The Problem With Enterprise's Shuttles...
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- Опубликовано: 10 сен 2024
- Today we take in-depth look at the various shuttlecraft that make up the Enterprise Ds coupious complement of auxilary and daughter craft. From the Iconic top of the line Type 7 Shuttlecraft. To the Humble Type 15 shuttlepods. we analyse each in how it serves and supports the overall operations of the Enterprise D in its Missions of Exploration, and ask why it had such a variety of the humble little ships?
Reminder: Enterprise D delivered DS9's initial runabout and Federation shuttle complement. Without depleting the ship's complement.
At what point did they start having vehicle replicators? Then it becomes a matter of...well, matter...and antimatter
@@adcraziness1501 before Voyager launched
@adcraziness1501 they actually have industrial replicators, which they use to make the parts, that they then assemble by hand into the shuttle. They don't replicate the vehicles wholesale, just the parts.
Similar to 3d printing, you print the individual parts and then you can assemble the object you want. You can't print the final product, just the individual parts.
@@adcraziness1501 The USS Protostar is the first ship shown with one that I am aware of.
Welcome to shuttle operations, we have a saying here; transporters maybe quicker but at least a shuttle doesn't arguably kill you.
Unless it crashes 😂
Transporter psychosis might be rare, but there’s no such thing as shuttle psychosis.
We don't talk about the potential world altering consequences of a machine that ends and resurrects you in 30 seconds.
This comments sounds like something out of a Steve Shives video. He should do one about flight operation on a Galaxy class.
@@nlald Claustrophobia
There. Are. Four. Shuttles.
I have to admit, that at the end, I did indeed see 5 shuttles.
FOUR! THERE ARE FOUR! THERE ARE….. FOUR SHUTTLES….!
Four hundred?
Clever reference to Madred.
@@RoniChihuahua Easy there, Berman. Voyager is over.
A great deeper dive to demonstrate that the Ent-D wasn't just bridge officers pushing buttons, getting immediate answers, and spouting technobabble.
Ambassador wasn't the first to have two shuttle bays. Miranda class had two.
The Constellation is also older than the Ambassador and has like 7.
In TNG Galaxy child you can see a model of a constitution class ship with cutouts around the saucer section. Theories are that they put the model kit together incorrectly and left cuts out or that they are shuttle bays to make a variant but we don't know if every model was an actual ship.
@@rowbi1211 Oddly enough the Excelsior class has the least room for standard shuttlecrafts.
@@rowbi1211I think some of them are cargo bays but that doesn't take away from your point
🎉🎉 15:37 @rowbi1211 😅
This is super cool, cause now, we're moving away from the idea of the Enterprise as a battleship, or an aircraft carrier, to an international airport, serving the entire "galaxy" with how much goes on. When your put mind to it, Data's Day really does set the table for how *gigantic* and busy this ship really is. There's stuff going on at all hours, and dare I be so bold, Wesley may have been right when he said "it'd be hard to get bored on this ship."
Also, I finally understand why there were two shuttle bays at the back! Ones for the little pods! Sokath, his eyes opened!!!
Whoever thought it was a battleship or aircraft carrier? Ever since I was a kid the Enterprise D was always seen as a flagship for diplomatic missions and scientific research. So it was always seen as a luxury ship to show off for the federation. More like a cruise ship with canons and sensors.
@@TheMysteryDriver there's lots of people who in fandom consider the role of a Galaxy to be akin to a battleship. It all depends on one's interpretation
@@TheMysteryDriver Starfleet classifies its ships not by combat role, but by _peacetime_ role. The Galaxy, like the Constitution, Excelsior, and Ambassador before it, Nebula alongside it, and even Sovereign after it, is classified as an explorer. The Oberth and its Nova replacement are classified as short-range planetary survey vessels. Runabouts are short-range personnel transports. The Steamrunner is an engineering vessel specializing in demolitions work. Sabers are mostly used as police ships, patrolling the space lanes for pirates and acting as first responders to any distress calls.
Starfleet isn't stupid, however. Every single one of their starships is _also_ a warship with a specific role. When war breaks out, they all move into their wartime roles. The explorers become the mainstay of Starfleet, the frontline cruisers and battleships. The Miranda was a light cruiser, the Constitution and Nebula heavy cruisers, the Excelsior a battlecruiser, the Ambassador, Galaxy and Sovereign battleships. The Steamrunner becomes a long-range fire support cruiser lobbing a near-endless stream of photon and/or tricobalt torpedoes at whatever needs to die this particular second. The Oberth and Nova turn into picket ships; their sensor arrays, capable of incredibly detailed planetary surveys right down to microbial life _from orbit,_ allow them to spot threats before anyone else and scan them to identify weak points for the rest of the fleet to aim at. Runabouts join the Novas as picket ships and convoy escorts. Sabers act as destroyers, escorting the larger cruisers and capital ships.
The Galaxy was very much a cruise ship with guns and sensors. It wasn't just an explorer, it was a first contact specialist intended to showcase the best the Federation had to offer. Luxury, wealth, quality of life, medical care, protection.
Its wartime role, however, was that of a battleship. It is fscking _huge,_ and its phasers hit the hardest of any ship to date. There is a reason that Starfleet sent a Galaxy-class ship into Dominion space on a mission to rescue two children. There is a reason that Enterprise-D was frequently chosen for "show the flag" operations: It was showing off Starfleet's dedication to protecting these areas.
This complemented its peacetime role quite well. I have heard the Galaxy class described as a culture weapon, and the description fits quite well. The Federation has so much wealth that their battleships could also be small cities, with enough space for everyone to bring their families with them in untold luxury, and _still_ have room for thousands more people. All without compromising combat ability.
The Galaxy, as a first contact ship, represents more than just the Federation that sent it. It is a promise. A promise of protection, health care, quality of life, and untold wealth. And if you join us, all of that can be yours.
The point of all of this? The offer would not be complete unless the Galaxy were a battleship.
