23rd century Runabouts?

[Wingsley]

Maybe runabouts were formally new to Starfleet in the DS9 era, but that does not mean that Starfleet was not experimenting with various small craft in previous generations. Copernicus, for instance, did not look like it had a transporter or other facilities as elaborate as DS9's runabouts.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, all we know is that this Joseph guy hadn't heard of Starfleet using runabouts during his lifetime. Few civilians in the 1940s would have been familiar with any navy using "frigates", except in old adventure books, when the Royal Navy suddenly revigorated the designation.

Not that the 1940s frigates would have had anything to do with the original ones - but it's perfectly plausible that a certain design requirement might disappear for a few decades or centuries and then re-emerge, perhaps slightly modified by advances in technology.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

Timo said:

How would we like to define our 23rd century runabout? Any vessel that is fast and small? (Not that the DS9 runabouts ever were considered particularly fast, no matter what their exact top speed.)

Timo Saloniemi

A very good question.

Shuttlecraft are supposedly limited transportation vehicles. "The Galileo Seven" illustrated the disadvantages of a Class F Shuttle being used for exploration. Shuttlecraft probably don't carry any more armament than hand phasers. Maybe they have limited shields. They are meant "to shuttle": to get from a ship to a base, a base to a ship, a ship to a ship, a base to a base. They have limited range and accomodations. (I love how "Mendez" quipped "we coast" and Kirk noted how much air was left) I'm not even sure if a Class F has a commode. (Boy, no wonder everyone got irritable on Taurus II!)

OTOH, a runabout is larger, built with accomodations so that a crew of at least as many personnel can at least hot-bunk for extended periods. One can assume the ship would be at least as fast (warp speed is indicated for both classes of vehicles) and assuredly greater range than a shuttlecraft. It is possible that a runabout could at least be adapted to military applications (like a PT 109 mode) or, more likely scientific ones (like visiting a distant gaseous anomaly or a planet).

A shuttlecraft is an interplanetary, perhaps interstellar vehicle, while a runabout is borderline like a baby starship. I like how DS9's Runabouts even had a lounge-type area and a transporter, so a properly staffed ship could beam down small "away teams" to different locales, or even different planets entirely. If Copernicus were a crude, 23rd century precursor to DS9's runabouts, it was probably not nearly as well equipped. Likely no transporter or ship-based weapons.

One interesting question within your question, is how big could a TOS/TAS/TMP -era pre-runabout type craft be and still fit into the hangar facilities aboard the Enterprise? Is that round, turntable-like landing pad on the hangar deck an elevator shaft to a lower storage bay? Is so, does anyone know what its diameter would be? It would be neat to design a ship that would just fit and begin to take on the characteristics of a proto-runabout.

 

[Timo]

Now that would be a problem. The turntable is no bigger than the TOS shuttle, meaning that any craft of increased size of crew cabin or increased length of warp nacelles would be confined to the upper deck. That's bound to limit attempts to increase endurance or speed.

Then again, there isn't necessarily a need to stow runabout-type craft aboard starships. Indeed, that could be the defining factor: if it fits into a starship in the operational sense, it's a shuttlecraft - if not, it's a runabout. (More like "if it serves as a starship's means of pendulum transit, it's a shuttlecraft - if not, it's a runabout", but that's essentially the same thing in other words.)

The Copernicus seemed luxurious enough, with a table and stools erected mid-cabin, and no doubt with further comforts like bunks stowed in the walls, perhaps also with internal partitions that can be collapsed into the walls.

Indeed, we could say that the internal multi-section partition wall or curtain we see here and the doors we see here are the same thing, just an internal partition - and the actual vacuum-holding thing at the stern of the craft is the entire sloping wedge section that we witness in the exterior view, neatly hinging down to form a ladderway to the surface (otherwise where does the stern section go, and how do our heroes get down?).

