It doesn't matter what you want to happen here, it's what they physics of the situation dictates.
I just finished explaining to you AT LENGTH why that is not the case, as well as why the launch system as depicted in the show wouldn't actually behave that way. So I reiterate:
For star furies, the "outward" component is SIGNIFICANTLY greater than zero, as their launch system is a rotating leaver 5 to 7 meters long. With a centrifugal force of, say, 3m/s^2 at launch, it'll leave that launch arm with anything between 10 and 15m/s velocity before it even leaves the bay (depends on the friction force of the leaver and whether or not it is fitted with some sort of piston/ram or catapult thing).
So the question is, why would you want to design a system that DOES behave like a fictitious ideal mathematical equation when in the real world the "ideal" circumstance isn't likely to occur anyway? Is there a particular reason a tangential trajectory would be preferable to one with a larger "drop" angle like we actually see?
The launch mechanism in the show, if built in reality, would not allow the Starfuries to launch perpendicular to the station's axis as shown.
Yes it would. First of all, there is again the fact that the ships are being rotated into position on a drop arm 5 to 7 meters long and allowed to pick up speed before finally being released. Which means they're already moving away from the station at 10-15m/s by the time they actually exit the bay. This also assumes, of course, that they aren't actually firing their engines at the moment of launch, which as far as I can tell is not the case (IIRC, most of the time they exit the bay on a hard burn, which also explains why they're pivoted 90 degrees downward).
So call it 20/ms outward plus 40m/s tangential.
And bear in mind, all of these assume you're measuring these from a fixed point outside of the station and not co-rotating with it. From the station's perspective -- which is now a rotating coordinate system -- it's a completely different situation. Unless I completely slept through college trig (not saying I didn't) the angle to the axis of the station should actually be 60 degrees from a dead drop ALONE. Adding downward thrust of 20m/s would change that angle to 75 degrees.
They'd still be slung tangentially to the station
Someone watching FROM THE STATION wouldn't be able to tell. Whereas from an outside observer the starfury is moving away from the station at a constant velocity, the observer inside the bay sees the starfury simply "fall out" of the bay and then accelerate away from it on an angle. The starfury won't ACCELERATE along that tangent, so the open bay continues to face the retreating ship as it rotates away from it. So at least from the point of view of the LAUNCHER, this remains ideal, and the ship dropping out of the bay relatively fast means it gets clear of the station faster, possibly to intercept whatever might be threatening the station sooner.
As I said before, in reality the launch mechanism would be redesigned to be completely different, likely similar to a bomb release mechanism on a fighter jet. They'd could even "lower" the mechanism outside the launch bay before release. No need for a cradle that rotates, because this way, the Starfuries are already pointed in the direction of travel when they release.
Again, no, because from the LAUNCHER'S point of view, the starfury's direction of travel is still approximately DOWN.
Babylon 5's rotational velocity is somewhere between 20 and 40m/s in that part of the station. You drop a star fury from a bomb release, it continues to move on that same vector, at 20 to 40m/s;
to the guy standing in the bay, the starfury is accelerating downwards and out of the bay at a rate consistent with the normal acceleration due to centrifugal force. The starfury will not
accelerate along that tangential vector, so relative to the release mechanism the only vector is "down."
So to recap: I am asking why attempting to replicate "ideal" conditions is preferable in the first place. Having the ship gain MORE speed along an outward axis gets it off the station faster and probably avoids the prospect of accidental collisions and gets more separation from the station's hull, in addition to increasing the angle of rotation relative to the rotational axis. That the final vector for an outside observer is partially tangential doesn't matter so much to the STATION, whose coordinate system cannot recognize the tangential vector at all since it is, in fact, rotating in that same direction.
At most, you'd be off by maybe a degree or two from an ideal tangent vector without compensation, but certainly not 90.
From the rotating coordinate system, the initial vector is EXACTLY 90 degrees (downward). Coriolis effects build up as the station continues to rotate and the angle of movement begins to change; at a certain point (I think 180 degrees from the drop point) the starfury appears to be moving perpendicular to ground level in the opposite direction from its release point.
