How important is the shuttle?

[Timo]

I think we know the ENT shuttles are armed with plasma cannons (at least in the early seasons).

That'd make sense. The guns are fired fairly seldom: I only remember "Desert Crossing", where there's no dialogue on them.

From Season 3 onward, we saw them fire actual beams like the ship (it's entirely possible they received an upgrade just like the NX-01 did before going to the Expanse).

True. But when did we see the beams? Only in the Vulcan adventure of "Awakening"? In the dialogue of that episode, the weapons were explicitly referred to as "plasma cannons". They do appear more beamlike than in "Desert Crossing" or, say, the plasma cannon of the Horizon in her titular episode.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Rob]

One really sneaky use for a shuttle.
Just watched Star Trek XI again. I know it would've shortened the movie, but wouldn't it have been a good tactic for the Kelvin's shuttle to have one of those floaty bowlingballs full of antimatter that detonates when the Captain is killed?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

"It's kind of like asking why can't aircraft carriers be powered by the fighters they carry... "

I bet if you had a real-life warp-capable shuttle or runabout that you could power the lights and AC of a Nimitz-class carrier off of it.

Assuming that a Nimitz-class carrier can use warp plasma.

It sort of can. You could probably rig a hot gas exhaust pipe to the tailpipes of a couple of fighters and run it all the way down to the engine room to generate steam for the turbines. It would take a hell of a lot of jury-rigging (and some engineering that an aircraft carrier may or may not be capable of), but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. Alternatively, you could take the engines out of a couple of F/A-18s, hook em up to a transmission and then run them at full power to turn the drive shaft. U.S. Navy destroyers are powered by EXACTLY this setup, and rigging one to work on an aircraft carrier might give you a low level of propulsion until your aviation fuel runs out.

Of course, if all you need is some electrical power for the weapons and radars, that's even simpler; it might be sufficient to simply bypass the electrical systems of a half dozen planes and hook em up in parallel to the ship's own power grid. They do, after all, have to provide enough power to run their OWN radars...

Energy compatibility aside, there's also the issue that some systems have different input/output ratings. One system may draw more power from another than it can generate, while another may be overloaded from power it takes from another, IMO...

True, but that's just a question of engineering. You'd have to step up/step down the voltage in the rig, which means you'd really need to know exactly what you were doing. It's not something you could just dream up around the conference table saying "Two, maybe three hours... make it so."

 

[Timo]

wouldn't it have been a good tactic for the Kelvin's shuttle to have one of those floaty bowlingballs full of antimatter that detonates when the Captain is killed?

Yes.

Then again, perhaps those balls are photon torpedo warheads, and the Kelvin had none aboard so nothing like that could be rigged on short notice? Also, Nero might have scanned for such trickery.

However, when Pike did the same thing a quarter of a century later, Nero explicitly did not notice the ordnance that Olsen was packing. And Pike did have a torpedo-armed ship and no doubt could have spared a warhead or three.

you could take the engines out of a couple of F/A-18s, hook em up to a transmission and then run them at full power to turn the drive shaft.

The engines of the big helicopters would probably be better for that, what with having gearboxes already...

But rigging up something like this would probably take months, be extremely inefficient compared with the factory-built stuff, and be more vulnerable to enemy action than standard hardware. Should we see a trend here? An old sailing ship could rig all sorts of special tricks on fairly short notice (just go and see half a dozen sailing ship adventure movies), but WWI and Cold War ships would have progressively more difficulty coming up with something that would make a difference. Perhaps starships are utterly inflexible except when specifically built with flexibility and backups-to-backups in mind? That is, one could rig a shuttle to provide auxiliary power, or fire up a transporter control console with a hand phaser battery, but only if there were prebuilt sockets and carefully optimized "multimodal" power leads for those tricks.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Rob]

^^ Oh God, I can hear the Chief of the Boat now to all of the Electricians Mates:
"Okay... it's promotion test time. Here's the scenario: The ship's dead in the water and we need emergency power. We're going to line up all of the aircraft above and below deck and wire their generators together. The first one to figure out how to do it without blowing up the ship gets his Chief's stripe."

As for the floaty ball. In dialog it's said that it contained antimatter drained from the ship's engines specifically for this task. And on the Remastered version we see that it completely obliterated the planet's surface and created a shockwave that hit the ship in orbit. I'd say that it was a bit more powerful than a torpedo warhead. When your ship is in mortal danger it's time to think outside of the box.

 

[Deks]

True. But when did we see the beams? Only in the Vulcan adventure of "Awakening"? In the dialogue of that episode, the weapons were explicitly referred to as "plasma cannons". They do appear more beamlike than in "Desert Crossing" or, say, the plasma cannon of the Horizon in her titular episode.