@@CiaranMaxwell they sent the Galaxy so we could see the "Enterprise" being blown up super easily
@@Relav1364 I mean if you didn't watch the show I guess
Mr Bean's car gave me a good chuckle. I always preferred the Type 6 it struck me as a very rugged and utilitarian look to it. To me the type 7 is a car and the type 6 is a small van
As the later shuttles were more in the style of the Type 6 (such as Voyager's shuttles) I suspect in-universe the Type 7 was something of a dead-end. Very pretty, but harder to maintain and/or repair, most likely.
I had a toy of the _Goddard_ , so a special place in my heart. But the Type 7 does look prettier.
If I had to theorize a reason in-universe why the Type 7s didn’t show up so much is perhaps they were more work to upkeep and/or overengineered, so they decided it was more efficient to use the older, but more efficient Type 6s
I figure they started with a full complement of 7s, but accidents required them to pick up whatever crap-mix of shuttles that various deep space repair docks had spare.
@@nathanielhill8156 perhaps a combination of both theories, maybe the ones they had left were just put in the storage, and they just kept going on 6s because why fix what ain’t broke
I feel like if they were writing the show today, part of the flight deck would be a fabrication facility, but only the older design could be replicated with fewer exotic materials, so we saw them more often as throwaway shuttles that they didn't mind sending off to other ships or planets with no expectations of return.
I think this can partly answer the question of why two different versions that do the same thing. Real world F15 vs F22. But someone realized the shiny new type 7 was pretty, it did not actually provide any real advantage over putting new tech in the old hull.
@@danamoore1788 yeah, that’s the line I was going down, since I imagine the Type 7s are probably higher maintenance and as we all know, newer technology is often full of design bugs, while the 6 does everything they need and requires less maintenance
my favorite shuttle will always be the type 6. i was given a type 6 shuttle toy as a kid and remember having so much fun with it.
👍👍👍
As the old saying goes, "your first live never dies".
The TOS Enterprise was my "first" Enterprise (I'm old, LOL) and she's still my favorite!
The memories you must've made playing with your first shuttle are probably the best memories. 👍
The _Goddard_ (for some reason on wheels) and the Galoob _Enterprise-D_ (with saucer separation!).
I like the explanation that the main saucer shuttlebay was for more day-to-day operations. It means that while it's important, it's also never plot-relevant. Anything exciting enough to be part of an episode is going to happen in one of the secondary bays.
That's just depressing, with a large shutlebay it could have easily had a series of episodes focusing on the day-to-day operations of the primary shuttlebay crews. It would have been interesting to see a Starfleet equivalent to the flight/maintenance crew of the Battlestar Galactica
@@andrewmalinowski6673sure. More below decks/lower decks type of episodes and series could show off all sorts of cool or interesting stuff going on.
Like make a whole series/season that each episode is the same event or series of events from different parts of the ship.
Timing of this is crazy been really into vr walkthroughs on the D especially shuttle bay.
You rule , I ALWAYS love Thursday nights
I still have the Enterprise blueprints in physical form.
Ditto. I really liked that VR Enterprise that got shut down by Paramount; the unfinished product is still pretty expansive and cool. I had a helluva time controlling the shuttles with my Vive wand though, lol. I spent some time wandering around that huge flight deck. Very cool.
In " Cause and Effect " they decompressed the main shuttlebay at the end to avoid the USS Bozeman but your right that we don't get to see inside. I really feel like a nerd now !
I always wondered who got sucked out I to space when they did that!
It was my understanding that there was always someone working in the shuttle bays. Performing daily maintenance, repairs, or whatever. Just like there's always someone on duty in the transporter rooms.
@@Estes705 I'd think the shuttlebay crew probably have emergency suits or something in case the force field ever goes down during operations. Although who knows, no one in starfleet ever wears so much as a surgical mask when exploring brand new planets so maybe they just don't give care that much.
@@gearandalthefirst7027they introduce the Bio filters in the transporters to filter out anything they might have breathed in , thought as some episodes it didn’t catch everything.
@@lasarith2 Doesn't help if they die before they get transported home. (And also yeah it seems not to work half the time) I get it's a compromise because it's really hard to get good facial acting through a mask but just funny to note
@@gearandalthefirst7027 it’s the same principle of Stargate in the beginning they had to translate every planets language then they just changed it to we sent another team to the planet before hand ( so in most of the cases the Enterprise wasn’t the first ones there ) to make it easier for audience and the episodes( they actually said this ) don’t want to waist half the episodes translating, (SG1) - in reality yeah they would wear some sort of protection above the bio filters .
I think there might be a couple reason they would have both the Type 6 and Type 7 shuttles on the Enterprise. One is like you've pointed out the Type 7 is the newest most advanced generation of shuttle and it's likely that they are more expensive (in raw material cost if nothing else) than the Type 6 which is likely a mature, reliable design. Two it's likely that the time is which TNG was set in a transition between shuttle generations This would be not unlike USN aviation during the Vietnam era. USN carriers carried everything from WWII vintage, propeller driven A-1 Skyraiders and S-2 Trackers to 50s era jets like the A-3 Skywarrior and A-4 Skyhawk; to late 50s early 60s supersonic jets like the F-8 Crusader to the latest cutting edge A-5 Vigilante, A-6 Intruder, A-7 Corsair and F-4 Phantom. The older types were still operated because while the were older they performed their jobs adequately, if not at the same level as the newer designs.
My guess is, a type six or it`s derivatives could be built from the ground up on-ship from replicated parts. It was harder to do that with a type seven, a type eight or runabout.
and then you have the pilots. even with all their pilot training and years of experience, training an old pilot on a new plane still requires training time. so your pilot is months away for learning how to operate the new plane. instead, if you keep the old planes too, you can keep the old pilots without a new training requirement.
then you have mechanics and support personel, who just know the old stuff, whereas they have to learn the ins and outs of the new stuff again. that might be the even more important part. because building a shiny new plane is one thing, keeping it operational for 20 years is something else.
Makes sense. Just because a new one comes out doesn’t mean you throw away all the old ones.
@@lebojay yeah and it takes time for the new model to completely displace the existing units. So if Type 7 was brand new at the time the show starts, there wouldn't be many in service yet.
Would make sense, but the effect of that would be backwards compared to the show. You'd see type 6's being replaced with 7's as the show went on, very similar to what you see going on carriers.
