Dialogue ("Metamorphoses")
Spock: Captain.
Kirk: Yeah.
Spock: Will you check your automatic scanner, please?
Kirk: That's odd. I've never seen anything like that before.
Spock: Nor have I. Heading directly toward us at warp speed.
Kirk: Staying right with us. Sensor readings, Mr. Spock.
Spock: Vaguely like a cloud of ionized hydrogen, but with strong erratic electrical impulses.
Kirk: We've got it.
Spock: Helm does not answer, Captain.
Kirk: Neither do the pods. Communications dead. Building power overload. Cut all power relays.
Spock: Cut, Captain.
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takeoffs are optional; landings are mandatory
The only case where TOS shuttle warp drive is really required by a plotline is "The Menagerie", where the Enterprise departs at warp and a Class F shuttle (externally and internally similar to Galileo II) almost catches up with it. Certainly the other TOS episodes featuring shuttles do not contradict the possibility that these shuttles have warp drive. And if TNG shuttles have it, why not TOS ones? (Then again, we never saw a TNG shuttle at warp, either...)
The pods serve an unknown function. We know the fuel dump valves are there, as we see in "The Galileo Seven", so probably either these pods store fuel, or then they consume it. Since they look like warp nacelles, I'd be happy with saying they ARE warp nacelles, but that's by no means certain. They sure aren't fancy landing gear, since the shuttles have dedicated pads for that purpose. Perhaps they are emergency flotation gear, though?
Timo Saloniemi
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-=/\=-
Captain Stark http://beam.to/readyroom
"The man on the top walks a lonely path. The chain of command is often a noose." Dr. Leonard McCoy --Obsession, Stardate: 3619.2
[This message has been edited by Captain Stark (edited December 14, 2000).]
Which does lead to a rather stupid point. Say the journey to the starbase was 9 hours at Impulse in the shuttle. Really, how long would it take the Enterprise to warp there? 5 seconds?
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"I am in one of those rare periods of life where I am convinced I am a sexy devil."- Simon "Sol System" Sizer
For warp launches
Or something..
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"There's no such thing as overkill when it comes to killing."
-Gaseous Anomaly, December 11, 2000
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Titan Fleet Yards - Harry Doddema's Star Trek Site
But, again, i could be wrong. Scotty might have pulled off another engineering marvel and given the shuttle warp capibility.
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Delta Flyer
The rationale for shuttle use in this episode was twofold. First, the Enterprise had a mission to perform and a starbase visit would have delayed it. Second, Picard wanted some privacy during his trip.
Would a five-second delay have mattered? Probably not. But there are plenty of star systems out there where warping is apparently impossible or at least highly dangerous. Even the mighty Borg dare not warp within Earth's system, and the Bajoran system seems to place some limitations to warping as well. It would then be logical to use shuttles in systems like this, instead of tying up the entire starship to a tedious multi-hour impulse run towards the target planet and then back.
And TOS might not have shown compact warp-capable craft of Federation design, but TAS sure did (in "Mudd's Passion" or "More Tribbles" or especially "The Slaver Weapon"). Of course, that's not considered canonical at the moment...
Timo Saloniemi
As for the TNG shuttles, even the shuttlepod (Type 15) must have warp drive. Geordi was on such a shuttle in open space, returning from a conference, when he was abducted in "The Mind's Eye". And didn't Data use a Type-15 shuttle to get to Lore's planet in "Descent"?
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"Species 5618, human. Warp-capable, origin grid 325, physiology inefficient, below average cranium capacity, minimum redundant systems, limited regenerative abilities."
Ex Astris Scientia
In "The Mind's Eye", Geordi could have been dropped off the E-D on the outskirts of the system for an impulse ride. The Romulans would have the gall to kidnap him straight from within a Fed-held star system. We do not know how LaForge planned to conduct his return trip (which was clearly interstellar), since he ended up hitchhiking on a warp freighter. Perhaps his original plan had been to wait for a Starfleet warpship that would have departed a bit later than the freighter he ended up taking? There's no clear evidence he intended to use the shuttlepod for the return trip.
And Data's trip in "Descent" need not have been interstellar, either. After all, he was being summoned by Lore, who had control of a Borg ship, and of a transwarp conduit that led straight into the target system. These could have delivered Data to his destination, after which the pod would have been abandoned for Picard to find, as part of Lore's plan of entrapment.
Timo Saloniemi
Given what we "know" about warp nacelles, they do not themselves seem to be very complex. It does not seem that the TOS shuttle nacelles are equipped with bussard collectors, but they certainly may contain the necessary warp coils and plasma injectors. The question then becomes, could the TOS shuttle have enough space for its own warp reactor?
I would have said no if it were not for backstory provided by "First Contact." If Zephram Cochrane can piece together a warp-capable ship with left-overs from World War III, it seems logical to assume that two hundred years later a shuttle could be outfitted with at least a limited warp drive. They certainly had small anti-matter containment systems in the TOS era, otherwise photon torpedoes would not have existed. TNG shuttles (some of them at least) appear to be almost as fast as starships, but the TOS shuttles were probably significantly slower than their parent vessels.
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Andrew
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"This is cooling, faster than I can..." Tori Amos "Cooling"
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I have been floated to this spot this hour
On a series of events
I cannot explain
--
Olivia Tremor Control
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Read chapters one and two of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! Read, read, read, read, read me now.