Timo Saloniemi

It was in Season 3 episode when Mayweather, Reed, T'Pol and a Maco took a shuttle to infiltrate a sphere and retrieve data discs that contained information that subsequently allowed ENT to destroy the Spheres.
In that episode, the Maco, T'Pol and Reed were in EVA suits collecting the data discs and an automated system activated (the long extension arms).
The first one killed the Maco, and when the other one approached Reed and T'Pol, Mayweather fired several beams towards the arm in question.

Note that I haven't mentioned they changed the name of the weapons to phase cannons, merely that beams were fired instead of bolts.

As for plasma cannons being specifically mentioned... I think it was also in episode 'Shadows of P'Jem' when they were attacked in air and Archer ordered T'Pol to bring the plasma cannons online (Season 1).

 

[C.E. Evans]

"It's kind of like asking why can't aircraft carriers be powered by the fighters they carry... "

I bet if you had a real-life warp-capable shuttle or runabout that you could power the lights and AC of a Nimitz-class carrier off of it.

Assuming that a Nimitz-class carrier can use warp plasma.

It sort of can.

I don't think there are any aircraft carriers that can use warp plasma. Other less highly energetic sources, yeah, but I think electroplasma is something else entirely, IMO...

Energy compatibility aside, there's also the issue that some systems have different input/output ratings. One system may draw more power from another than it can generate, while another may be overloaded from power it takes from another, IMO...

True, but that's just a question of engineering. You'd have to step up/step down the voltage in the rig, which means you'd really need to know exactly what you were doing. It's not something you could just dream up around the conference table saying "Two, maybe three hours... make it so."

Exactly. You'd need both specialists and the technology to convert electroplasma into something that wouldn't crash the grid or perhaps even blow up the carrier (if the rig failed).

 

[T'Girl]

It's kind of like asking why can't aircraft carriers be powered by the fighters they carry...

This used to happen. Carrier captains during the second world war and in the years immediately following, when bring their ships along side a dock when tug boats weren't available, the captains would tie down the ship's propeller powered aircraft in multiple rows on the flight deck with pilots in the coxpits, different rows facing in different directions. they would run the aircraft's engines full out and use the aircraft's thrust to assist in the docking of the carriers.

 

[Colonel Midnight]

wouldn't it have been a good tactic for the Kelvin's shuttle to have one of those floaty bowlingballs full of antimatter that detonates when the Captain is killed?

Yes.

Then again, perhaps those balls are photon torpedo warheads, and the Kelvin had none aboard so nothing like that could be rigged on short notice? Also, Nero might have scanned for such trickery.

However, when Pike did the same thing a quarter of a century later, Nero explicitly did not notice the ordnance that Olsen was packing. And Pike did have a torpedo-armed ship and no doubt could have spared a warhead or three.

you could take the engines out of a couple of F/A-18s, hook em up to a transmission and then run them at full power to turn the drive shaft.

The engines of the big helicopters would probably be better for that, what with having gearboxes already...

But rigging up something like this would probably take months, be extremely inefficient compared with the factory-built stuff, and be more vulnerable to enemy action than standard hardware. Should we see a trend here? An old sailing ship could rig all sorts of special tricks on fairly short notice (just go and see half a dozen sailing ship adventure movies), but WWI and Cold War ships would have progressively more difficulty coming up with something that would make a difference. Perhaps starships are utterly inflexible except when specifically built with flexibility and backups-to-backups in mind? That is, one could rig a shuttle to provide auxiliary power, or fire up a transporter control console with a hand phaser battery, but only if there were prebuilt sockets and carefully optimized "multimodal" power leads for those tricks.

Timo Saloniemi

Whoa -- let me get this straight. You're proposing to rig up helicopter transmissions (or F-18 turbine engines, for that matter), to a propeller shaft of a carrier!?!?!?

Plus, in order to do so, the drive train first has to go vertically (down through the various decks), then turn 90 deg (possibly twice, accounting for 3 dimensions), into a homemade reduction gear??

To be honest, this smacks of the "Super Loogie" from that Seinfeld episode... no way. A snow ball has a 100% chance of surviving Hell than trying to do something like that. (Or, as the other saying goes, 'Can I have some of what he's smoking??')

Sorry to burst everyone's bubble, but trust me... that is simply not possible using modern technology.

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[Captain Rob]

It's kind of like asking why can't aircraft carriers be powered by the fighters they carry...

