The shuttle craft in which Kirk and Melendez give chase should have had no chance of catching up to the Enterprise, yet judging from the dialogue it doesn't sound like the Enterprise is zooming away quite as quickly as one might suppose. Given the speed advantage warp drive has over the sublight drives that the shuttles are assumed to have, they ought to have been long gone and out of sensor range before the shuttle could even leave orbit.

My question: Is it canon that TOS shuttles have no warp capability, or can we infer that they have limited warp ability? After all, Cochrane's Phoenix wasn't very big, and wasn't very fast, but even warp one or two would be enough to make a small shuttle quite useful. Besides, if they didn't have warp, then what are those nacelles for? They are as useful as a hood ornament would be on the Defiant.

--Baloo

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Of course, in "The Galileo Seven", the "fuel" that was dumped and ignited as a flare created two plumes streaming back from the nacelle structures.

What is the power source used for shuttles (TOS only) anyhow? They certainly don't seem to be powered by matter/antimatter reactors. The one in "The Menagerie" was powered by some sort of "ion" drive, or so the dialogue leads me to believe.

--Baloo

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The type 7 shuttle of early TNG clearly had what looked like warp nacelles, yet we never saw it at warp. In "Q Who?", Riker searches for a missing shuttle and a mention is made of covering the area a craft could cover at sublight speeds. But this may just have been a good place to start searching for a warp-capable ship, and Riker later expands the search area.

In "Samaritan Snare" and "Neutral Zone", the shuttle
makes long transits into or out of planetary systems at sublight speeds. But then again, we know that ships have to go to sublight on such transits ("BoBW"), and thus using a shuttle might not be any slower than using the ship itself. And shuttles could still have warp.

In "Skin of evil", the type 7 shuttle was clearly in interstellar transit, so it HAD to have warp drive.

In TNG, type 6 is never seen in interstellar transit or at warp AFAIK - or at least all its sublight transit trips can be interpreted as "out of the system and onto the ship waiting just outside system limits". In Voyager, types 6, 8 and 9 all make interstellar trips, although I think only the latter is really seen at warp.

The TOS shuttle makes interstellar transit in "Metamorphosis", just as TNS says - and arguably also in "Menagerie", unless SB 11 was in the outskirts of the Talosian system!

Timo Saloniemi

 

We hear very little about shuttle power sources. We know shuttles can be beamed around, which might indicate lack of antimatter if not for the fact that antimatter has been shown being transported around as well! We also hear in "The Sound of Her Voice" that only a warp-core-less craft can make a planetfall on that temporal-twist planet, and then one of the shuttles lands on the planet. But this might simply mean that a) the shuttles have warp cores but they can be removed more easily than the one on the Defiant or b) the Defiant couldn't land on a planet anyway.

I think it would be plausible to assume that a fusion-powered warp core is available in all the shuttles that have big nacelles, and this makes them capable of warp. The tiny shuttlepods with small nacelles might not be capable of warp, and the nacelles could be there only for erecting a mass-reducing subspace field.

As for the "fuel" coming from the nacelles in "The Galileo Seven"... Wouldn't this be the traditional location of drive plasma vents in all Starfleet designs? And wouldn't it make sense for a shuttle to have only one power system, shared by impulse and warp drives? Thus, the fuel venting system would probably also be shared. "Ion engines" might refer to the impulse nozzles only (those are the lit areas at the stern of the main body), or then to the power system which might be some exotic non-fusion device that somehow uses ions. Or it might even be a trade name for the engines made by Ion Powerescu & Sons Engine Company!

Timo Saloniemi
 

Do we have any convincing evidence that the shuttles have been used to travel further than a few light-days' distance? That would be good evidence that the shuttles may have been warp capable in TOS.

--Baloo

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Having a sublight shuttle only makes sense in situations in which the transporters can't be used, such as going down to a planet's surface during an ion storm. Let's say that a crew member wanted to visit a planet along the original Enterprise's route. He jumps in a shuttle and travels at sublight speed for several days. Wouldn't it be much faster if the Enterprise just made a short detour at warp speed to drop him off at the desired planet?

Regarding the objects that look like warp nacelles on shuttles: What else could they be? If you they were impulse engines why would you make them look exactly like minature warp nacelles? No other type of ship has outboard impulse engines.

