posted
Sorry I haven't replied yet, been taking care of a sick wife...
Anyway, I had forgotten about the E-B MSD, but my graphic seems to fit with that fairly well.
Dat, can you tell me when they mentioned lifeboats on the NX-01?
The design of the lifeboat in my sketch is based mostly on the one shown in Mr. Scott's Guide, with a couple of elements from the Galaxy class one thrown in.
posted
I rather think the distinguishing feature of the ASRVs is that they are called ASRVs. That is, all these things are collectively known as escape pods. Starfleet or the manufacturer just applies some yucky NASA-lingo on them in order to appear cool, and as a side effect, one can sometimes tell the different escape pod models apart by their acronyms, or guess the vintage of the designation.
I tend to agree that all Earth starships throughout history have had lifeboats, for reasons of tradition if not for anything else - pragmatic logic will have nothing to do with this. True, a lifepod on a NX class vessel should be classified as a torture device if its only function is to prolong the quite inevitable death of the crew in inhumanly cramped conditions. But that argument won't sway Starfleet from installing the devices anyway.
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: The Sovereign class uses yet another escape pod design, which (like many things Eaves) makes little sense, being supposedly upside down...
Ah, but only the lifeboats on the upper hull are upside down. The lucky crewmembers get to escape in the lower saucer boats...dizziness averted!
posted
If the lifeboat has artificail gravity, there'd only me a moment of vertigo when gettin into it.
You'd think a ship as large as a Soverign would have used it's shuttles when evacuating the ship: the survivors would still need transportation (and possibly armed air support) on whatever planet they're stranded on.
Mabye the shutlebay was Borg-ified when we saw the evac in First Contact...
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I'm pretty sure Picard said they couldn't get to a shuttle bay at some point during the movie. Also, the thing with using shuttles is that, in theory, the require preflight operations. They have engines that have to be dealt with correctly, etc. If you've got a minute before the big boom, you don't want to be dinking around. You want to jump into the pod, push a button, and be seeing the ship getting smaller a couple seconds later.
But, given time, you're right. Having some shuttles around would be handy.
posted
I had gotten the impression the difference between ASRVs and older lifeboats was that the ASRV was a fully autonomous spacecraft. It could maneuver under its own power, navigate, even return to the parent ship. The older lifeboats were more of an enclosed ejection seat. They might have some reaction control thrusters, but it's still a one-way trip.
As for heat shields, it sure looked to me like the boats in First Contact had them.
You're artwork's really nice, B.J., but I'm not going to go along with the idea that 23rd century ships didn't have any kind of lifeboat.
Marian
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Registered: Aug 2003
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