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Originally Posted by Manchurian Taikonaut
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A the winner is our "StarTrek Shuttlepods". Built like a brick I've never understood how these things fly, I suppose they have some tractor beam, anti-grav technobabble to overcome that stuff. Apparently it can fly at Mach 8 but it still looks like it would fall like a rock
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Actually, one of the reasons I like the shuttlecraft design (for a science fiction show) is that there is no pretending that they work by aerodynamics. Anti-gravity is part of Star Trek canon. In the original series, there were several times they used a device labeled as an "anti-grav" to move things, often with those things shown to be floating in air. See here:
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Antigrav
The Star Fury is a bigger issue to me, as human technology in the B5 universe didn't seem to have gravity control at that time. I was also a bit surprised at the new B5 DVD showing aircars going all over New York.
Regarding design, if you don't need lift for an atmospheric craft, you might still want to shape it to minimize resistance, or to give it control surfaces. Then again, if you have force fields you can shape on the fly, even that may not be important.