posted
Could the Galileo II have warp drive? And the pods mentioned in the following dialogue, are these warp pods?
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.
posted
Difficult to say based on this dialogue alone. The Companion thingy could have been approaching an impulse-speed shuttle at warp speed and slowed down at the last moment.
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?
posted
I believe we saw several TNG episodes with shuttles that are in warp. One that comes to mind is Samaritan Snare where Picard and Wesley travel from the Enterprise to Starbase 212. At the end of the episode the Enterprise-D had to travel at high warp to reach the starbase in time to save Picard.
posted
The Enterprise travelled at warp, sure, but I'm pretty sure the shuttle was at Impulse the whole time.
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?
------------------ "I am in one of those rare periods of life where I am convinced I am a sexy devil."- Simon "Sol System" Sizer
posted
I personally don't think that the shuttle could have had warp drive. If it were designed in the 24th century, it probably could have. But, in the 23rd century they were still not advanced enough to equip an auxillary craft with warp drive.
But, again, i could be wrong. Scotty might have pulled off another engineering marvel and given the shuttle warp capibility.
posted
In "Samaritan Snare", the Enterprise did warp towards the starbase at the end - but it had warped AWAY from it in the beginning of the episode, and had then altered course and accelerated to respond to the distress call of the Pakleds.
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...
posted
My impression from "Metamorphosis" is that the shuttle definitely does have warp drive. They were on a longer warp trip of maybe a few days. It just couldn't be a journey inside a solar system on impulse drive. Unless the Enterprise had a very very urgent mission, they could have easily dropped the four people at their destination and left again with at most an hour delay or so. But if the mission was very urgent, why the hell were Kirk, Spock and McCoy, the three most important officers, on the shuttle?
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"?
------------------ "Species 5618, human. Warp-capable, origin grid 325, physiology inefficient, below average cranium capacity, minimum redundant systems, limited regenerative abilities." Ex Astris Scientia
posted
In "Metamorphosis", Kirk could have used an impulse-only shuttle for the in-system part of a long interstellar journey in order to protect his ship from those dangerous asteroids (where the shuttle eventually did "crash", with some assistance from the Companion). He would have insisted on commanding the shuttle if ferrying Commissioner Hetford was his primary mission and if the Enterprise could not perform all parts of this mission safely, due to the asteroids.
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.
posted
Years ago, a lot of people would have argued that the TOS shuttles were NOT warp capable. This certainly was true in 1975 when the very first Star Trek Technical Manual was published by Ballantine, as authored by Franz Joseph. The schematic of the shuttle labeled the nacelles as "propulsion boosters."
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.
posted
They had 5-Speed Manual trannies with a 4-Cyclinder Dual Overhead Cam, CD player, moon roof, dual exhausts, mag wheels, and pin striping. Remote start was optional.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