More likely, the type 7 was shiny and new, built for the Galaxy class, and it didn't catch on fleet wide for whatever reason (cost, maintenance, not fitting in older shuttle bays, less deck space efficient in the face of changing requirements, ect..) It would not be the first time a craft outlasted it's replacement. It's happened numerous times with aircraft, rifles, armored vehicles, ect...
If I remember correctly, in the TNG Technical Manual, they go into detail as to how the Enterprise goes to a general area, and the shuttles are sent out for a closer look. If they find something interesting, the ship shows up which reduces the risk to the ship as well as manages time. So your use of the image of a carrier is on point. If i had to guess an in show reason as to why we don't see the type 7s that often is because they're probably out on a scientific mission.
It would be so cool if in the final season of Lower Decks they would show the "Flight Deck" of a Galaxy Class Starship.
It would be so cool if in the final season of Lower Decks that it is revealed to be a comic book that Jake Sisko was writing and then dumps it in a trash can as he walks out of the room at a Comic Con.
A pity CGI wasn't really available when TNG was filmed, so we could actually see Shuttlebay 1 and the Mall.
So a little bit of it when they almost killed Frasier.
@@SiXiam And a launch in Best of Both Worlds.
Generations would have been the perfect opportunity to show all the areas we didn’t get to see in the show: cetacean operations, the big bay and mall, etc. but no they showed Astrometrics, a part of the ship we had already seen but now it’s a continuity-breaking huge spherical cgi chamber. Thanks generations, you really do belong among the worst trek movies.
@@russellharrell2747 I've done a rewrite, fixing some of the problems in Generations. But since it is the last of my TOS reboot, and I'm currently on S4 it will take about about 18 months to get there.
Thank God CGI wasn't there. We can admire the art of real craftsmanship instead of computer games trash.
One of the reasons the Akira class is my favorite is because it also has a huge fly through shuttle bay. I like to think if a show used it as a hero ship, they'd have a dedicated Flight Ops department and official flight deck like a carrier.
Akira is maybe my favorite class, I'd kill for a show set on one
My favourite class is the Manticore variant of the Chimera from _Star Trek Online_ . It'd also have been great to have had a series centered around Nog before Aaron passed. But I would accept a good enough recasting in his honour.
The Constellation class had multiple shuttle bays before the Ambassador class did.
It's even in the video at 17:14
yeah sorry forgot. i should have clarified by saying "ships with the Enterprise layout"
The Excelsior had at least 2 shuttle bays, and 2 pod bays.
@@DrewLSsix where?
The Miranda Class had two shuttle bays as well, unless it's just one large bay with two doors?
Something I find odd is how the Galaxy class didn't have any type-8 shuttlecraft, and it took until Voyager for them to be introduced.
Shuttlecrafts are indeed underrated in Trek, combined with the how massive the Galaxy class is, more exploration on them is neat.
You aren't really supposed to need them with all of the various cargo and people transporters they have on the ship.
@@fmlazar Transporters, logically speaking, require and insane amount of power to operate, probably significantly more to transport a can of beans than shipping 8 tons of beans shoved in the back of a shuttle.
Then Voyager said the type 8 aren't good enough for the Delta quadrant and built their own.
@@gearandalthefirst7027 Yes but the Luxury Cruiser has power to burn.
I suspect that type 8 and type 9 came about after feed back from Galaxy class crews. The Type 8 is basically an improved type 6 with faster speed and better systems. Where the type 9 I suspect replaced the type 7 by being a smaller but faster multi purpose shuttle.
I would imagine that the worker bees engines were probably sub light but powerful. We saw in Voyage a glimpse of warp engine maintenance, those worker bees would need to be able to easily maneuver while towing significantly more mass then they themselves are.
We know that at least one Runabout was assigned to the Enterprise D. It was the episode a bunch of Command staff were coming back to the Enterprise and found it rescuing a Romulan Warbird.
You should see just how pact in they can get aircraft into an Aircraft Carrier Hanger Bay. You can barely walk around them. In peace time they more than likely didn’t pack them in that tight on the Enterprise but fast forward to the Dominion War, and you can pack a lot of those fighters into Galaxies and Akiras.
I would expect the reason why u have 2 shuttle craft that about the same size that do the same thing is very simple and you answer it In your lead in….
The one shuttle is newer so likely more “expensive” so they don’t have as many of them so they still using the older ones to supplement while they make the new ones.
I think they did this with ships as well. They slowly build new ones and then retire ships once they are no longer needed
This could also explain why Picard gave Scotty that other shuttle. It is older and was a model that was nearing end of its lifetime; the nacels suggest that as well
Thoughts?
It's also likely that the Type 6 was cheaper to operate, which eventually led to Starfleet modernizing it into the Type 8 that Voyager used from time to time.
@@corrinestenman5683
It would be interesting to see the actual differences in the abilities and engine specs and I think that would explain a lot of the questions.
I doubt those specs exist for shuttles but I also think it is IMPOSSIBLE to answer without specs.
Sometimes the only answer to a question is another question which is unanswerable but the mental puzzle is still fun for this nerd 😂😂
The thing is... no navy, no force can replace all of its equipment immediately with new designs. The production of the new designs is still below the requirement _and_ a lot of the older equipment is going to be new, and thus would be a waste of resources to just toss out immediately. So... when the Type 7 is 'lost' the Federation probably sends whatever shuttle is available as a replacement... and that mostly means, the readily available Type 6.
@@aralornwolf3140 exactly what I was thinking, too. And at times even if a shuttle is just damaged or broken down, it'll be faster to swap it for a working shuttle from some starbase, remote outpost, etc. which on the fringes of Federation space are probably not going to have the newest shuttles yet.
Also one thing to consider on a under complement of shuttles. That's evacuation space. Some cots, basic furniture and false walls. Voila! Instant refugee barracks.
Given the number of shuttles reported in your count @18:05, that means they can easily accommodate between 350-550 personnel onboard the normal complement of shuttlecraft. Incase of emergency evacuation, getting a third to a half of the crew comfortably into shuttles before even needing to resort to escape pods is pretty good.