And we see this craft in interstellar transit all right - they are said to be "passing" an entire star system. All the Copernicus lacks, then, is a shipboard transporter (probably not available back then) and clear evidence of armament (but I could easily accept something comparable to the Danube guns in terms of relative firepower).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

Normalizing the bridge, which is the one thing you cannot really dispute on the Sydney's size, I made a schematic of her (with some errors on the forward side, sadly).. but, here she is next to the Constitution (R) and Miranda (R), to show how big she really is.

 

[blakbyrd]

^ That's one huge b****!

(Sorry)

 

[Wingsley]

Vance,

I would love to see you do your magic with a retcon of the Sydney, as a TOS-era vessel. The Cahuya may already provide some clues...

 

[Forbin]

Can ya crop that down to a less page-stretching size plee-uz?

And yeah - definitely NOT a runabout. I wonder if people keep calling it a runabout only because the hull is the same shape as one.

 

[Wingsley]

Timo said:
Now that would be a problem. The turntable is no bigger than the TOS shuttle, meaning that any craft of increased size of crew cabin or increased length of warp nacelles would be confined to the upper deck. That's bound to limit attempts to increase endurance or speed.

Then again, there isn't necessarily a need to stow runabout-type craft aboard starships. Indeed, that could be the defining factor: if it fits into a starship in the operational sense, it's a shuttlecraft - if not, it's a runabout. (More like "if it serves as a starship's means of pendulum transit, it's a shuttlecraft - if not, it's a runabout", but that's essentially the same thing in other words.)

There's another TAS illustration that popped into my mind:

http://tas.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=10&pos=67

This seems to suggest the launch bay itself is just a huge garage; and no confirmation the bay we see in TOS is big enough to hold craft like that.

Still, one deliciously evil I idea occured to me. See the above URL. Note the different shapes of the hangared spacecraft. I kind like the "Mickey Mouse" style ship with the oval-shaped body and the nacelles on top. A thought: What if Starfleet developed a ship that was just big enough to fit on that turntable (assuming the turntable is some standard size for starships), kinda like a small saucer-shaped vehicle. Let's give the upper surface of the saucer folding wings. The nacelles are on the wing-tips; the wings extend for flight, and fold onto the top of the saucer for landing.

I wonder how much greater volume such a saucer-craft would have over a Class F shuttlecraft...

 

[SonicRanger]

To post the relevant dialogue for "Paradise":

ALIXUS ENTERS, from the ship, Vinod at her side. Alixus is
a handsome, happy-eyed, smiling, glowingly charismatic woman,
about fifty. Her smile broadens into a wide, infectious
grin.

ALIXUS
After all this time... visitors!
Welcome to our community. Are there
others?

SISKO
Just an empty runabout in orbit.
Hopefully, it'll attract some
attention.

JOSEPH
(hungry for news)
"Runabout." Is that some kind of
new Starfleet vessel?

DEEP SPACE: "Paradise" - REV. 11/30/93 - ACT ONE 9.

8 CONTINUED:

O'BRIEN
(realizing he wouldn't
know)
Yeah, they commissioned the first
ones two years ago... they're short-
range interstellar craft... about a
quarter the size of your... "cabin"
here...

 

[Timo]

The two ways to interpret that:

1) The ship category of Runabout is new to Starfleet (or at least there has been a considerable break since the last Runabout in Starfleet service), and the Danube class is its first example, commissioned two years prior to the episode.

2) The first vessel of the particular type that sits in orbit above O'Brien and arouses the curiosity of Joseph was commissioned about two years prior, and happens to belong to the Runabout category. The category itself isn't new, but Joseph just doesn't happen to know his way around Starfleet hardware, and makes this obvious by not recognizing the term. Thus O'Brien feels the need to help him out, telling that yes, he's flying a new model.

Since "short-range interstellar craft" would have been technologically viable for a long time (they basically were in TAS already, and the elderly Maquis ships with "E-C-era" graphic interfaces also meet the criteria), it is IMHO better to assume that Starfleet has made prior use of the tech, and that Danube is simply the newest example of such use.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

I guess it's open to interpretation if the term 'Runabout' is new. But, certainly, a single-deck courier-type ship wouldn't be all that new, would it?