DS9's USS Defiant

[James Wright]

Being one of Starfleet's smaller starships, how many shuttlecraft does the Defiant carry? After a shuttle completes a misson how is it recovered?
Just Curious and Thanks!

JDW

[JNG]

They apparently retrofitted a lil' shuttlebay into an area previously reserved for...other stuff. Doors on the bottom of Defiant open up to allow this shuttle, the Chaffee (designated as a Type-10 testbed shuttle in the DS9 Technical Manual) to fly out and do nothing interesting in its single appearance. Lookie at this here. At the intended scale, it's quite a big shuttle: dimensionally similar to the cargo shuttle from the TNG Technical Manual, but much heaver, which the text specifies is due to denser warp coil assemblies. Unfortunately, the illustrations all contradict each other, but it seems this model only existed as a CGI and nice pictures of that are available on the internets tubes.

There are also shuttlepods; where they are carried and ejected from the ship is less clear (evidently some sort of hatches), but the DS9 Technical Manual suggests she can carry up to four of the little guys (designated Type-18 shuttlepods in that book, and also with questionable illustrations).

Both types of craft carried by Defiant bear a cute and silly resemblance to the mothership, with their tucked-in nacelle structures and whatnot. I can only imagine they were engineered at the same time as Defiant as more robust takes on familiar Starfleet shuttles of the era. This is where Starfleet directed the efforts of that anti-Borg task force: tougher shuttlepods with little mini pulse phaser cannons. That'll show the menace of the Delta Quadrant who's boss.

[Kirk1980]

JNG.... hotlinking is bad apparently.

[JNG]

^

From Wikipedia:

Inline linking (also known as hotlinking, leeching, piggy-backing, direct linking, offsite image grabs and bandwidth theft) is the use of a linked object, often an image, from one site into a web page belonging to a second site. The second site is said to have an inline link to the site where the object is located.

Hotlinking is defined at EAS as

image posts that are not recognizable as coming from the EAS server

So if I'd made the image itself appear and it was being hosted by EAS, I think that would be hotlinking, where as this would seem to be a more regular kind of link (coldlink?), which one clicks to visit the image at EAS itself. Especially as EAS is a site for Trek fans, it is hard to imagine this falling into a category of undesired usage. Fortunately, EAS is hotlink-protected.

Here is a link to the full article anyway: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/ar...t-problems.htm While it is well worth a visit on its own merits, my linking to it purely for purposes of reference to one individual image of the many elements contained within would only cost EAS more bandwidth overall, would it not?

[James Wright]

How many shuttles does the Defiant carry?
Just the Chaffee!

JDW

[bryce]

JDW wrote:

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How many shuttles does the Defiant carry?
Just the Chaffee!

JDW

No, in addition to the Chaffee...

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Chaffee

It carries 4 "Type 18" shuttlepods...

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Type_18_shuttlepod

(From the way they were exited in "The Search" - the front swung open and beyond you could see a Defiant hallway - I always imagined that they each probably dropped from their own individual bays on the underside of the Defiant...)

[nx1701g]

^ I thought that was the back. In the 'dream sequence' they were rescued and I thought it was the aft that opened to let them out.

[JNG]

The model has no rear hatch, though...it has gullwing-type doors instead. So...hmm. It was all a dream!

[GodThingFormerly]

DS9 illustrator Doug Drexler posted a concept sketch of the Defiant's shuttle bay at the bottom of this page. I have absolutely no idea if it was ever actually used in the series or not.

TGT

[Timo]

(From the way they were exited in "The Search" - the front swung open and beyond you could see a Defiant hallway - I always imagined that they each probably dropped from their own individual bays on the underside of the Defiant...)

As already commented, this was indeed the rear of the craft. Since the Type 18 pods don't have rear doors, but gullwings, we might just as well decide that Sisko and Bashir were "escaping" in the Chaffee, which does have a rear hatch.

