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)

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.

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

Something to keep in mind: when your ship basically has outside modules, that means it's also *_modular._* Say you instead want to launch massive inter-planetary missiles or planet-killer missiles... drop the hangar module, put in the missile module. Or you want additional crew space that's not just temporary - drop the hangar module and put in a module with crew quarters. Or maybe you want a massive ECM/jamming package. Unbolt, install. Or scanning equipment. Unbolt, install. Or, maybe you want an armed and armored sponson wing for your ship. Unbolt, install. Hell, you could have a wing module that is an entire pre-fab base where you just land, unbolt, and have the base down on the ground ready to use. Now, granted, it is probably vastly more involved then "lefty loosey" and "righty tighty" and installing it. It would probably take some time in a spacedock... But the point is that it would be a hell of a lot faster to do than any other ship modification on the same scale.

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.

In defense of the venator, and most other star wars carrier/battleship hybrids, and likely other scifi that uses shielding. 1. Venator is gravely missused even in universe. It has guns made for long range engagements and the large hangar is specifically a design meant to send out a ton of fighters. - the venator is a carrier with a very small amount of long range guns. 1.b The ISD is a battleship with a hangar and it used the fighters for aa screen instead of actually having a decent anti fighter turret loadout - there is a sister type that actively foregoes the hangar for more armor and firepower. 2. As engagement range of capital ships in star wars is extremely low, it makes sense to send out fighters before starting combat, as such the direction of the hangars don't matter as much. 3. In a universe where shielding is strong and most ships get nearly insta destroyed once they are gone, you don't have to think so much about the ammo rack. 4. With that said, the venator has shown to be immensely tanky specifically during the battle of ryloth. I do agree that your examples are goood for the "battlecarrier" archetype. TLDR: The venator is a bad example of a battleship/carrier hybrid, because it only has 8 dual turbolasers specifically used for long range shooting, meaning in a proper fleet it could sit at the back, send out fighters, then snipe from a relatively safe distance. It's mostly just a carrier.

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.

Another positive for the flight pods i immagined - the military dockyards could have them pre-build as segments, and when the ship is damaged mostly on the pods, those should be able to be swapped for undammaged pod(s). Modular ship designs are even today most desireable features on the military vessels. Btw remember a star trek federation spaceship with 2 or more "secondary hulls", with shuttlebay door at least on their backs. If on their fronts too, could (according what it contains inside beside hangar) be seen as flight pods too...

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.

On the note of the carrier explosions, check out the USS Franklin. That carrier was blown to hell and back but somehow managed to find its way into port. There was another I cannot recall that the USN had written off after a strike so went to blow it up. But no matter how hard they tried, it simply refused to sink for the longest time.

It really depends on wether you want low or big profile design. Also disappointed you aren't showing the Macross with it's twin carriers as flight pods or the ARMD carriers for them as well.

Originally the Omega Class Destroyer was supposed to launch its Starfuries from its rotating section but the budget and tech wouldn't allow for it. If you look at those sections you can see hangar doors there on the ends.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Honorary mention to the Lucrehulks due to having a curved double flight pod and a detectable control sphere that can land and operate as a forward base.

while it is anime, I would look at the Macross/Robotech style of Carriers. the SDF-1 has a 'limited' flight deck in the main ship but it soon received a (submersible) carrier as one of its arms to be its main flight pod. btw the Macross movies later on, SDF-1 changed to having two space-based carriers instead of the water-based carrier. (or something like that)

The star citizen ship design devs really need to watch this video

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.

one more neat thing about an external-ish hangar: you can keep the entire section decompressed during combat, so even if your hangar has a hull breach, work can continue as always

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 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.

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.

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...

Okay, okay. You've sold me. I'm making every spaceship 100% modular. Every warship and AR-15. All weapons systems come in modules which can be swapped out at shipyards of almost any size.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Better idea - support ships. Nowadays, support ships exist to protect and serve the carrier. What if carriers ended up being support ships to the massive impenetrability armoured and massively gunned battleship? And carriers were smaller support ships capable of launching swarms of smaller fightercraft whilst needing medium sized support ships of their own for defence? Battlestar Galactica is a special narrative case were they only one ship survived. And Stargate is another were they could only build one. But realistically, they'd have a fleet were each ship was designed for a purpose and each ship could be replaced. No need for one big hybrid ship. Just for each ship to not be alone and travel in packs or small fleets.

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.

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.

I like the idea of the flight pods being able to be jettisoned in a emergency situation. No sense in sitting next to a big bomb.

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!

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.

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 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.

Your historical mention about battlecarriers is missing something kinda relevant as to why they were not developed. Before WW2, the major naval powers signed a series of treaties which limited the quantities and displacements of ships making it pretty hard to make a battlecarrier without pretty much openly violating said treaties. As an aside, a lot of the carriers outgunned destroyers, at least in one case, a carrier tried to form up in a line of battle before the battleships with it complained.

