Flattops Er, Motherships in space!

In fact, the Korean word for "aircraft carrier" translates more-or-less to "mother ship", which is apt.

Link at Instapundit led me to Transterrestrial Musings - Aircraft Carriers In Space, which led me to Aircraft Carriers in Spac at Foreign Policy, of all places.

I always considered the space battles depicted in Babylon 5 to be pretty good; I liked the way that Tron Sheridan would call for a firing solution on the bad guy ship. I had--still have--problems with the physics of "space fighters", but read the comments in the article at Transterrestrial Musings above:  It wasn't shown, but some thought went into "How would this work for real?"

Realistically, of course, the way you'd launch space fighters from a space ship would be...  Well, maybe ask back in a decade or three.  B5's USS Macon-esque pivoting launch rack--were I a writer for the show I would have had to work a reference to "Trapeze three in launch bay 4 is down for maintenance" into at least one show--seems more likely than a runway in vacuum, which would need either some sort of force field, or an elaborate Viper-size airlock system.

I also liked the "breeching pods" used for boarding operations.  (Could have done without the Ruger Mini 14-armed Narn auxiliaries, though...)