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Blue star fighter?

  • Thread starter **DONOTDELETE**
  • Start date
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**DONOTDELETE**

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Both on this forum, and on some of the game sites I have heard a reference to an ISA bluestar fighter, a white star class fighter. I got an impression that it appeared in SiL. Does anyone kmow where I could find a picture of one if there really was one on the show.

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Who do you Serve and Who do you Trust?
 
I had never caught that, I thought he was in a white star. Thanks.

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It seems a little big for a fighter.

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it goes by the name "smurf" and/or "bluestar" in some circles
tongue.gif


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### Hi, I'm a sig virus. Please add me to the end of your signature so I can take over the world.### - caught from Saps @ B5MG
 
The Blue Star was as much (maybe more) a Courier Boat as a fighter.
It was a small, extremely fast ship that could be used to carry important messages that no one wanted to risk over the Stellarcom where someone might tap the lines.

Sheridan was using his Blue Star as a personal runabout.



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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."
 
That makes much more sense. But I am still a little dissapointed that we never see the Rangers have their own fighters. It seems like a gap since the ISA put so much importance on developing a destroyer but have no mention of fighters. As we know the victory class destroyer has a large fighter capacity. So what did they plan on stocking the fighter bays with?

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minbari fighters perhaps?

although the launch system doesnt seem consistant with minbari ships...

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### Hi, I'm a sig virus. Please add me to the end of your signature so I can take over the world.### - caught from Saps @ B5MG
 
Well, since the Victory class was a joint project between Earth and Minbar, perhaps it was decided right away that the ships would be using Starfuries?

The Earth fighters seemed to be pretty decent, probably standing up better in comparison to other races' fighters than Earth's large ships compared to other races' large ships.

So perhaps if Earth wanted to contribute some tech as well as money, they figured that the fighters would be a good thing. Besides, the fighters for the Victory class ships could have been slightly modified to make them better.

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"There are things out there beyond imagination, and I have a rather healthy imagination." - G'Kar, B5: Rangers
Kribu's Lounge | kribu@ranger.b5lr.com | Kribu.net
 
Well, the Starfury is the spacegoing equivalent of a Bulldozer or Semi truck engine with a cockpit for the driver.
Everything else is a strap on package.
Weapons systems, for instance.

JMS said in one post that More Starfuries are used in Construction than as fighters.

The trick is that, unlike a Truck, a spacecraft's engine doesn't Have any sort of "transmission" to worry about.

All it cares about is the Mass it's moving.

So, a "bulldozer" engine that can move a few tons of Construction material is a Very Fast and manouverable system when it's carrying nothing but a light weight weapons package.

BTW, a Starfury working construction needs a Lot more flexibility in its manouvering abilities than any fighter would ever need, so there are very few "tradoffs" or disadvantages to using them as the base platform for fighters.

The most likely answer, though, is for each Fighter pilot to use whatever fighter craft is best suited to His/Her own race.

Humans prefer a Seated position for piloting.
Minbari seem to prefer a Prone position.

Other races will each have their own peculiarities.

They just need to practice working together so that each knows what to expect from the others and what responses they are expected to make to the Orders they are given.

I would imagine that they would all check out the various engine/fuel capabilities, decide which is most reliable, economic, etc. and standardize that part of the fighters.

Although you might see variations suited to different Missions.
Long range reconaissance and scouting.
Long range weapons platforms to take out planetary defense platforms.
Fast Attack platforms to disable a large ship's Weapons or Engines.
Hunter/Killer platforms to hunt Raiders.

Each of these would require a slightly Different configuration of weapons and electronics capabilities.
Plus, there would be some missions that might require Two people to operate all the goodies.



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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."
 
About ISA fighters. I was visiting a B5 tech page(not sure which one) and they mentioned something called the Hel'zha heavy fighter. They said it was basically a small whitestar. Anyone have info on that?

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Garibaldi: "Someone's trying to frame me for the explosion in the Cobra bay. They planted a schematic of the bay and a pouch of Centauri ducats in my quarters."
Londo: "Cen-tar-ri?"
Garibaldi: "Cen-tau-ri."
Londo: "Po-tay-to?"
Garibaldi: "Po-tah-to."
Londo: "To-may-to?"
Garibaldi: "To-mah-to."
Londo: "(and Garibaldi) Let's call the whole thing off!" Downbelow Sound Archive
 
the hel'zha were the whitestar prototypes, smaller and only room for one (these are the ones from "sorrows")... no canon sources that i know of list them as actually going into prodcution, so they were simply a testbed for crossing vorlon and minbari tech

bakana... all that stuff is nice to know, but the excalibur was fitted with t-bolts, which from their design were quite obviously designed only to be a fighter

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### Hi, I'm a sig virus. Please add me to the end of your signature so I can take over the world.### - caught from Saps @ B5MG
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Arrghman:
the hel'zha were the whitestar prototypes, smaller and only room for one (these are the ones from "sorrows")... no canon sources that i know of list them as actually going into prodcution, so they were simply a testbed for crossing vorlon and minbari tech
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Ok, I see. Thanks. So, are they related to Blue Stars because I've heard Blue Stars called prototype white stars also.

