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"Life Lines" added a new designation to our classification scheme for Starfleet ships. The new designation is waste transfer barges. There are hundreds of these barges and are maintained by Mark 1 EMHs. (Dr. Zimmerman mentioned 675 Mark 1 EMH, 675 may be the lowest, highest, or median of the number of barges.) So, canonically, we have cargo drones, cruisers, destroyers (?), escorts, explorers, fighters, freighters, frigates, scouts, shuttles, surveyors, transports, tugs, and waste transfer barges.
In the episode previous, "Fury", there is mention of a Class 1 Shuttlecraft. So, the canonical classification is as follow-Class F, Class S, Class 1, Class 2, and Class 6.
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I'd wager that these waste barges are 100% automated vessels, with no humanoids or other biological lifeforms aboard. It would then make sense to use former EMHs for cleaning duties and other such menial jobs, since they would be so much more practical than adding a human cremember and all the life support required to keep him working.
Aboard a ship that has biological crew, it makes no sense to dedicate an artificial intelligence to do something a crewmember or a simple machine controlled by a crewmember can do.
------------------ Remember December '59 The howling wind and the driving rain, Remember the gallant men who drowned On the lifeboat, Mona was her name.
------------------ If you want to get your soul to heaven, trust in me. Don't judge or question. You are broken now, but faith can heal you. Just do everything I tell you to do. Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow. Let me lay my holy hand upon you. -Tool, "Opiate" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prakesh's Star Trek Site
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I wouold hope that Starfleet would at least remove the EMH's adaptive sub-routines. I mean if the hologram can grow and learn and develop, pretty soon he's going to become aware that he's a slave on a waste ship. They're just asking for trouble. However, he was just a robot with nothing resembling a consciousness, it'd be o.k.
------------------ "A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx
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