posted
I am working on an addition to "Ships Starfleet Never Built". It's a shuttle that's based on aerodynamic principles more than the ones seen in the series today, or even in TOS. I've posted the illustration before in the "Designs and Artwork" forum).
Can anyone answer the following question:
When did the "current" shuttle technology supercede the "aerospace plane" type of shuttle?
--Baloo
------------------ It is less important that you agree with me than it is for you to to understand what I'm saying.
posted
The likely timeline point would be the one where some innovation made wings unnecessary. Perhaps the development of compact impulse engines? The rocket used by Cochrane was rather nifty already, but still seemed to require lots of fuel/propellant. If Earth had something like the modern shuttles before the early 2100s, then colonization of Mars wouldn't have been delayed that much.
And in "Samaritan Snare" Picard compares an impulse journey aboard a type 7 shuttle to "22nd century interplanetary travel". He is likely to be referring to the fastest designs or "capital ships" of that era, or he would specify "22nd century shuttlecraft travel". So modern shuttles oughtn't come before the early 23rd century.
Perhaps the crucial point was the development of shields to generate aerodynamic shapes around unaerodynamic hulls? We don't know when shields first appeared, although apparently an early experiment was run aboard the Charybdis in 2037.
Personally, I'd put the Jeffries TOS shuttles and the Phase II shuttle aboard April's Enterprise, but not aboard Pike's. That's just IMHO, though, and I sure would like to have some factoids to back that up. Much depends of course on the timeline of transporter development, too.
posted
I wonder what the colour scheme of April's ship was compared to Pikes? - how long were each of their respective tours of duty aboard the Enterprise?
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The First One
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posted
Well, the post-refit 5 years is heavily conjectural. . . I'm assuming some fiction exists which is set during this period, but I've never seen any of it in the bookshops. . .
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Oh it's definately conjectural. It's the Phase 2 stuff that never happened. I only reason I'm inclined to say that it did is because it helps shore up the timeline alot. There's so much stuff that happened between movies 1 and 2, and 4 and 5 that we never got to see. A bunch of years passed between some of those movies.
posted
Yes, I suppose you're right Dax. That is what I meant although there was gap of maybe a few weeks or months between 4 and 5 (of course they couldn't do much with the Enterprise in pieces now could they :-) ).
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