This used to happen. Carrier captains during the second world war and in the years immediately following, when bring their ships along side a dock when tug boats weren't available, the captains would tie down the ship's propeller powered aircraft in multiple rows on the flight deck with pilots in the coxpits, different rows facing in different directions. they would run the aircraft's engines full out and use the aircraft's thrust to assist in the docking of the carriers.

That's featured in one of my favorite movies: "The Bridges at Toko-Ri" with William Holden. I think it's called "pinwheeling" or something like that. They used the squadron of Corsairs lashed to the forward flightdeck to turn the ship. A Essex-class carrier, I forget which one. The whole time the CAG is screaming at the Captain for damaging his airplanes. Great movie. What's a coxpit?

As for running a carrier off of aircraft engines. You're not ever going to run the ship's screws (not even one) with power from the aircraft. Just like you're not going to run the starship's warp drive with a shuttle's power core. And you're sure as hell not going to do anything by mechanically linking heli rotors or small jet turbines into the ship's gearboxes. It'd be like trying to turn the prop of a B-36 with a lawnmower engine. If it moves, it will move VERY, VERY slowly. Just Google B-36 and see how big the props and engines on those things were.

 

[Timo]

Whoa -- let me get this straight. You're proposing to rig up helicopter transmissions (or F-18 turbine engines, for that matter), to a propeller shaft of a carrier!?!?!?

I thought the question was about providing auxiliary power? So the jury-rig would involve running generators with helicopter engines. Whether that would provide enough power to run something like an electric steering propeller is another question; probably not.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Rob]

^^ Yeah, That one kind of threw me too.
I can see possibly connecting aircraft generators into the ship's shore power connections. Every ship's got them for basic power while in port. I think after Katrina a cruise ship was used in New Orleans to provide some emergency power to the city while docked downtown for a while. I don't know what a nuclear carrier has for emergency power since they have redundant reactors and generating plants. The Enterprise CVN-65 has eight reactors. I guess they would use big diesel or gas turbine engines connected to generators. Maybe someone should tell Carnival Cruise Lines about emergency power generators.
As for starships; they have shore power connections as well. For use when docked at space stations or spacedocks. We've seen them. The D and E had umbilical connections along their dorsal spines.
Anyone know what the little red panel on the side of the TOS shuttlecraft was for? External power perhaps? Just reverse the flow and you've got a flying generator.

 

[Timo]

I'm not sure 24th century Starfleet would necessarily need cables to transfer power.

Very large amounts of it, moved through confined spaces, might call for waveguides of some sort. But we have seen "power transfer beams" ever since "The Ultimate Computer", and the idea of Data constantly recharging out of thin air might be a funny wording for him recharging from a wireless power network.

I'd think the PADDs and tricorders and the like would siphon power off a wireless net whenever inside a starship or space station or in a properly equipped UFP surface settlement. At some point up the power curve, the wireless would become too wasteful, and would start to have health effects, but it might still be that shuttles get recharged without the help of cabling...

Such technology would probably also mean that basically everything imaginable is compatible with the same power source, in this case the UFP wireless power net. But again only to a certain point up the power curve, I guess.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Rob]

^^ TNG was always fussing about the EPS (Electro-Plasma System) conduits and such. I'm assuming thats the primary method of moving power around the ship, except to the engines (warp plasma conduits). I'm assuming that the bigger the EPS conduit the more power it can handle. Kirk mentions in one episode hyperpower systems with megavoltage. Sounds like EPS to me. It looked like later on that the smaller low-voltage devices ran off of power cells or plug-in fiber optics. Power would be generated by running a high-intensity light source such as a laser down the fiber to a photocell in the device that generates power. I could see wireless or induction used for items such as PADDs, communicators, and tricorders. Phasers are shown using replaceable powerpacks. The question is would these be more efficient than good old-fashioned copper or gold wires for low-voltage applications? Gold being a excellent conductor and really cheap in the 24th Century.
Not a big fan of ultra-high intensity focused microwave beams except in short-range applications. They've been shown to vaporize people or at least cook them.

 

[Colonel Midnight]

Whoa -- let me get this straight. You're proposing to rig up helicopter transmissions (or F-18 turbine engines, for that matter), to a propeller shaft of a carrier!?!?!?

I thought the question was about providing auxiliary power? So the jury-rig would involve running generators with helicopter engines. Whether that would provide enough power to run something like an electric steering propeller is another question; probably not.

Timo Saloniemi

Hmmm... Well, perhaps I misread or mis-interpreted that. Still, even with trying to trying to jury-rig aux power with helicopter engines still wouldn't work IRL.