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It makes sense to me that the "warp nacelles" on the TOS shuttlecraft are actually warp nacelles. Otherwise (as I said to someone else) they are as useful as hubcaps.

--Baloo

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Sounds like my Type XX and XXa shuttle. Since warp nacelles require (presumably) scarce resources, the type XXa has dummy nacelles that serve not only as the landing skids, but provide additional cargo storage (like baggage pods on fighter planes).

--Baloo

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Kira flies the standard type 18 shuttlepod, with gullwing doors. Sisko and Bashir fly a shuttle with an aft hatch, a feature available for the type 10 shuttle but impossible for type 18. So I'd bet Sisko was (dreaming of) flying a warp-capable type 10 in that ep.

Note that it's never said in "The Sound of Her Voice"
that the shuttlecraft is incapable of warp. It is only said that it does not have a warp core. This may mean

a) it isn't warp-capable
b) it is warp-capable but uses fusion or something
c) it is warp-capable and uses a M/AM warp core,
but O'Brien yanked the core out of the shuttle
for the duration of this mission.

Personally, I favor the latter.

Timo Saloniemi
 

The Type 18 is definitely warp capable, although officially otherwise stated. Ironically, the first and only episode where the pod was prominently featured ("The Search"), establishes the warp capability.

Maybe this issue is reconsidered in the future. The Fact Files, for instance, state that the Galaxy class saucer is capable of low warp speeds, probably to explain why Geordi issued the idiotical order to return the saucer to the next starbase in "Arsenal of Freedom". After all, a warp field does not necessarily require visible warp nacelles, but can be generated with the impulse drive coils.

My problem with the shuttlecraft, if they have warp drive, is rather the maximum warp speed. Warp 2 for a standard Type-6 or Type-7 shuttle and maybe a bit more for a runabout is as good as sublight, and I don't think the crew want to spend years on a shuttle travel to the neighbor planet.

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Ex Astris Scientia
 

And on the outward leg, Geordi hitchhiked on a Teldarian cruiser, which was said to have speeded up his journey - perhaps the original plan had been to hitchhike on a slower yet still warp-capable ship, or wait for transport aboard a scheduled Starfleet transport? IIRC, Geordi said the change of plans had shaved several days, not decades, off his journey, which means the original plan had to involve warp speeds as well.

As for "Arsenal of Freedom", I don't think Geordi's orders to have been idiotic. Surely the saucer would survive a journey lasting several years, subjective time (possibly decades if not centuries, "objective time"). The alternative to this was to stay and be slaughtered by a force that had already destroyed one starship and threatened to do so to the E-D as well.

The saucer could have later rendezvoused with starships for evacuation, and then be towed the rest of the way or scuttled. In any case, it had to be moved out of the Minosian system, so why not in the direction that would make later evacuation easiest?

I think it *would* be a good idea to give warp drive to every thingamabob that has obvious warp nacelles. Perhaps just warp one for the shuttlepods, though. Or "warp 0.8" a la ST:TMP, to differentiate from 0.8 c achieved through impulse drive (the former is Trek magic, the latter is a feat that should not be possible for something that is essentially a conventional rocket boosted by small amounts of magic tech).

Since I'm an advocate of upscaling the type 7 by some 25-30% from TNG TM figures, I'd also like to upgrade its speed to warp three or something. The rest of the shuttles ought to stay close to warp two, although I'm sure Voyager has already made its shuttles go warp 9.98 or something (outside "Threshold", that is!).

Whew! Perhaps I shouldn't carry on four threads in a single post?

Timo Saloniemi
 

The Voyager shuttles all seem to be significantly faster than TNG shuttles. If the shuttles were much slower than the ship, this would cause big problems especially on Voyager's mission. You couldn't drop a shuttle somewhere in a planetary system, then move the ship on with reasonable speed and let the shuttle catch up the distance after the mission is completed. Voyager would have to stand still each time a shuttle is on the way. Actually, it would be much better for the credibility of the plots (Voyager, not TNG) if the shuttles were much faster than the ship.

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"When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative - violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way."
A somewhat different Janeway in VOY: "Living Witness"
Ex Astris Scientia