How many shuttles did Voyager have?

[Prax]

If they had such a system surely they could use it to say replace tthe photon torpedeos as we are told they have no way of replacing them we can deduce that the ship doesn't have such a facility.

Maybe they didn't have the ability to replicate all of the components for a photon torpedo on say...day 47, but surely after 5 years, hundreds of planets, dozens of friendly, advanced civilizations, and all the experience of maintaining self sufficiency without Starfleet around, they could.

They ran out of their initial supply of photon torpedoes sometime in season 5. By this point we've seen them:
build the Delta Flyer(and we got to watch how it was built and where it was built), create alternative torpedoes, and trade with weapons dealers.

And surely massive Starships aren't sent out on extended missions with only food replicators, or without spare parts. Ships would need these whether they're near Federation space or not.

 

[Timo]

It's amusing how the ENT writers went to sometimes ridiculous lengths to ensure that the two precious, irreplaceable shuttlepods of the hero ship never got lost. It would be less plausible for Archer's team to be able to build spare shuttles than for Janeway's...

...Or would it? Archer would sail out without anything approaching replicators, with the knowledge that nearest help from fellow Earthlings was months away in the very best case. And he would be relying heavily on those shuttles, running them ragged on missions where Janeway would take the transporter. It would actually make more sense for Archer to carry spares for building six extra shuttles than for Janeway to do so.

And it's not as if he would suffer from a shortage of space for the components - the mere 80 people must have been rattling inside that saucer that was bigger than Kirk's yet had a much denser network of corridors and cabins to establish the percentage of habitable, i.e. free, space.

But Archer sailed out on short notice, on a supposed milk run, and then stayed in deep space for two years straight. Janeway... Well, she scrambled, too. But probably not in a wholly unprepared and unprovisioned ship, as Voyager was due a shakedown cruise, and those seem to be pretty extensive in the 24th century (the E-E spent a full year out there).

Aaaanyhow. Ships of yore were always building new boats from scratch. And aircraft carriers of yore carried parts for building their own replacement planes on short notice. Starfleet can probably only do better.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MacLeod]

It's amusing how the ENT writers went to sometimes ridiculous lengths to ensure that the two precious, irreplaceable shuttlepods of the hero ship never got lost. It would be less plausible for Archer's team to be able to build spare shuttles than for Janeway's...

...Or would it? Archer would sail out without anything approaching replicators, with the knowledge that nearest help from fellow Earthlings was months away in the very best case. And he would be relying heavily on those shuttles, running them ragged on missions where Janeway would take the transporter. It would actually make more sense for Archer to carry spares for building six extra shuttles than for Janeway to do so.

And it's not as if he would suffer from a shortage of space for the components - the mere 80 people must have been rattling inside that saucer that was bigger than Kirk's yet had a much denser network of corridors and cabins to establish the percentage of habitable, i.e. free, space.

But Archer sailed out on short notice, on a supposed milk run, and then stayed in deep space for two years straight. Janeway... Well, she scrambled, too. But probably not in a wholly unprepared and unprovisioned ship, as Voyager was due a shakedown cruise, and those seem to be pretty extensive in the 24th century (the E-E spent a full year out there).

Aaaanyhow. Ships of yore were always building new boats from scratch. And aircraft carriers of yore carried parts for building their own replacement planes on short notice. Starfleet can probably only do better.

Timo Saloniemi

To draw on your ship an anology, lets take a smaller ship like a frigate which has a hanger for say a helicopter, does it carry enough spare parts to be able to build a replacement helicopter?

Compared against a bigger vessel like an Aircraft Carrier.

 

[Tenacity]

I doubt an aircraft carrier could built a complete helicopter with what they have on board.

 

[Timo]

Oh, but carriers up till the end of WWII definitely could build planes out of spares. Heck, cruisers with catapults sometimes could, too, and those are much better analogies to starships than modern frigates are. Overall, we usually get the better analogies to what Starfleet is or does, the farther back in history we go.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tenacity]

Oh, but carriers up till the end of WWII definitely could build planes out of spares.

Still no, They might have been able to cannibalize multiple aircraft of major assemblies and put together a complete aircraft.

But a carrier would lack the ability to construct a new aircraft from scratch using just parts off the shelf. The carrier's spares wouldn't include things like air-frames, wing spars, the skeleton of the aircraft. Nor would the carrier possess the construction jigs (the forms) a factory would have.

If a aircraft was damaged in battle to the point it required a new airframe, it probably would have been parked out of the way pending return to port, or pushed over the side.

 

[Timo]

Well, still yes - for the first generation of carriers, in WWI and immediately thereafter, basically all operators opted to ship three or more aircraftfuls of disassembled interchangeable parts that could be put together to create casualty replacements to operational losses (in addition to being used more conventionally, such as replacing lost wings or landing struts), zero cannibalizing required. The Japanese continued the practice virtually to the end of WWII. Quite a bit of tooling would be required to put together these "1:1 scale kits", basically the same as at the far end of the usual assembly line for the things.

Whether an old carrier could carve an all-new engine block or not would depend. She certainly wasn't intended to, but she was intended to create new pipes and seals and valves and even cylinders if required. In absurdly dire straits (see Starfleet Standard Operations Manual, Chapter 1: Routinely Encountered Situations), the tooling might be adaptable to creating something more grandiose.

Beyond that, it's a rat race: a Nimitz today could (and perhaps would?) have the sort of industrial lathes and drills that would allow her to manufacture new Sopwith Pups at will, although doing a Tomcat would be beyond them. Can an Intrepid do a Type 12? I don't see why not.

Timo Saloniemi