if anyone knows of any books that covers Ronald D. Moore's universe of BSG please let me know. I have seen all the TV shows, the movies that came along with them and the game. I cant believe there were no novels written. It's such a rich and detailed world how come nobody was interested in it?

Did you look at the various Wing Commander games' carriers? Now they are true carriers not hybrids so they generally stick with the big main runway model down the middle.

The battlestars are one of my favourite ship designs I love the design so god damn much, it literally has that 'Shit-just-got-real' look.

Using the KF-51 technology demonstrator as "looking cool as fuck while killing people" is quite a compliment to Rheinmetall.😂😂

Flight pods turn your battleship plus two escort carriers into a trimaran: 3 powerful ships with specialized capabilities that only need one FTL drive. In water-borne navies, this doesn't work so well because carriers have to turn into the wind to launch/recover aircraft, and because they can't just tilt the ship to get the outboard carriers out of the way, but in space, they make more sense.

The best way to demonstrate why a flight pod Is absolutely brilliant is to look at one of the main examples of internal hanguers. Namely Space Battleship Yamato. The fighter ar launched from a rotary magnetic catapult, and are launched by an opening barely big enough for the fighter. Because there isn't any more available space. The main problem is that if there needs to be an emerging GTFO situation or a malfunction on the fighters then say good bay to your air suport or worst case, the Yamato itself as the fighter rams into the hanger and causes likely catastrophic internal damage. Meanwhile with Galactica. GTFO situation were the 33 minute routine for the first 5 days of the exodus. And the Flight Pods made sure there was plenty of room for the exhausted pilots to land safely. And funly enough, the Carrier Version of the Andromeda Class Space Battleship, does use a version of the flight pod concept in the Form of a T shaped hangar Replacing the back Gun Turrets.

my guy, you're literally my savior, some idiot was trying to argue with me on how good they are, trying to say interior hangars are better XD

/shame I recently fell to the Isekai insanity. Did you know they have one where a Roomba becomes a god? All the Dust that Falls. Technically they never say that the roomba met truck-kun, he just got summoned by some demon mages and they got freaked out when he started just slurping up all their binding circles... it's pretty good. Flight pods like in BSG have too much redundant armor IMO. The gap between the main ship and the pod could just be shortened, and a single thick bulkhead put in. Instead they have a big bullet catching gap with ribbed for our pleasure armored exterior walls on both the ship and the pod. Yeah yeah the little pod is supposed to be a lifeboat, but I think 'bigger target' is more appropriate. If they already took down the big shooty bit with even more armor your little non-shooty bit with less armor and big holes in the front and back isn't going to last long. Daedalus does it better. Though I like the baleen whale style, where they pull up behind their escorts, fire their small ships at the enemy, then hang back and watch. Less backup, only one hanger to lose, but also far easier management. Don't need basically two (or more) Chief Tyroll's per ship if you only have one hanger bay.

The clip of the fireboat spraying the hull of the burning ship with the subtitle 'He's doing his best, ok' to be very cute, because that ship is actually doing what it is supposed to. If a metal ship is burning, the problem is not going to be solved by adding water. Rather, what the fireboat is doing is helping reduce the heat of the hull above water to prevent a rapid thermal crack sinking the ship entirely before the fuel burns out. If it floats, it is much easier to salvage than a sunk ship.

6:22 Well, aCTuaLly the main hangar on the Omega faces foreward.

"Seperation of function" is exactly what flight pods are.

Here's an easy example, get into KSP and then make an interstellar cruiser, and the difference between adding a couple of flight pods and/or external docking ports versus trying to make an integrated a hanger in the middle of the ship. External storage is invaluable to ship design for space based vessels

6:57 John Crichton using the Odyssey's flight hangar to scoop up Samantha Carter was epic. One of the reasons why that franchise was so awesome.