In real-world terms, both Type 18 and the mystery interior of Sisko and Bashir's escape craft were reuses of the TNG shuttlepod interior. Then again, so were many, many other Starfleet craft interiors... So we might assign just about any external identity to this interior.

Timo Saloniemi

[jamestyler]

The God Thing wrote:

---

DS9 illustrator Doug Drexler posted a concept sketch of the Defiant's shuttle bay at the bottom of this page. I have absolutely no idea if it was ever actually used in the series or not.

TGT

I'm sure I'd seen it on the same up at the link above with the shot of the shuttle leaving Defiant. But theres a 90% chance I imagined it as it'd be an expensive piece to build for the brief shot I remember.

[JNG]

Timo wrote:

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As already commented, this was indeed the rear of the craft. Since the Type 18 pods don't have rear doors, but gullwings, we might just as well decide that Sisko and Bashir were "escaping" in the Chaffee, which does have a rear hatch.

The problem there would be that the doors through which Chaffee was seen to exit hadn't been added yet. Instead there was a thingamajigy in the middle of where the doors would later be, which can be seen pretty clearly in this shot:

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/ar...fiant-keel.jpg

I believe said thingamajigy served as a tractor beam emitter several times, and then later a change was made so there were doors down there for a shuttlebay inside. (CGI sure makes stuff like that easier.) The DS9 TM seems quite insistent that this was a retrofitted thing, so before that she only had the shuttlepods and their accompanying mystery hatches.

Does anyone recall if we ever specifically see the rear hatch get associated with that Type-18 shuttlepod? Like in any of the Kira scenes? Because otherwise, it was only in their Dominion-induced mental projection (and, regrettably, a DS9 TM picture) where those Type-18s have a rear hatch. Since Defiant had just arrived at the station recently, it is believable that they were not really familiar with its auxiliary craft of all things and were not rated on those designs. Their brains could have just filled in the Type-15-like interior--which, as Timo points out, is sure a common appearance for Nextgen-era Trek small craft

Because the little model has no phaser strips, but the DS9 TM states it has phasers and it would be surprising anyhow for the shuttlepods that go with the combat-oriented ship to be unarmed, it appears that the Type-18 does have some baby versions of the pulse phaser cannons from the Defiant. I can't figure out if they are the turret-looking thing with two forward-facing barrels in it (the most obvious candidate) or the insets in the nacelles, which look and are positioned similarly to the ones on Defiant and are thus also a candidate.

[Timo]

The problem there would be that the doors through which Chaffee was seen to exit hadn't been added yet.

True. But the Chaffee in this interpretation wouldn't be too big to fit through one of the other hatches or would-be hatches on the ventral hull...

Does anyone recall if we ever specifically see the rear hatch get associated with that Type-18 shuttlepod?

No, the Kira/Odo scenes are shot with tight focus - the only thing we see are the Okudagrams covering the insides of the gullwing doors, as they had done ever since the shuttlepod interior was used for the Maquis craft in "The Maquis II".

The shuttlepod prop had always featured both the side doors and a removable aft wall, though, making it easy to film the various stories, and to create the aft hatch for this episode.

...the Type-18 does have some baby versions of the pulse phaser cannons from the Defiant. I can't figure out if they are the turret-looking thing with two forward-facing barrels in it (the most obvious candidate) or the insets in the nacelles, which look and are positioned similarly to the ones on Defiant and are thus also a candidate.

I'd argue for the twin ball turrets that look similar to those on TOS movie era starships, really... IIRC, there are three pairs of those: one asymmetrically on the nose, and two atop the engine cowlings.

Timo Saloniemi

[James Wright]

Nobody has explained how shuttles are recovered aboard the Defiant!?

JDW

[Praetor]

IIRC, according to the DS9TM, those two small shuttlebays have a slide-out 'drawer' type landing platform for deployment and retrieval. There are two pods per bay, with each bay having a maintenance hangar where one can be stowed while the other is launched.