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Garibaldi: "Someone's trying to frame me for the explosion in the Cobra bay. They planted a schematic of the bay and a pouch of Centauri ducats in my quarters."
Londo: "Cen-tar-ri?"
Garibaldi: "Cen-tau-ri."
Londo: "Po-tay-to?"
Garibaldi: "Po-tah-to."
Londo: "To-may-to?"
Garibaldi: "To-mah-to."
Londo: "(and Garibaldi) Let's call the whole thing off!" Downbelow Sound Archive

[This message has been edited by Tigara (edited February 09, 2002).]
 
i dont think they're related to the smurf... the prototype fighters description of the insides made it seem very fighter like to me, and the smurf clearly had the same bridge as the WS (although im sure that was budget related, even so you could see room for a full crew)

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### Hi, I'm a sig virus. Please add me to the end of your signature so I can take over the world.### - caught from Saps @ B5MG
 
The BlueStar may be a courier ship and I do like that idea, but it is well armed and better armed than any singular fighter most likely (look at the guns, they are just scaled down WhiteStar guns).

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-- IceFire
 
Considering it was a joint venture, maybe many of the fighters were to be manned by Humans of EarthForce. I get the impression the ship would always have EF crew on board even if it was pure ISA Ranger ship. The White Star fleet all through the Shadow War and the Earth Civil War after had non-Anla'shok Minbari Worker and Religious caste manning the ships - and a few of those pesky B5 Humans.
wink.gif
We very rarely saw Rangers training to pilot fighter craft - the Ranger Lennier episodes are the only ones that come to mind. Most of Rangers do seem to imply they aren't often going to be on the front line in fighters - that they're either going to be behind the signs getting intelligence or maniupulating the enemy or crewing very powerful battleships. But that's just my take.

Of course ... what about those prototype White Star fighters in the book "To Dream in the City of Sorrows"? (And I won't go on any further about that since I hope that alone isn't a spoiler since I don't know how to make a spoiler box!)
tongue.gif


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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR> ...the excalibur was fitted with t-bolts, which from their design were quite obviously designed only to be a fighter<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You are missing the point: The T-Bolt Package was strapped on to the same basic Engine/Cockpit modules as all the Other variations on the Starfury.
A British Firm used to make a Car/Truck combo that used the same philosopy.
The Base package was a Frame, Drive Train, Driver seat, floorboards and 4 wheels. Everything else, including the windshield was an Option.
You could buy it and bolt on a Passenger car setup, a Pickup Truck bed, or use it "as is" as a flatbed farm truck hauling bales of hay and the like.

That is the way the Starfury was designed.
Deliberately.

Several engineers at NASA were so impressed that they formed a private group to build a REAL Starfury to be sold to NASA for eventual use on the Spacestation.
I haven't heard from them in a while, so I don't know how they are doing.
Their biggest hurdle was expected to be the Computer systems.
Not a one of them was willing to even consider trusting the pilot's life to anything that Micro$oft had Anything to do with.
They expected to have to design a custom OS for the Starfury.
Modular, Fault Tolerant, Redundant, Crash Proof, etc.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR> ... but it is well armed and better armed than any singular fighter most likely (look at the guns, they are just scaled down WhiteStar guns).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Do you think Delenn would have let Sheridan Have the thing as a personal toy if it Didn't have a very inpressive Weapons suite?
She prefered her husband Alive.
If he was going to insist on flying around by himself, she wanted him to be able to kick butt on any stray "muggers".



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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."
 
i'm not missing the point... the tbolt is a completely new design from the ground up, cockpit included. i'll show what i mean...

heres a starfury, model built by mark kane:
ea_starfury.jpg


here's a maintnance unit, model built by fabio passaro:
ea_maintfury.jpg


clearly the designs are very similar, in fact the cockpit is even identical. obviously this is a modular design, with components that can be interchanged etc as you have described.

but here's the tbolt, model by nick lee:
ea_thunderbolt.jpg


clearly the design here is completely independent from any other EA tech. the body is a smooth solid shape, the cockpit is inline and completely integrated into the fighter. theres no way thats going to be able to be interchanged with any other ship designs... and even if it were, the EA would be silly if they wanted to rebuild all their other craft to that standard. rather, the tbolt was designed purely as a fighter... to compete with the obviously superior minbari fighters

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### Hi, I'm a sig virus. Please add me to the end of your signature so I can take over the world.### - caught from Saps @ B5MG
 
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