Interesting points but I fear you may be overstating some the supposed problems with through-hull hangers: *Early carriers were originally made from converted Cruiser hulls (hence the CV hull code in US), with significantly less armor than period capital ships. Modern fleet carriers are far more heavily protected and survivable by comparison, and I see no reason that trend would not continue into some far future. *Forward facing hangars aren't actually any better than lateral hangars in sortie capability. Remember; space is a relative 0G vacuum where your vehicles don't have to turn to maneuver. Any ship (fighter or carrier) would be capable of omnidirectional linear flight. IE, it would be trivially easy for a fighter to match its carrier's vector before flying sideways into the hangar. Same holds to for the carrier itself. Of course, this ignores the major downsides of external hangars, as well. First and foremost, that's where all your ship's own weapons are supposed to go. Assuming a prismoidal ship, you would want as much of your ships surface area to be free of obstructions so that you could mount additional main guns, laser batteries and missile silos. Even if the fighters are meant to be the ships primary armament, they interfere with the coverage of the carrier's point defense system, leaving the hangars vulnerable to long-range missile fire.

The thing is in science fiction like Star Wars, where energy weapons are so prominent you’re going to have far less concerned about physical ammunition in regards to resupply and space since you don’t have to store as much as well as not having as much things that go boom in your hanger. Yes they do carry missiles and torpedoes though it’s also possible that since these aren’t explosive devices, we’re familiar with in real life and are more advanced. They might have some sort of safe mode or other safety mechanisms to prevent explosives from being donated the way we think of explosives.

Having multiple pods add some redundancy to the flight operations. If one is taken out, there will be others that can launch and recover fighters.

Makes sense for warships. With Star Trek, Starfleet ships are (generally) exploration ships that are armed in order to defend themselves. Even the dedicated warships developed to fight the Borg don't normally rely on fighters or auxiliary craft in battles. Also, it'd ruin the distinct, sleek Federation aesthetic, which is the most important argument against it. I do like the idea for more grounded storytelling in a war setting, though. If I were writing it, the pods would be able to be jettisoned in case of exploding ships, etc, and there would be an armored "firewall" layer between the pods and the ship to help protect it, in case the mechanism to jettison the pod failed.

Dude... this is your channel. You provide your POV. You do a great job. If someone disagrees? Too bad. They can comment with positive feedback or start their own channel. Drive on.

Reminder that halo ships where built before the covenant and boarding was not a concern for the unsc Star wars focuses on shields as well as armor and there is a version of the venator that welds that top hangar closed and welds more armor because that is a concern. Also boarders in your hangar bay just vent the hangar bay. Star wars also has tractor beams and computers to help them land on ships as well as docking hooks to grab things like tie fighters. Also that some fighters have there own hyperdrive so they don't need to dock. Halo fighters arnt released much? While space fighters are a thing and on ships there also fucking gigantic so they can't have a lot and when they dock the ship often has advanced computers or downright AI to help. The hangars are mostly for dropships.

I am glad to see someone "Starkly" comparing the rule of cool to the rule of boom.

Wow, I never thought about this. You basically strap fully functional and independant aircraft carriers on the sides of your battleship. With both working separately while still being a part of 1 big unit. On the sea this would be impossible, but in space it will just work lol. One weakness I see is that if the hangars are forward facing there is a chance that in battle, when they are in their most venerable state - open, the inside could be hit by enemy fire causing heavy damage. However if our battlecarrier posseses the standart sci fi one sided energy shields the problem should be solved since the hangar would only be open when launching and recovering aircraft at the beggining and end of the battle when the shield would either be at full strenght or not needed.

I am personally subscribed to having the fighters/drones attached directly the hull with no cover. The unmanned fighters are the cover.

You forgot about what Earth Alliance has with the Omega Destroyer in Babylon 5, a front facing hanger bay to launch and recover small craft, the bay is zero g and open to atmo, a boom happens there, oh well, the void fo space eats the boom and no harm done. And its more guns than god version Nova Dreadnaught, and well the whole ship here is zero g. There are a couple dedicated carriers in B5 as well. The Posidon that has 9 hanger bays facing in 3 different direction, forgoing main weapons for just flood open space with a fighter swarm. Going small size is the Strike carrier, no main weapons and no armor here instead opting for speed and rapid release and retrieve of fighter craft housing 2 rings that fighters just hang from and a small hanger for shuttles.

Small craft and fighters in the hangar shell are non-essential mass that can add damage resistance. They are already depressurized and can have Point Defense bolted/welded on.

My headcanon has it that the flight pods on battlestars like the Mercury Class are in fact modular and can be swapped out for any of a number of pod modules for different missions. Imagine a Mercury Class battlestar charging into a fight and instead of launching hundreds of Vipers and Raptors, it instead launches tens of thousands of missiles at the enemy from modular missile pods.