The Enterprise is a ship that is very *important*. It's a diplomatic type ship, ferrying dignitaries around, it's a place for conferences and negotiations to be held, that sort of thing. It has multiple, big shuttle bays to accommodate such dignitaries and their personal vessels. The Type 7 shuttlecraft is a luxury shuttle for ferrying ambassadors and the like around. The Type 6 is the one the ship actually uses for getting around, and the one they can just...give people, like they did with Scotty.
A ship will, when possible, have multiple sub-vessels for various given tasks. A big cargo shuttle, a little shuttle pod for quick trips down to a planet, let's say, a ship for actually going somewhere away from the main vessel. And the fancy one to impress a diplomat and his aides as they're ferried up to the Enterprise.
And then there's the later addition of Runabouts, to actually be sub-ships.
They gave Scotty one of the shuttles because they destroyed his ship, the Jenolen, to get the D out of the Death Star. Picard said so.
@sabrewolf4129 yes, but they could still just give it away.
0:20 immediately thinks Cetacean Ops
that makes me think: are there cetacean shuttles? sometimes you need to fly a whale.
@@robertheinrich2994 How would you move cetaceans around on a starship? I'd imagine it would be like moving the Guild Navigators around in Dune (1984 and 2000s miniseries).
Stagnation is also somewhat on display with the Enterprise-D itself. Yes, its warp drive is much better than the Ambassador. But its combat capability? Not much improvement at all. And it shows. The Galaxy class is woefully underpowered when it hits the fan. Remember: The D'Deridex was a panic response to the Ambassador class, the Galaxy's predecessor. Yet the Galaxy, a full generation of ship design newer than both, still only has one good option when faced with a hostile D'Deridex: Run.
A known hostile power had a ship that vastly outmatched the Federation ship that spurred its design, and Starfleet chose to _not fix this problem._ If the Romulan Star Empire had decided to forgo stability (something like 75% of the Romulan battleship population is busy maintaining order (read: suppressing rebellion) at any given time) and invade the Federation, Starfleet could not have stopped them. Both factions knew this. Yet Starfleet did nothing about it.
The Constitution pioneered phasers, marking a huge increase from Starfleet's previous laser weaponry.
The Excelsior massively increased their firepower and fire rate by powering the phasers from the warp core directly, instead of the Constitution's self-powered emitters. Its shields could no-sell a single photon torpedo. (This technology was backported to the Constitution, creating the TMP-era Enterprise. While not capable of fully blocking one photon torpedo like the Excelsior, it _could_ block a single shot from V'Ger.)
The Ambassador pioneered the phaser array, granting an unparalleled field of fire. Thanks to the phaser array's charging method, it could match the firepower of the Excelsior's phasers without drawing from main power. Its shields could tank an entire salvo from a Klingon battleship without entirely failing. Its single forward torpedo launcher was capable of burst fire, allowing it to match the fire rate of the Excelsior and Constitution Refit's dual torpedo launchers.
The Galaxy... had one continuous phaser array each dorsal and ventral along its saucer, compared to the Ambassador's separated three each. While this gave the Galaxy's phasers more than triple the punch of the Ambassador's (the saucer is much larger than the Ambassador's, remember), there is no new technology here. The Galaxy, in battle, is little more than a refit of the Ambassador, and not nearly on the same level as the Constitution Refit was to its original design.
It took the Borg to remind Starfleet that it isn't safe out there. Q introduced the Federation to the Borg, thus causing the Battle of Wolf 359. This catastrophic defeat spurred the panic development of new combat technologies and warship designs. Yes, _warship,_ not all-rounder exploration ships. This mindset of "Fuck, we need improve NOW to survive," shows in the names of the two warship classes that came out of this renewed innovation effort: the Sovereign and the Defiant. Translated: "Resistance is _not_ futile."
Without this panic-induced engineering revival, the Dominion would have entirely overrun the Federation. And the Feds were still slowly losing ground, even after the Dominion decided to dig in and start up their war machine logistics on this side of the wormhole rather than continue their advance. Starfleet just couldn't produce the anti-Borg ships fast enough. And the Galaxy, Starfleet's pinnacle ship class, was nearly useless.
The Galaxy class, believed by Starfleet to be a battleship, shows off the stagnation caused by the golden era of the Federation. Small improvements to existing technology, rather than any true innovation. Necessity is the mother of invention... and despite the signs (see the D'deridex above), there was no invention.
Edit: I missed a word.
Beyond what is mentioned here, my understanding is that shuttlecraft were also somewhat modular, meaning you could take pieces and parts and make new ones with relative ease. As such, some of that "empty space" abord the Enterprise D was literally just storage for those pieces and parts. If the need arose, they could put together several dozen more shuttles in a relatively short time frame.
15:30 One thing to think about: they are not really a post scarcity society, they don't have money and use replicators for food and good but their resources are not infinite. Making ships takes material, work, and energy, replicators require energy and existing matter to make things out of. That would explain why they keep using old shuttles and ships, it's cheaper than making new ones.
Another odd thing about shuttles and the shuttle bay is that there is scant security on them! How many times have shuttles been stolen from the various ships and stations in the Star Trek universe? And not even a security camera to see who it was.
Speaking of security, the Enterprise episode of the mirror universe where Captain Archer turns the gravity plating up to maximum to crush the Gorn made me think, "Why isn't this method used more often when they have intruders?" There should at least be an automatic security protocol where if the ship detects someone beaming in unauthorized they automatically get re-beamed into a holding cell. Oh well, I guess they have to be able to tell their story and we don't want to make it TOO realistic..
We know the Enterprise-D was equipped with at least one runabout, because we see several of the senior officers aboard one returning to the ship. But we only see basically a dining room aboard the runabout.
Another possibility is that the main shuttlebay was designed such that it can house fighters in time of war. Having the majority of them in the saucer makes sense because that allows them to defend the saucer if it's separated.
We did see shuttle Bay 1, in Cause and Effect that was the main shuttle bay door opening that moved the Enterprise out of the way of the incoming ship to avoid collision.