I remember playing X3: Reunion, and had the game heavily modded, including a few different carrier types. One had the hangar deck running straight through the center, bow to aft. I also had a Galactica ship, with its pods. The centerline ship launched and recovered well, but only in single file. With the Galactica model, I could launch and recover multiple birds simultaneously, making for a quicker response in battle situations. So yeah, I ended up using that one considerably more as a command ship. Also, in a broadside fight, which happens a lot in these types of large scale space battle games, easier to keep birds out of the firing line of the carrier.

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

Twin pods mean you can either take off and land at the same time, or launch twice as many craft - also if the pods are open at each end you can do this all simultaneously (a bit like a pit-lane). I also like how another user called them Modular, which is totally true! Need more fuel, or cargo capacity, easy, just seal it up and convert. Re the fighters though, the biggest issue with space combat and sci-fi shows in general is orientation; they assume space is 2-dimentional, in-fact it's probably done this way because doing full 3-dimentional combat would be difficult to shoot and shoot well without giving the viewer a brain aneurism. I've seen it done in a few movies and it's been pretty messy, like Jupiter Ascending or Lost in Space for examples. In Star Wars, the ships ALWAYS meet each other on the same plain and when they mauver about, it's almost like they're impacted by gravity how they rock and sway back into alignment. Most people turn to B5 and it's Starfury for perfect capture of realism in a futuristic star-fighter; but even the Starfury had issues, chiefly being one shot virtually anywhere and your pilot is either disabled or dead. Another thing you missed on the Daedalus (Stargate) is that the whole forward section of the ship was like a submarine with it's vertical ICBM launchers (which kinda became redundant once they received Asguard technology); my point here though is if they kaboom those launchers, your crew is still relatively safe within the bridge or rear of the ship (that is if it doesn't just bleed out into space - again if there was anything left). This stuff is fun to discuss! :)

The main reason fighters arent used in the Star Trek universe is due to weapon accuracy and fire rate. There is an episode in TNG that shows this fact off very well. Basically, any military ship from any faction is able to not only hit their targets with 100% accuracy but hit a specific spot with 100% accuracy. This is normally used to disable ships instead of destroying them. However when firing at something as small as a fighter craft, even if it had shields that craft would just explode. Making them useless. However there is a concept from Halo that could be used in Star Trek, namely the launching of frigates from a larger craft that might work. Though not sure if a "Frigate Pod" would actually work here.

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.

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?

I enjoyed your take on the issue. well done sir. safe journey

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.

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.

Definitely, looking at how many real life carrier kills essentially came down to getting fuel and explosives on the hangar deck to start doing their things in a way contrary to design parameters, I can see the utility of hanging all that risk off from the main body of the ship.

For one thing, Modularity. It just makes better sense that everything on your ship is Modular. If it needs to be sacrificed for the survival of the of the ship it can be, and can always be replaced, think of Homeworld Cataclysm if they didn't jettison the hanger bay then they all would have been part of the Beast.

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.

BSG 2003 is my favourite show of all time and I've watched SG1, Atlantis and Universe through three times, I hear you man

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.

love this video. and you're so right. this makes so much sense!

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

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.

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

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.

With most weapons in Star Wars being turbolasers there wouldn't be a huge ammo stack present in the Venator's hangar, plus the long linear doors, shich can be opened section by section wouldn't allow for a massive explosion in the hangar.

/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.

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.

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

Sir, couple of things to add to your thinkin' for this fun video, perhaps: Space objects tend towards being modular, we would almost certainly see that in space ships. Ammo would likely be energy based or nuclear, so exploding is not a thing to consider. Fuel would most likely again be modular in storage, for safety, so... SciFi has pilots for smaller attack fighters, this is almost certainly not possible to still be needed in a future tech situation, surely drones. Shoot me a hello some time, love to geek out on this. Thanks for the video.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I loved the SGC ships they just look cool

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.

In star was I would name the "Quasar Fire-class cruiser-carrier" as an example.

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 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.

i play a lot of Space Engineers and I'm in the process of making a Battle-Carrier and I was stressing out on making hangars inside of it but the ship was getting ridiculously big. NEVER thought of using Flight/Hangar Pods........BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD! but with a better idea