You know what else is underrated? Mobile Suit Gundam has some really cool scenes where federation GM mobile suits are docked in combat with older pre war dreadnaughts and getting reamrmed with ammo and cooland and stuff mid battle. These crusiers are like sitting ducks. And Zakus attack them mid refit and take out a ton of them while they are still hooked up to their Salamis class light cruisers. I think it was in 0083 Stardust Memory or the early part of ZZ or Chars Counter attack. But it was a cool scene in someone's flashback that lasted a few minutes.

I'm definitely going to build one of these in my ships in space engineers.

i'm honestly with you 100%, and in the case of the X-304's from stargate they feel like a logical leap when it comes to where the series started and where it was around the time universe was airing. at the start is was just normal earth with normal weapons and an alien stargate, by the end we become this space faring super power and yet it's only the late 2000's and seeing how such a short amount of time has passed it makes sense that our first real starships would look more like aircraft carriers because thats a design that already exists in the US miltary, becoming these large battleships at the core while on ether wing you have these hanger pods (plus whos to say the ship isn't modular and those pods can't be swapped out with say a heavy weapons pod or colony pods)

Since you mention obscure books... Capital ships in Jay Allen's _Blood On The Stars_ series are all described as having flight pods, whilst also having giant spinal weapons, making them fairly similar to Battlestars while still having something distinct about them. Christopher G Nuttall's _Ark Royal_ series has all its carriers use flight pods, though only the titular HMS _Ark Royal_ was a carrier/battleship hybrid. Only converted freighters known as Escort Carriers seemed to have internal hangars.

I like the whole precept of this video. I play a game called Space Engineers quite a bit, and one of the ideas I've been toying with is actually to create flight pods to use for fighters, rather than trying to incorporate a hangar into the structure of the ship itself. I have several reasons for thinking this, one of which has to do with armoring, and security. I definitely think flight deck pods should be used much more in sci-fi in all sorts of media, including movies, shows, anime, mecha, etc... Also, and I doubt that this would ever be adopted as it would require building an entire new dry-dock and port to make use of it, but I feel that carriers that were built like triple-hulled catamarans would fix a lot of the issues faced by carriers. Have the flight decks on the outer hulls, and then use the central hull for most things, like storing fuel, ammunition, ordinance, etc... within armored sections, while the aircraft are stored in the outer hulls. This would accomplish two things, the first would be lowering the possibility of uncontrolled fires crippling the ship in the event that something sets off the explosive stuff, as well as make carriers more stable in battle conditions, allowing for aircraft to land even when the ship is maneuvering, even when making turns to avoid enemy fire and what not.

6:00 concerning the expanse : these ships are constructed like giant rockets, cause the show tries some realism. A heavy mass apart from centerweight, aka flight pod, would throw centrical acceleration way off line. Also, the reactor types in the expanse can be shut off and powered up, a lucky hit to the roci would not had done much as long as its inactive. And if hit when powered on - the destructive potential would rip everything apart, flight pod or not.

I personaly loved the Stargate ships with their hangar bays and Venator Star destroyers With ships that can jump independently you can basicly set up a strike package, let it jump in and deal damage and vanish again. How carriers worked in ww2 basicly.

Star wars had shields around each fighter bays. However if the pod is as well armoured and solid as the rest of the ship they are a ok idea as long as your pilots are forces to remain there. Otherwise sortie speed will suffer.

Should look at the various ship designs in Gundam. Some have dedicated "flight pods" some are more like a flat top in space.

Always loved the Daedalus class, the design and rail guns pew pewing in space look cool lmao

Something I’ve been thinking about is inspired by the Homeworld series. Instead of a hangar bay. Get a giant gun. Build a ship around it. Replace that giant gun with a catapult and the loading mechanism with a printer/constructor for fighter drones. Have ammo / parts stored in armored sections much like modern battle tanks. If it blows up. It explodes outwards and the remaining containers keep feeding the fighter drone factory. And the carrier keeps pumping out fighter craft. And if we wanna build a stupidly large battlecarrier. Just grab one or two of these constructor carriers, mount them onto the sides or underbelly of the main ship. It has the benefit that the tools/parts/programmable matter could be used to patch holes on the other parts of the ship if need be and you can’t go to drydock for repairs

This was an entertaining watch. Thank you for putting it together. I do agree with your line of reasoning. I see the benefits of having easily detachable hanger bays for servicing and replacing. Do you feel there would be considerable threat to the main ship if one of these hangers went critical? With all of that explosive potential I envision fragments still punching through the main ship and ending our squishy meat bag lives. You found some really engaging imagery for this piece. I thank you for the thoughtful distraction to our non-flying car world.

