Deneva must also be smaller in diameter than Earth or have a thinner atmosphere for "permanent orbit" to only be 72 miles up. 
A Sneak Peek of Season 2 Remastered Unaired Episodes!!
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They could have beamed up anything they needed from the planet, and deployed the satellites as they were finished being assembled and tested.
And also because corners are great places for small stresses to build up and turn into structure-threatening cracks. The British Comet airplane was destroyed in part because of the rectangular windows when rounded or circular windows would have been much better. Rounded surfaces don't provide such places for material fatigue to concentrate.
GodThingFormerly
A Different Kind of Asshole
I spent the last three decades blithely assuming that, A). those satellites were each about the size of a beach ball a la Telstar, and B). 23rd century miniaturization technology would permit the individual spacecraft to be reconfigurable for a multitude of different active and passive tasks beyond UV-flaring (communications relays, sensor networks, electronic countermeasures, etc.). How wonderfully thoughtful it was for CBS Digital to correct my foolish assumptions after all these years.
TGT
Replicators perhaps? If they're all made from basic electronics, and we've got transporters, pattern buffers, and raw materials... I figured that would work.
But I'm with TGT on this.. by the 23rd century, you'd think they'd be about the size of a toaster....
But I'm with TGT on this.. by the 23rd century, you'd think they'd be about the size of a toaster....
My assumption has always been the satellites were built by the engineering department--they made a load of flintlocks--and were deployed by the ship's probe launcher, a la "The Immunity Syndrome". The big drop bay makes no sense when the ship already has a huge set of doors to shove stuff out of.
The perspective is hard to determine from the still photo...it's far enough from the ship that it might have drifted into the foreground. It's possible that the UV satellites were converted photon torpedo tubes of the era.
That's pretty much the way I imagined it as well. It never seemed (to me anyway) like there would have been enough space aboard the Enterprise to hold that large a number of satellites, of any kind.
I did occasionally consider the idea that they were assembled aboard the E, but that never seemed to work due to the compressed time frame. After all, those weren't deployed a week later or something.
Whhy couldn't the parts(not on board) be beamed up and assembled on the ship?
At the moment of release, the satellite looks quite a bit smaller. My own eyeball guesstimate would be 2-3 meters in length, which would reduce your estimate of the total volume required by a factor of 8 (or so).
Still bigger than a beachball, but nowhere near the size of a minivan.
M´Sharak said:
The UV-satellite equivalent of hammerspace?
Kind of like how Voyager still had original photon torpedoes left after seven years in the Delta Quadrant. And we all know Intrepid-class ships were smaller and has less armament storage capacity than Galaxy-class ships, and even Picard's Enterprise had a fairly limited supply of torpedoes and had to be restocked at starbases periodically.
Please do not start with the large number of Photon torpedoes used over their seven years in the Delta Quadrant.
Stag said:
OK, how about the number of shuttles carried by Voyager? They went through as many of those as they did torpedoes!
UGH.
Don't remind me!
VOYAGER is my least favorite of all the TREK incarnations for reasons. None of which seem to get any easier to tolerate or swallow.
The same for the number of shuttles!
True. Voyager left DS9 in the Alpha Quadrant with...what? Half a dozen large and small shuttles tops? After seven years it still had several, including the new Delta Flyer even though it had lost quite a few in earlier seasons?
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