The advantage of the rotating hangar is that it was near the center, so the centrifugal forces were minimal. It was a sort of microgravity environment. Since it never played that big a role in the series, we never saw the Starfury get reattached to its cradle.
In my imagining, the entire cradle could be on a rail system, so that manipulator arms in the bay could “catch” the fighter and place it in the cradle. The cradle makes sense also from a maintenance point of view.
As far as the 1970s BSG instruments go, I give up figuring them out, even though as a kid back then the buttons on the stick were super important. Now I am not even sure if the instruments shown in closeups actually match the dashboards the actors had in front of them, or if the directors just used stock aviation instrument closeups whenever they could. Science fiction was simply too expensive for network television, and corners were cut even during planning.
Turns out Minovsky particles have an anti-gravity effect as well as allowing for cheap fusion power and reducing radar ranges to the point that giant robots are a practical way to fight a war. Miraculous, really.
JMS talked about it at one point - the Starfuries return to the station by the central docking bay and land in cradles that they latch into, which then transport them back to the Cobra Bays.
THIS. One episode had our hero(es) being chased by several baddies, and they finally used “IM” to shoot backwards (slam on the brakes?) ending up behind the baddies, which were then easy pickings
As far as I remember the Vipers in the remake did that as well. I remember a scene where a pilot is accelerating away from Cylons, and she rotates the fighter to face behind her and fires her canon. Although how would that work, the relative muzzle velocity versus the velocity of the fighter in the opposite direction?
Some interesting geeking on the Viper instrument panel, but seeing Flight Corporal Rigel again after all these years made me all nostalgic cuz I wanted her job.
And I just found out that “According to Ron Moore, producer of the 2004 Battlestar Galactica series, the character of Petty Officer Anastasia Dualla was built out of Rigel, though with the name changed.” (from Rigel | Battlestar Galactica Wiki | Fandom)
I’m not saying it’s a great show, but it’s probably the high water mark of “realistic sf” on TV.
When it was broadcast, it was barely science fiction at all—it was just meant to be a cop show in space. Watching it now, it’s more like an alternate history story.
It’s exactly that, in fact. It was part of the wave of sci-fi in the 1970s that fell in love with the trope that sci-fi is cooler if it’s in the past instead of the future. As was Star Wars, though nobody except pedantic argumentative nerds ever remember that it’s also supposed to be a historical setting of sorts.
BSG went so far as to end the show in the 1980s present day (at the time) Earth. There was even a weird attempt at a sequel called Galactica 1980 where they kept going on that thread. It was cancelled very very quickly.
The reboot took a slightly different spin on this, landing on Earth during primitive human times, with some problematic images of “tribes” walking around hunting with spears while they landed their spaceships. Then there was some hamfisted suggestions of how they guided our evolution today and an even more hamfisted fast-forward to our current state of robotics and how we’re gonna create Cylons all over again.