If you've never seen it the Andromeda Ascendant has hanger/shuttle bays that are mounted towards the rear of the ship, but the doors face the front of the ship including the fighter bays.

Yes, you finally referenced the video: Battle of Helios Delta 6!!!!!!!!!!!! I think that the Four Hanger Bay design is a WARSTAR!!!!!!

5:54 - in terms of Expanse "space magic", it is mainly just in the power-to-thrust ratio of the engines. Otherwise normal material engineering principles, just with foreseeable upgrades as we are prototyping them now. Meaning it would not be of any difference if the fusion explosion of such hit to Roci in the hangar happened inside the ship or in some external pod - Donnager would not survives such explosion. Its own fusion reactor is no less vulnerable to railgun fire.. that's why every ship regardless of size has quick reactor drop off sequence, so a failing reactor would explode in empty space behind the ship. So there is no actual benefit to external pods here in this setting for purpose of "surviving explosion". But other things applies as well - center of gravity, forces generated in combat maneuvers etc. And the Roci is unlaunched just tons and tons of added momentum - imagine running in the combat trough forest, with heavy weights in fully extended arms. You would prefer to have same weight at least on chest, right? Less stress on the docking claws as well, if the hangar is near the center of rotations.. Consider that every small PDC on the Roci is firing a blast of propellent backwards(!) to every slug hurled towards (it is nicely visible in the show), just that the forces generated by the cannon fire are equalized (basically recoilless rifle principle) and does not affect overall flight characteristics.. meaning Alex does not need to react also to random drags and pushes from the defensive/offensive firing solutions... so such smaller scale vector changes are considered here. Artificial gravity - battlestar, stargate - changes everything.

Love the FTL background music.

Catching pilots with Battlestar flightpods. Weirdest thing to witness. Now I want it.

I know this is a month old but I feel obligated to chime in lol. You brought up the Helios Delta 6 video, which I agree is amazing, and the TItan depicted there with 4 flight pods. This is actually something that exists in the canon, but idk if the video animator knew it or not. Anyway, it's called either a Warstar or a Commandstar depending on the source, with Colonial navy having I think 12 of them - 1 in each of the 12 fleets, each fleet having 10 Battlestars/Battlestar Groups. Thank you for reading my daily useless knowledge dump.

Having your hangars as separate pods does increse the hull surface area more than a monolithic design, which can matter for some strains of plotdevicium for FTL and/or defensive techno-babble. In general, though, I agree with most to all of your points, though having your strike craft/drones/etc. arranged so each one has it's own mini-bay like the VLS cells on a modern navy missile destroyer - and rocket booster strap-on parts for fast-scramble interceptors is 1950s tech IRL so it could certainly be done for space fighters to make up for off-axis launch angles - is a logical option as well, compartmentalizing the armed and fueled ready-for-launch craft in their cells from the maintenance and recovery operations areas. BSG does of course do something like this with the launch tubes separate from recovery and hangar space, but doesn't take it so far. And also looking super-cool, of course, the only thing better than an Itano Circus missile launch is when each of the things launched is actually carrying a bunch of missiles to launch a second generation.

There is also the Idea that in theory a "Flight Pod"/ "Hanger Bay Section" could be detached from the main hull, making the main ship faster and act as a "Limited Range Slow Moveing Mobile Space Fighter Base" each with it's own point defence systems. The idea of useing other pod types of the same basic size for a number of usefull roles is also a wise dysign choice. I prefer the ship version that has 6 pods, 3 on each side around main hull.