True but that's only a miniature we never got a full set
On the topic of shuttlebays 2 and 3, it's important to remember their doors are also simply smaller. That means they are smaller gaps in the pressure hull, which means loss of pressure in them is less severe for the overall ship. Remember that in "Cause and Effect," Riker's suggestion to dodge the USS Bozeman was to vent shuttlebay 1. Simply opening the door and decompressing the bay provided enough thrust to perform an emergency maneuver of the whole ship!
Thus, we have another great reason to have smaller shuttlebays. If the ship is in a situation where maintaining a shuttlebay's forcefield is not guaranteed, it's much safer to expose the smaller volume of bay 2 or 3 to the vacuum, than the massive flight deck of bay 1.
Much better than beaming around. Fly down to the dirt, or over to another ship and back. You're never getting me in a teleport booth.
Your thumbnails are getting way better
Venom is trialling multiple thumbnails per video. Which one did you see?
@@Mr_Sovikthe one that says all bling
17:40 How many shuttle craft did the Enterprise-D carry?... Not as many as Voyager, or at least, not as many as Voyager lost or destroyed.
Good hypotheses about the purpose of the shuttlecraft. They're definitely a bit of an enigma in-universe. It feels like you can almost read the script whenever you see one pop up on screen most of the time.
How many fighters could they hold? Also I can imagine some of the cargo bays could hold additional fighters, shuttles and drones in a pinch. Dominion war variants without all the luxuries installed into the ship could have made for massive spaces for even more fighter bays and the addition of spare parts, mountains of extra phaser banks, torpedos, power generation.
Hehehe mountains of phaser banks
By fighters, do you mean something like what Wesley supposedly flew in that disaster during First Duty, the Peregrine glass vessels, or the made up gryphon/valkyrie from Beta canon? Don’t think Trek actually has any fighters, unless they modify the small class 9’s.
They do. More or less beefed up Wesley ships. Memory Alpha has a write up of you want to dig in to it. @@whitewolf3051
They do. More or less beefed up Wesley ships. Memory Alpha has a write up of you want to dig in to it. @@whitewolf3051
I seem to remember that the Enterprise-D had an elevator to a lower storage area at the rear of the main hangar, at least in the Technical Manual. If anything, we see WAY fewer shuttles than it should have had, even without that. It could have had a literal swarm of shuttles coming and going at all times; that's how much hangar space it had.
One other thing to remember concerning the number of shuttle bays on the Enterprise-D was it could separate the saucer and engineering sections at will. When separated, the main shuttle bay was on the saucer section and shuttle bays 2 and 3 would be on the engineering section giving both parts the ability to launch and receive shuttles.
As an in-universe reason for having both the Type 7s and presumably older Type 6s (as opposed to the IRL of film production reasons), we see that shuttlecraft can have a fairly high attrition rate compared to the starships themselves.
So it's possible that Enterprise D was originally fitted out with mostly Type 7 shuttles but as they went further out in their mission, and shuttles were damaged (or destroyed), they needed replacements and the further afield starfleet facilities only had the older Type 6 shuttles available as the newer ones hadn't filtered out that far yet.
4:10 The weather started getting rough. The tiny ship was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Campbell would be lost. The Campbell would be lost.
4:15 a 3 hour tour, a 3 hour tour
We actually briefly see the large shuttle bay in “Cause and Affect”
One thing worth noting on the sensor network side, while we don't see them recovering them ever, there's no reason the Enterprise couldn't use probes for that and either bring them back into the bays, or use the transporter to bring them back. Potentially they could also replicate new ones as well much easier than shuttles.
Keep in mind the Galaxy Class was also future proofed to a degree. She had capacity to act as a colony ship, carry a starting population and equipment/supplies (in relative luxury no less) to a new world and then between transporters and shuttles offload and help set it up before moving on. Hell with the science suites I could see them going out to a sector with a bunch of potential settlement candidates, checking them all out and then letting the settlers decide which world is best.
I think there is also another reason that isn't often mentioned. In the event of an evacuation, you're going to need a way to collect/defend the escape pods. I my opinion there would be some crew, most likely from shuttle ops itself. Who's job or action station would be to take a shuttle instead of a pod.
The original ship was huge and in the 60's TV show we only saw about 5% of the entire ship. I love the original ship because I can relate to it, huge, like a massive aircraft carrier, but not too huge. I'm building the entire original ship interior and the more I get into the project, the more I realize the absolute size and majesty of the 1701 Enterprise.
Great video. I'll compliment it more in a sec but also: this has helped me articulate my view that the saucer section isn't a giant escape pod. It's a giant shuttlepod/portable spacestation. (Something that I think would make a great video topic btw.)
I like this video because it does what I really like in sci fi content, it made me think and consider something I hadn't before. I hadn't seen the shuttles quite like this and I thought this was a great explanation that was really satisfying.
My argument on why it connects to my thoughts on the saucer is that, as the show demonstrated several times, it's not very convincing that the Galaxy separates just for the sake of usingnthe saucer as a giant escape pod. There are several times in the show they should have used it that way the didn't, so that's a fair rebutal, but also it's clearly not *that* practical an option, generally speaking.
What makes about a billion times more sense is that the PR line to the families on the ship was the escape pod bit. The ACTUAL reason (and the reason Starfleet cares about separation when other fleets don't) is that you would use the saucer in the same way the shuttles are described here.
Mapping a nebula or a star system? Leave the saucer at the most interesting bit, have it send out its shuttles as described here and then have it do it's work slowly there, while, meanwhile, the stardrive warps around dropping off and picking up shuttles and/or doing it's own wider mapping.
Need to catalogue a new planet? Help a civilisation with a massive medical crisis? Drop off the saucer, it's bigger than most other starships sent for that purpose anyway! Then go off with the stardrive to fetch something else, check the surrounding area (or just do the same thing in the next system/planet along).