Mainly from the reason that, assuming you could rig up some sort of gearing (a big IF to begin with) -- you'd also have to craft up some kind of a genset (generator set) to motorize and provide electrical power. A shipboard generator (SSDG/SSTG/EGT, etc.) is composed of two sections: a prime mover and a generator.

The helicopter blades (or rotor head, or jet engine exhaust) would/could be the prime mover portion, but you'd still need a rotor/stator combination to actually generate the electricity. That's something you just don't have a spare laying around handy, unfortunately. Nor could you realistically build one.

As for the shore connections -- most modern ship electrical systems have a reverse power relay installed to prevent the ship's generators from taking on the city load when you shift from ship to shore and vice versa. Sure you could probably bypass it, but you'd still have to the plug connections to worry about/figure out how to jumper into... (see link -- they're pretty substantial)

http://www.meltric.com/html/highampacityplugs.html

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[Vanyel]

I do wonder why the shuttles weren't used for their sensors. Use one with a good set of "eyes" and the ship can "see" so it can plot a course and get to safety. The shuttle sensors can also be used in battle as back ups to the ships main sensors. The ship wouldn't go blind and could use them aim their weapons too.

 

[Captain Rob]

TNG and later ships had sensor arrays everywhere. I assume that the earlier ships did as well. There's no way a ship would go so blind that it would need a tiny shuttle with it's lower power sensors. Of course we did see a shuttle used for its' sensors when Spock piloted one into the giant space amoeba.
I would think that trying to use a shuttle during battle would just get it smoked pretty quickly. If I was got in battle with the sensors completely down, the quickest thing to do would be to engage maximum warp in whatever direction I happen to be pointed. Then figure out where I was later when it's safe.

 

[Vanyel]

TNG and later ships had sensor arrays everywhere. I assume that the earlier ships did as well. There's no way a ship would go so blind that it would need a tiny shuttle with it's lower power sensors. Of course we did see a shuttle used for its' sensors when Spock piloted one into the giant space amoeba.
I would think that trying to use a shuttle during battle would just get it smoked pretty quickly. If I was got in battle with the sensors completely down, the quickest thing to do would be to engage maximum warp in whatever direction I happen to be pointed. Then figure out where I was later when it's safe.

Traveling by warp ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?

 

[Timo]

Not in the real world, tho, as stars are far too thinly spread for that. Nor in Star Trek. A panicky five minutes at extreme warp would not take the ship far enough to hit another star...

There might be situations where a shuttle's sensors could take measurements in a location the starship herself cannot or doesn't want to visit. There could be technical reasons, tactical reasons, scientific reasons for leaving the ship behind. For the first, say, the ship is incapable of moving, or the region of interest lies in a dense asteroid belt or down in an atmosphere. For the second, say, ship wants to lie low and be silent, and shuttle uses active sensors from a nicely confusing location, then relays the tactical data to the silent mothership. For the third, perhaps the ship's engines create a disturbance.

Nevertheless, the only time a shuttle was used for sensing when the starship herself would also have been available was "Nth Degree"; no explanation was offered as to why Barclay went out in a shuttle, except for the obvious dramatical one that this allowed him to be hit by the Plot Complication.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

As for running a carrier off of aircraft engines. You're not ever going to run the ship's screws (not even one) with power from the aircraft. Just like you're not going to run the starship's warp drive with a shuttle's power core. And you're sure as hell not going to do anything by mechanically linking heli rotors or small jet turbines into the ship's gearboxes. It'd be like trying to turn the prop of a B-36 with a lawnmower engine. If it moves, it will move VERY, VERY slowly. Just Google B-36 and see how big the props and engines on those things were.

"Very slowly" in this context would probably be enough to get the ship moving around 5 to 10 knots; basic "emergency power" scenario. And again, this is hardly without precedent, as a single pair of those same aircraft engines already power the Aegis cruisers and destroyers; gearing up three dozen of them to a carrier's power train would be an effective (if monstrously complicated) emergency measure.

The helicopter blades (or rotor head, or jet engine exhaust) would/could be the prime mover portion, but you'd still need a rotor/stator combination to actually generate the electricity. That's something you just don't have a spare laying around handy, unfortunately. Nor could you realistically build one.

The question assumes that spares would be available, of course. But even if they're not, you seem to be overlooking the fact that those parts are ALREADY available in the aircraft themselves, which use their own engines as prime movers for electrical generators (or larger craft who have APUs installed). These would have to be connected in parallel and the voltage would have to be stepped and rectified multiple times, but the concept itself is sound.

Either electrically or mechanically, it would still entail the equivalent of several weeks--if not months--of planning and machining work, and even then the setup wouldn't last for long. The question wasn't whether it would be feasible, but only if it were POSSIBLE.