Because it’s cool to see the craft come in and out. It’s not supposed to be tactically sound

2:187 look up the USS Saratoga and USS Lexington…they literally were this idea in actuality: guns on an aircraft carrier. they found out why it’s not a good idea to fire across the deck in a broadside when the ship couldn’t fire across the landing deck. the guns worked, the issue was that the use of guns on guns in battle was proven over thanks to Pearl Harbor and other battles.

Well the venator hangars can be separated with blast doors - in one of the episode of the clone wars - there was a hijacked venator packed with explosives and its hangars were indeed separated from each other. The part shown here was not from battle but during the stand down time - so everything was set for maximum convenience.

I have only a singular point I need to make: At least as far as the Star Wars Legends canon is concerned, the fighters and small ships are considered to be majorly more maneuverable and nimble than the massive capital ships, so anything short of complete engine failure and loss of steering means the fighter can still land and launch safely out of/into the hangar of the major massive battle brick even mid maneuver. EDIT: And not to mean that I want to make battlepods even more awesome, but how many exits does a side hangar have? That's right, 1. 1 way in and out. A well-constructed battlepod can receive fighters through the back of the module while simultaneously launching fighters out the front. And they can do the airport switch if mid battle the priority is receiving damaged fighters, meaning they can simply start launching out the back of the module if needed.

Pros and cons. A "flight pod" may be less dangerous to the ship as a whole, but it's far more exposed and far more likely to be knocked out. An internal flight deck may technically pose a greater danger to the ship, but at the same time it's much harder to be compromised, if it's largely behind the same heavy armor. The balance may ultimately tilt in favour of the latter, considering your strike craft capability is otherwise hanging by a thread if the enemy decides to focus fire on the exposed pods.

I can think of several reasons why you might have flight pods on the outside. Not least of which is the modularisation of standardised ship templates. Say you're building (and maintaining) a huge fleet that needs to be versatile enough to see a vast scope of deployments. Instead of building inefficient hybred designs (like you might see in star wars) you have the option to put a specialised module on a standardised flight frame. Standardisation massively improves logistical supply. Logistics win wars and in an interstellar war scinario doubly so.

I don't actually think carrier pods are a good idea because you have slowed down the "carrier" a ship that is not supposed to be in direct combat because it is usually lightly armored and needs to disengage. Then you essentially staple it to a "battleship" a slower weapons platform that is designed for direct combat with armor and weapons in mind over speed generally speaking. Also a detonation of a pod next to your main hull might not outright destroy your "Battle-Pod-Carrier" but it will cause extreme damage to the ship if not cripple it in combat. It turns out that hulls do not like massive explosions going off right next to them. This event has happened before in WWII when the carrier USS Princeton detonated with USS Birmingham beside her attempting to put out fires. The detonation cut down large swaths of the crew on deck of the Birmingham along with hull and superstructure damage. This prompted Birmingham being called back to port for repairs. The explosion can knock out critical systems like exposed weapons, personnel, and sensors. Also explosions next to your ship can be extremely deadly in the vacuum of space as even small cracks in a hull can depressurize and kill many of the crew inside. On another note I doubt the crew will be using the pod sections as a life raft or for escape pods. In a protracted battle where the primary heavily fortified hull is damaged and the crew needs to abandon ship I bet the more lightly armored carrier pods will have long since been destroyed defeating the purpose of using them as a means of escape. For strategic, tactical, and logistical purposes it is better to keep these two classes of ships separate. However, I do know that we are talking about science fiction and not reality so if you want your ships to look cool I have no problem with it, but in reality it will never happen.

If you're looking at this from a "realistic" perspective, the problem is even more basic than "To flight pod or not to flight pod". The problem is that I'm not sure the mission and tactical advantages of a sea-borne aircraft carrier translate to a space-borne equivalent. The sea-borne carrier's whole reason for being is to be able to apply surprise to an attack by striking your enemy from beyond his sensory horizon. This works because the curvature of the sphere upon which both combatants are operating interposes itself between them. This allows craft which are otherwise much too small and fragile to be considered a serious threat to your opponent's capitol ship on their own, to mass at a point or points of their choosing, out of sight of the enemy and by timing their approach properly attack your enemy overwhelmingly from too many vectors for him to be able to defend. In space however, there is no horizon to hide behind and if your enemy knows to look for any heat sources above ~ -250°C, there's nowhere you can hide to mass your small craft for an attack.