I do also buy the modularity argument. Lord knows Starfleet loves modularity! That can mean mission specific saucers, true, although it seems like 90% of the time a ship uses it's "base" saucer that belongs to it specifically but, sure, there can be specialist saucers just like Nebula/Miranda has mission pods (and I think the Oberth would make way more sense if it's underslung bit is also mission specific pods). However... the other option that could exist in addition to just mission specific saucers as the modularity is: a middle ground between modularity and the "giant shuttlepod" (I say shuttlepod as the saucer can't warp) where having saucers that are small scale portable space stations (that therefore fit on a Nebula or Galaxy stardrive) and so can be dropped off somewhere before the stardrive goes back and picks up it's base saucer. You could also imagine it would be very tempting to build tactical saucers, like those some people speculate were used in the dominion war, and scatter them about the federation to act as defense platforms within an individual star system 99% of the time... BUT with the ability to move them around as needed/they can be used as the saucer of a full ship in a large scale combat situation. Say, for example, you wanted to be prepared after the Cardassian border wars juuuuuuuuust in case the Cardassians suddenly kick off again.
I think the whole point of the Nebula/Galaxy line having these detachable, mutually compatible, saucers (if we're trying to make a sensible in universe reason!) is:
-When they're doing deep space exploration as per their initial mission goals: the detachable saucer is supposed to function like shuttles as described in this video. Drop it off, have it, the stardrive and the shuttles act as a mini fleet doing system cataloguing or whatever.
-Then, stage two, as time moves on and you've had time to build more and more of these platforms (and presumably are starting on their replacements for the deep space exploration part): do the same thing to them as was done to the Excellsior and Mirandas, they become the backbone of operations within the federation as part of a unified, holistic system that can be flexibly redeployed on the fly.
Obviously Borg/Dominion war then break everything and previous plans and strategies go out the window. I would have loved to have seen the Galaxy/Nebula line used like this in recent Trek though. Its little details like that that, sure, mostly happened due to production constraints in the past but, made the show feel grounded and have weight. I think that's more valuable than is commonly realised! It's similar to how in Lord of the Rings they painted the skirting boards of Edoras. Basically never going to be seen. Did it anyway. Why? Those tiny way background touches give a world weight, they make it feel lived in. It's a really important part of storytelling!
Also, last side note: I'm pretty confident that, just like the Miranda actually has more internal volume than the Constitution, I think the Nebula probably has more internal volume than the Galaxy but I think you can still make the Galaxy the "top of the line" ship but just saying that the more lower internal volume is counterbalanced by that wider external spacing that is somehow more efficient? and the taller neck gives room for a more powerful warm core? Then just say that that lets it have greater power output for longer without frying everyone with radiation or something! Then the Nebula can be the not quite as powerful per se, but very flexible with the mission pod variant, a lá Miranda, and the Galaxy and still be the more powerful Excellsor equivalent. (Even though the Excellsior does have more internal volume than the Miranda and the Galaxy doesn't have more than the Nebula.) Also works for why a Constitution might still be considered, at least in some ways, superior to a Miranda for the same reasons.
Plus, you could have fun with the Odyssey and Verity classes (I can't remember if Verity is the class or ship name, sorry!) being developed with those larger deflector dishes because that's the only way Starfleet can do transwarp or slipstream at that time. That, ironically, relegates the nominally more advanced borg busters to regular warp speeds, due to smaller deflectors. That would give the old Galaxy and Nebula ships one last chance to jet off into the unknown and do what they were supposed to do: shuttle around saucer sections to far off reaches of space in order to establish new outputs and explore new regions. The Odyssey class then feels like a natural response to that scenario/situation.
I don't know why I gave a million word essay here as a youtube comment. Sorry. 😛 Please take it as a compliment to the original video and how much I enjoyed it/was grateful that it let me experience sci fi in that "thinking through interesting problems" way again. I don't like ragging on nu Trek because people are just horrible to the writers and actors in a way I *really * feel uncomfortable with ...BUT I really do miss Trek thinking in ways more like this video. That's home for me, it's what I'd love to see again!
Episodes with shuttles where a treat, you have to question the why the send though a wormhole pod to that gamma (oops I mean Delta)
I think you answered the question several times, 'production reasons'. It's why we never saw the main shuttle bay or other ship facilities as it would have been too expensive to produce. There's even a report that the only reason Picard walks through engineering in the pilot was that if they hadn't built it for the pilot, it would never have been built. We never had an explanation as to why we only ever saw them use a runabout once or the Captain's yacht.
Can I say something? You mentioned shuttle warp speeds in this, and I just find it so ridiculous that any shuttle ever wasn't supposed to have warp speed, save for maybe the ones that we only see going ship to ship, ship to station, or ship to surface. Like, the idea that they used to take a shuttle to a distant planet or starbase without warp, is ludicrous when it always would have been magnitudes faster to just warp the ship there, drop them off, and then warp the ship off to wherever it needed to go. Not to mention we see a TOS shuttle keeping up with the Enterprise at warp as early as The Menagerie. It's why I don't have an issue with DIS and the like giving older shuttles warp speeds. I think whoever decided that they shouldn't have warp, despite very obvious warp-style nacelles, just didn't understand how big space really is.
End of rant. Sorry. Great video btw.
Edit: lol hadn't actually gotten that far and you ranted the exact same thing. Great minds.
Not many people realize that there are reasons why TNG ships grow in size. From so called Phase 2 Starfleet start utilizing large numbers of drones (and for reminder term actually originate from TOS Star Trek). Ships were basically a vast chambers filled by robots and equipment. With suspended decks inside it. Though conventional deck layout did fallow outside surface of the ship. Mostly due to access to windows. This new layout heavily promoted increase in size seen in that period. Though technically TMP ships also get similar upgrades, which was initially tested on USS Jefferies. Giving name for the famous tubes. What BTW did give crew access to crucial components inside drone chambers. Though of course refitted ships were far less efficient.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” they still have those older shuttles, so they still use them. What send most appliances and vehicles to the scrap yards today is scarcity of parts due to replacements not being produced anymore, but in the Star Trek universe, they can replicate almost any part they need. So unless a shuttle gets damaged beyond a level it’d make sense to invest time in repairing, replicate new or upgraded parts and put it back in service. Could also be a form factor thing like the captains yacht, in that between the countless ships and stations the federation alone uses to the infinite amount of allied designs, keeping various sizes of craft would be essential for docking with other ships which a majority of are smaller than the D. The pods would easily fit in a one car garage, which would also serve them flying around a dense city.
You forgot about the Captain's Yacht.