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Warning, essay follows. The reason has more to do with treaties then anything else, as most carriers were built on top of battleships. Combining types were originally desired, but the treaties made it undesirable. Treaties during ww2 often used the size of the largest guns to determine the class of the ship, for conforming to the treaty. This was to stop navies from putting one or two 10" guns on a tiny ship and call it a patrol boat. Navies were limited on the number of ships with certain classes of guns to keep a navy from building a massive number of battleships. But this allowed navies to break from the temptation and take the big guns off the converted ships and not force the carrier to be subservient to the battleship or cruiser it was attached to; which is what would have happened, and many of the battles in the pacific would have turned out differently. Likely with the carrier being dropped because it performed poorly because it wasn't used correctly, or at least, efficiently. Here's the core problem. In order for a terrestrial carrier to launch or receive fixed wing aircraft, they currently need 49knots of wind going down the flight deck. This is most often achieved by turning into the wind and, if necessary, adjusting the carriers speed. This is counter to a gun based ships needs. The tactic is old, steam to within firing range, turn, and broadside. Not very good for airops. On to hangars. The reason modern carriers have long flat decks is for the launch and recovery phases. What was super structure on converted ships has given way to a structure more fitting the needs of a carrier and providing it stowage for aircraft and other gear (like motorwhale boats). Looking at moving the carrier into the future there are a few considerations: launch, recovery, stowage, maintenance, fuel, ordinance, and squadron/airwing crew. Launch: you do not need a forward facing launch as you do not need to have wind down the deck. Recovery: while it is not necessary for recovery to be linked to launch, for efficient flight ops of combat craft, you want a designated place (or more) for your craft to land that will not impede launches. Stowage: while it may be required that all combat craft be sortied, this is not always the case, and there will always be craft that are not mission capable that are undergoing maintenance. While having hanger bays close to launch and recovery areas, you do want them out of the way of craft being cycled from recovery to launch. Not that you do not have to provixe enough hanger space for every craft. Even in low tempo ops, there will be two craft that ate ready to launch immediately, and another two ready to go if the first two need backup (if your building for a culture that has a pref for more craft in a flight adjust the numbers). As long as one recovery area is open, or easily cleared, the path between recovery and launch can be used to stow waiting craft. Maintenance: having hanger bays sorted, the only requirement left here is space for on shift ground crews and their gear. Fuel and ordinance: in the past, fuel was stored just below the flight deck. This wasn't just a fire hazard, it created ship instabilities. Since the started designing carriers from the keel up, they have allocated space in the lower hull to stow fuel. Ordinance has always been stowed at hanger deck or lower levels until it's ready to be loaded. Ordinance use is planned to the round for the guns, only the ordinance needed for the current sortie is delivered to the launch areas. There is no ordinance just laying around the deck. Once that sortie launches, the ordinance for the next sortie is prepped for the when the sortie is ready to be armed, then it's transported up. Crew: in most navies, the people that crew the squadrons are not a part of the ships crew, they belong to the squadron. So when the squadron disembarks after a cruise, their crew does as well. I think a US carrier has around 1500 crew from the squadrons when the leave on a cruise. Whatever ship or station they are assigned to, the squadron uses the ship or stations facilities, primarily supply. Like food service, parts supplies, and others. So some squadron crew are temporarily assigned to these areas to help the ship or station provide for the squadrons needs. But the ship needs to be fitted with enough berthing to account for all of the squadrons personnel. These often tend to be less desirable area when the squadrons are aboard, like below the flight deck. The ship also needs to have enough stowage for supplies for the squadrons. Can you do this with attached bays? Sure, and theres other benefits. If a bay can be removed in a few days or a week, they are modular and can be replaced. Need a mardet? Switch them out for marine modules. Interdiction? Put on a customs package. But their temporary nature is also a problem. There is a higher risk that these modules can separate during combat maneuvers, or from combat damage, or just because of a sustems malfunction [wndblows has updated your systems. Your system will now cycle to a neutral condition, shut down, and reboot. This could take from 5m to 5h]. The one problem I have is that, in most cases, there is one entry and one exit (bsg does a good job imho in solving this), if there's a problem there's no way to get ready to launch craft over to the other module. I personally prefer fly through hangers, you fly into a receiving bay near the front, land, are moved to a check and rearm station, if you pass the check and are scheduled for the next sortie, you get placed on hold for launch, and you launch near the aft of the ship. All of this is internal for fleet carriers. The entry to the hanger is forward, but facing to the sides at an angle. My reason is that a carrier does not engage, the squadrons do. So it sets outside of weapons range a acts as flight control and battle space control. Heavy hitters in the fleet move forward to engage while the squadron do their thing. In a scenario like this, it is better to provide as small a target as possible, so the carrier faces the heaviest or central mass of the enemy. Since the squadrons are its weapon system, protecting its abiloty to recover, rearm, and laych craft is paramount. That's my carrier 101 presentation. Now, about those tiny hangers you dislike. They have their purpose. 5he enterprise does not conduct extended combet operations using just their shuttlecraft, in fact, house shuttkes (the futures version of motorwhale boats) in one or more of these small hangers is actually a good way to do it. The enterprises hanger is a bit big, but, it was designed by an airforce jockey so what do you expect.

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

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.

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

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

Love the idea of Star Trek, where the shuttle bay is inline with the ships main power plant - you know, the thing that when it goes wrong, destroys the whole ship, and everything around it.

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.

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

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.

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.

Cold War carrier sailor here. Engine room Mechanic, not an Airdale, so my pov may mean squat. Catamaran Aircraft carrier, would more than double the available flight deck space. But, all that unused volume between the hulls would be waisted opportunity. Filling it in with a few decks would likely increase the displacement to a point that the draft would be too deep for any harbor. For space vessels the aircraft hanger/flight deck sponsons really do seem to make a lot of practical sense.

Just found this channel. Good video!

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

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

That HIMARS paint goes hard