The main Earth ships in B5 have forward facing flight decks. They're that big honkin' hole in the bow (Nova class, Omega class, etc). The B5 space station, being a stationary object, has the launch bays on the outer circumference so that they literally just drop out of the station when launching due to the centrifugal momentum.

Fun fact: in WW2 US battleships often carried a sea plane that they could launch as a spotter.

The aircaftcarrier are main of navy air to lunch, air wing and power portijection!

That just shows why you also design a hangar inside a ship....to take advantage of the armor and multiple layers of heavy shields on a Venator, even with shields per bay aboard said Star Destroyer. Not knocking your preference. But also Aircraft carriers can be...rather weak and vulnerable in general. Not quite the same of the real warships of space that are more like battleships with hangars....though you may explain partly why Venators were replaced by Imperial class Star Destroyer with smaller hangars.

Star Trek ships don’t have flight decks because most situations never require it. The shuttle bays are for non-transporter transfers of personnel and equipment. While you could have fighter craft in Trek, the starship can reach FTL speed in magnitudes higher than any shuttle or fighter craft (if equipped with FTL). By contrast, Galactica had FTL jump capability but not FTL in real space capability. In that application, fighter craft are more useful because if your going to jump, you with recall your ships or abandon them.

For the humans at least, B5 had some fairly reasonable fighter arrangements. The station had pod like structures at least.

Flight Pods should be able to be ejected when heavily damaged, to avoid explosion near the main hull.

Star Treks hanger bay isn't for combat usually. If an Aegis cruiser can track and engage over 100 targets at one time, Since Star Trek is in the future they can probably track and engage 500 to 1000 targets making fighters obsolete. Otherwise outboard carrier pods are waaaaay better than internal hanger bays.

Designer: "Should we have external flight pods or place the flight deck inside the core of the ship?" Battlestar Galactica: "Yes."

The U.S. has had a number of carriers that turned Molotov cocktail, only to remain afloat. The Forrestal and Ben Franklin are two that come to mind.

If you’ve ever seen a flight deck or hangar deck fire, having an external pods that can be trashed without taking the entire ship with them is a good idea. Why isn’t this done on Earth? Water resistance. In space, there is no resistance and any shape is possible.

Not sure how to mention this as its kinda a spoiler of the bsg 2003 game but here goes. The galactica angles itself to take a hit that completely deatroys one of the flight pods so that the rest of the ship survives and can still function like described as a good idea in this vid. Oh and theres a 2007 xbox 360 arcade game too that was pretty basic but still fun

This video wasn't what I expected, but I liked it :) Speaking of space movies and hangars, back when I first watched the attack on Scarif and earlier that other little base i.e. Star Wars: Rogue One it bugged me so much, while they always overlook this in movies it was so unusually glaringly obvious in this particular movie.. why.. WHY did the Rebels completely ignore those huge open hangars filled to the brim with TIE's? Fish in a barrel, a couple of proton torpedoes would have set off a chain reaction that might have brought down the whole thing but NO... ignore them completely and let them all launch at their leisure!

I thought this video was going to slate the idea of the external flight landing and launching pods but the "Reimagined" BSG the Battlestars actually use both concepts. While fighters can be launched from the external flight pods they are mostly ejected from their individual internal fighter hangers like the Star Furies are in B5. The flight pods if they are going to be used for launching tend to be used by bigger planes like the raptors if they are needed. The primary use for the flight pods is fighter recovery and the most of the time they are used in full extended mode is when they are recovering their fighters. Otherwise they stay retracted and add to what is the Brick that the Battlestar is. Now there is a reasoning behind this back in WW2 and can be really well explained by the difference between British, American and Japanese aircraft carriers. Out of those 3 Navies the British Navy had armored flight decks extensively. Probably the fewest carriers out of the 3 nations but the highest percentage of armored flight deck carriers. (What is the point of a carrier that has lost it's flight deck) The US next had some armored flight deck carriers (But US navy damage control was actually superlative and as at least as good if not better as the British who didn't need it quite as much) then you have the Japanese who had a lot of carriers too but hey they had wooden decks and shoddy damage control. I'd argue that Battlestar Galactica and maybe some of its Ancestors where designed by the equivalent of a British Royal Navy warship designer and it is a premium warship with the damage control standards of the US Navy in WW2

Are they underrepresented if probably a good half of space carriers have a separated flightdeck?