Can't see a lot of logistical problems to support a wide variety of shuttle types when industrial replicators exist. As long as you have the schematics you can just whip up new parts. I think your take on them already having a load of the older types on hand is correct, saving the newer shuttles for higher end missions, diplomatic events, and any other 'gotta look good' stuff.
Didn't the _Galaxy X_ refits have increased hangar capacity in order to act as a fighter carrier as well?
In fact, Galaxy class ships that survived to the post Dominion war period could have gotten a power up by re-equipping with Runabouts, Delta Flyer copies, and no doubt other new designs that were a bit smaller than those two craft.
But exploring a new region with the ability to deploy a fleet of Runabouts would give a new lease of life to the Galaxy class.
Why are there different shuttlecraft on the same ship ? Well, that is how vehicle fleets are managed. The ship gets an initial batch of "type 6", then the aging or lost shuttlecraft are replaced by newer vehicles, for instance a "type 7".
It's also possible that each ship gets only 1 more advanced and more expensive "type 7". The captain and possibly some other high-ranking officers will probably have their own shuttlecraft.
The Galaxy class is a massive ship its supposed to cater to pretty much all categories exploration scientific diplomatic etc thus your gonna need a variety of shuttles to assist all eventualities.
Also the large amount of families/schoolkids needing to leave for holidays or school trips
Filling shuttle bays with shuttles fills Venom Geek with DETERMINATION.
Now that you mention it, a lost Galaxy class on a battlestar galatica style journey back home would be kinda epic, what with that big lovely shuttle bay.
I think it might be in _Encounter at Farpoint_ that its mentioned that the Enterprise D has an evacuation capacity of X. This would be what the majority of shuttles would be fore because you simply couldn't use the transporters alone, there are not enough of them and they require too much power. Now the evacuation limit isn't evacuating the ship, it's evacuating colonies and starbases in emergencies. Similarly cargo shuttles would probably be for moving medical supplies around because remember that it's been said more than once that certain things cannot be moved by the transporter.
Could have used them as a massive firepower booster if they ever actually used carriers in Star Trek. Even the Akira, which is supposedly a carrier never uses them properly in the show.
What always gets me (beyond plot complications) why shuttles weren’t use in situations where the “mother” vessel’s systems were down? The transporters are down, use a shuttle to go get them or use the transporter on the shuttle.
The Shuttles also work as escape system, the Enterprise-D being as big as it is, needs loads of shuttles in case of an evacuation. Like there are escape pods and such, but those won't get you very far and are probably reserved for the most dire emergencies. Having a civilian presence, there are probably cases where you would want to evacuate those and then go into battle or something like that. Or cases where the ship is just incapacitated and not about to explode. Of course there is the saucer separation as well, but that seems a little overkill most of the time. Thinking about it, that could also explain the huge shuttle bay in the saucer section, as the saucer has no warp drive. So it's basically dead in the water, if it's on its own. And in order to get people anywhere from there, you would need lots of shuttles, if you don't want to wait around for another ship to pick you up.
Your comments about using shuttles to expand operations on big missions made me think. It is a shame we never saw a 2part episode where the saucer was deployed at a planet as a temporary starbase and the main hull was on a different mission. So often they set up stories where the Enterprise wasn't able to be in two places at once, but realistically they had a ship that could.
The federation has had plenty of need in the past to have militarized ships, so I can imagine that playing into the design that if the federation see itself needing to convert some explorer vessels or made combat ready in some way, having a large hanger for fighter craft makes a lot of sense too. I’m not sure if Sisko’s Defiant would fit in the flight desk of the D, but it seems like anything smaller would
I'm going to guess that the Federation treats shuttles the way a trucking company treats trailers or containers. The Enterprise D may have just been given a smattering of whatever was currently maintained and ready, which included both new and old shuttles. Just like truckers much prefer to pull newer trailers, the newer and more well-mantained shuttles were kept and the crappy ones were given to people for transfer back and forth (in lore). We really see the same shuttles because it would be an unnecessary expense to rename them outside lore.
I mean, if the Enterprise is going to be shuffling these shuttles anyway, doesn't make sense to deliver all new shuttles (with exception for the maintenance shuttles) with the enterprise. Throw a few ragged shuttles in there too, especially if it becomes necessary to throw it into a space worm while doing a warp core breach.
If I could change one thing about the kind of story telling TNG produced it would be to include more of the world building and operational scale that we mostly have to infer must have existed. A lot of episodes really could be transplanted onto a runabout without much difference. The Enterprise is HUGE but we never really got to feel like it is. Money and time were the main culprits so I'm understanding about it but it would have been nice to see the city in the stars a little bit more. I think this sentiment is what I like about Lower Decks . Both the episode and the series.
In the 6 vs 7 and why we see more 6s in later seasons, they had supply issues. When a galaxy class stubs their toe, they don't run all the way back to Sol / Sector 001. When they loose a type 7, they're going to get resupplied by the spare inventory at whatever deep space outpost they are closest to.
Whenever they ask DS8 for a replacement shuttle, DS8 isn't going to give them their brand new type 7, they are going to offload their old type 6.
Type 9A looks like a precursor to the Runabout
Don't forget that in the event of a saucer separation both sections can still launch and recover shuttles.
Would be cool to see what kind of shuttles the original Enterprise had aside from the Galileo we usually see.
there were a couple of alternative designs all of which were more areonautical and thus harder to build
The case for keeping older or rather slightly less advanced technology shuttles makes sense for exploration. You need something capable of taking a few knocks. Sacrificing comfort, speed, fuel efficiency etc in favor of being repairable in the field.
always a delight pan loving your roleplays keep it!
I think it's likely the Ent-D operates in a similar way to Carriers do today, with a portion of its small craft complement always deployed and ready to scout/sense/intercept.
The D could probably support major solat system surveys and construction efforts as well as service other starships practically like a starbase, so it would make sense to have such a large flight deck
Good take on the SB 2 and 3. We even see them used in this way in the show, e.g. carrying special equipment or probes
in one episode of voyager, a crewman said, that they build new shuttles on a need-base. my guess is, that the older, simpler and smaller shuttlecraft are simpler to manufacture. they would still be modernized versions, but easy to manufacture. the deltaflyer was of course a very capable system, and it took quite some resources to make it, twice.
just what you need if you are on your own.
so I would be surprised, if the enterprise-D could not construct those shuttles, especially the type 15, that is not even warp capable and doesn't require the production of a warp core.