There is an argument for off movement axis hangars protecting fighters and strike craft from incoming fire during launching and/or recovery but the utility of that does depend alot on the setting and faction doctrine. Overall, fair points all around, I'm sold on the magic of battleships with hangar pods strapped to the sides.

Fun to watch, and a few cents from me: The Expanse made a mistake here, but luckily shines at most other aspects compared to popular SciFi, so a must read for all fans of the genre. One question though, are figthers any good in this kind of "universe"? They are mostly depicted to fill the role of mosquitoes stinging the big ones or acting as a kind of PD. Again in The Expanse, we see a lot rasons why this is unlikely to be of any use (at least before the Alien tech is showing up). As there is no advantage in the huge space thats Space. PD rounds can be deadly to any ship class if not stretching into the absurd WH40K system where they soak that up by just sacrfising some sectors of a ship. So what surrounding do we have? - Sensors can depict basically everything in a star system. Maybe beside something directly behind a star/GasGiant, constantly mirroring an angle to the sensor. So a fighter released from a capital ship would have to travel weeks to their target and still be visible all the time. A PD gun could easily pluck them out of any course from a few hundret-thousand kilometres away. - Opposite: Stealth? Let`s pretend we achive something like stealth cpabilities for disturbing the sensors or hiding. Let`s also pretend we are not as stupid as most are and add shiny windows to our shipdesign. So a hangar, or the release of fighters would certeinly not help in this part. Boucning back to fighters being visible weeks before they are in strike range. - Weapons. What waepon could be unique to fighters that are off limits for main ships? Rockets/Cruise Missiles/Torpedos (same in Space)? Don`t see a reason why there can`t be pods on the main ship. PD/Laser? Ammo or Power would be certainly a big blow on effectivness at small crafts. - Physics. As gravity-generators are one of the least possible parts to ever achieve, a fighter with a human beeing inside has none of the capabilites as we think of in a gravity well. There woun`t be "dog-fights" like in many popular SciFi, as a squishy human would just be a liability for movemnt and speed. No air resistance, so any proejctile will not loose veleocity or bend away. Hence they are even faster than they are in an athmosphere. So a cluster of drones would make way more sense then fightercrafts. - Redundency/Saftey. Agreed, this would be the main aspect of adding something like a hanger. But, wouldn`t it be better to basically built a connected honeycomb of capital ships? Maybe one giant supply station and a few strike cruisers docked around it? They can act like a bubble of firepower and can be constantly resupplied by the main ship/station. When push comes to shove, they disconnect and drive off, as well as not destroy the whole system if getting blown up by them selfes. Same could be thinkable for drone/weapon pods. Designed to be dockable, they could disconnect if needed and even suicide into rockets or porectiles. Not as appreciated by humans mostly... And as speed is not limited, a connected sytem travels at the same speed as all other crafts. so the drives of the connected ships can add to the whole mass, keeping the acceleration and breaking at the same level. - Various mission ships. Ok, you might want to have ships for different tasks. Like scouting, probing or diving into a gravity well (planet). Makes sense, but again, why not simply docking them around your main ship? There is no reason for them to enter a full hangar. Over all, the question is probbaly not hangars outside or inside, but why hangars at all? There probably woun`t be a need for fighters like we know from popular lore, as there is nothing they can add, a drone/rocket/gunpod can`t do. So let`s rethink this and see the next SciFi action where people wait in the emtyness of Space and suddenly get hit by a cluster of PD salvo... Fun!

The original design of the Omega class destroyers in B5 were supposed to launch the fighters from the rotating section using centrifugal force and recover them from the front but the VFX team changed it for simplicity. When launched from the station itself they are flung out of "cobra bays" and on the Hyperion class there are launch/recovery bays on a ventral pod along the spine of the ship.

Gundam Universal Century kinda had these things

1. There is little space onboard the ship that isn't essential. The only spaces that are unessential that could be used to shield the hangers would be personnel quarters and recreational facilities. It's not clear if there are enough to these to even cover the entirety of the hangers. 2. If a ship crashes trying to land, it would be less likely to hit essential systems if the hangers were further away from the reactor and engines.