Interesting to think of the Runabouts as 'large' when they were always pretty small in comparison to DS9 and even the Defiant.
My explanation for the type 6 and 7 shuttles is that the 7 is a brand new model and is in operational testing so there are only a couple on board
The majority of the operational crafts on the ship are older models
Similar things happened historically on aircraft carriers during transitions between aircraft models
I believe that the Galaxy-class would be great for planetary evacuations.
It can use shuttles or transporters to bring aboard civilians, house a colony's worth of them and provide schooling so any children don't develop a learning gap.
I always glad to see your videos pop up in my feed.
6:07 Way I figure? It's likely something to do with availability. If we assume that not all ports are up to the latest standard (the type 7), and that it isn't seen as a huge priority for them to be because the gap between the 7 and the 6 isn't actually too wide, then it makes sense that a ship with as large a shuttle complement as a Galaxy-class would end up using both models to fill out the ranks. After all, if the two craft are comparable, there wouldn't be huge incentive to upgrade then quickly, fleetwide.
Edit: lol hey great minds again.
Has everyone forgotten the1701D was equipped with replicators? Any vehicles needed could be created fairly quickly, so there wouldnt need to be many on display unless greater numbers were needed to deal with a specific situation. A vessel as big as Enterprise D was supposed to be better equipped than the previous 1701 iterations due to lessons learned over the service livespans of earlier versions.
Voyager had a seriously badass group of shuttles. You could blow them up & they just kept coming back!
My biggest issue with a shuttle is that they have warp capabilities. In the Enterprice itself you have a huge antimatter reactor and you need 10 people to controll it because it is a highly delicate machine. But in a shuttle all that stuff i somehow place in a 40 cm room at the heck of the ship and is fully automatic and maintainance free?
I think the importance of the empty flight deck is to receive shuttles from planetary, large ship and base evacuations where you might have a large number of short range vessels coming at you at once. I do wonder if the Galaxy-class flight deck can receive a Galaxy-class amount of life pods/life boats.
I imagine that Federation starships have the resources to assemble a certain number of additional shuttlecraft, as needed.
I always thought it silly to use those shuttles for anything but interplanetary travel or when you candidate use transporters. Starships and shuttlecraft would both usually be at sublight then anyway. Anything else and the far faster starship makes more sense. I think shuttles would have have to have toilets and be able to sustain no less than warp 5 for at least.a week, to make any sense for interstellar use. Warp 2 is just too slow.
If the Type 15 Shuttlepods had, say, tractor beams or an NX-01 style grappler, I could see them being something akin to cargo loaders or haulers. Tractor beaming cargo pods between ships or a starbase, or using a grappler to haul stuff from the surface of a planet/moon/whatever to the ship.
I always assumed that the Enterprise d had multiple shuttle bays because it can do a saucer separation. And I figure regulations demand that each independent ship have an auxiliary craft bay, ergo you need one for the secondary hull. I also assumed that the shuttle Bay is two and three were split and not another big door because I believe the top of the warp core would be poking up through the shuttle Bay if it was one big one but I'll have to consult the MSD to confirm that
My head cannon for the number of shuttlecrafts' is based on the primary mission of Starfleet. The ship comes into the star system and started investing. you need to get people down to the surface, or in orbits. You can't have your ship going from one place to another counting the hairs on the bald Faber beast. One shuttlecraft of a team can do that. Meanwhile another team could be in the ocean of the this world. The primary ship would be dispatched to areas where interesting things were discovered.
on the bottom of the saucer, opposite of the bridge, there is also the Captains Yacht. I dont think weve seen it on screen being used. But there must be some accompanying infrastructure for docking and boarding.
The one thing that i never understood is why weren't all shuttles in TOS and TNG warp capable? They could have had it where they were limited to low warp (1-2) and have quite a few of the uses in the show make a lot more sense. Especially since even the fastest shuttles in Star Trek couldn't go much faster than 0.3 c when using their impulse engines. Which on a stellar scale is ridiculously slow. It also would have made incidents like Geordi's kidnapping a bit more interesting.
I figure they only had a few of the nicer Type 7s. The ship was probably supposed to have a full compliment but when the ship was finished they loaded up type 6s because that was what they had on hand. Then off they went to Farpoint Station. More than likely Geordi preferred the Type 6 and so kept it around even once more Type 7 were available.
I think here's such a glut of warp capable shuttlecraft as a means of both making the Enterprise D a mobile starbase but more importantly, to bring far flung Starfleet forward operating bases up to something like a tactical capacity- from all the shuttles bring new personnel to Farpoint Station (obviously Riker and Dr. Crusher didn't arrive together) or dropping off Runabouts at DS9.
In the post W357 Federation, rebuilding efforts would need a lot of small patrol craft to "show the flag" and prevent enemies like the Cardassians or Romulans from taking advantage at a moment of weakness.
They might have outfitted shuttles with false transponder signatures to fool enemy sensors into thinking a larger ship was somewhere that a shuttle was patrolling.
But something not really touched up on is the technology swap/uplift for new Federation members.
That's probably a ton of warp capable shuttles to ease new members into a faster pace of communication and commerce.
Warp speeds between two and six are extreme and might financially destabilize a planetary economy if not handled right.
I would like to see the other departments how they operate that we normally don't see.
I'm a huge fan of the 6's and 15's, I just feel like they would be the most common out there. The 15's as personal transport, a small car if you will, and the 6's as your bus, or executive transport.
I love them, I want one.
What about the small and sleek 9’s?
great video
Any Enterprise carries whatever shuttles are required by the Plot of the Day. Case in point: the "Aquashuttle" which appeared once and only once, when it was required, and was never mentioned again.
geek media - Hazmat Materiels are also Transported DIRECTLY to cargo bays w/ Containment fields .
less Volatile Materiels can be Directly Delivered the Galaxy class by stores hatches in the Stardrive spine .