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
Just Curious and Thanks!
JDW
DS9's USS Defiant
- Thread starter James Wright
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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.
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.
^
From Wikipedia:
Hotlinking is defined at EAS as
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/articles/defiant-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?
From Wikipedia:
Hotlinking is defined at EAS as
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/articles/defiant-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?
How many shuttles does the Defiant carry?
Just the Chaffee!
JDW
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...)
GodThingFormerly
A Different Kind of Asshole
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
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.
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/articles/defiant/defiant-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.
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...
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.
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
Nobody has explained how shuttles are recovered aboard the Defiant!?
JDW
JDW
OTOH, we could argue that the big round thing at the bottom has always been the sole shuttlebay door, and that the smaller craft enter and depart through that. They'd enjoy a largish hangar space beyond that rolling door we see in Drexler's drawings, big enough to hold several of them plus the Chaffee.
Interestingly, when the Defiant deploys the relay station in "Destiny", our first shot of it shows it hovering above the ship, as if deployed through dorsal doors. And sure enough, the topside has what looks like a shuttlebay atop, between the twin rows of four blue glowing things, with a rolling door pointing aft - although it'd only be good for truly midget shuttles, really. I'd rather believe in a ventral bay.
That the bottom ring of the ship looks different before and after "The Sound of Her Voice" need not be all that significant. It could always have featured sliding doors at the bottom of a cylindrar shaft - PLUS a retractable tractor beam emitter that moves up and down that shaft, and sometimes peeks through the doors, sometimes (read: only in "TSohV") doesn't.
Timo Saloniemi
Interestingly, when the Defiant deploys the relay station in "Destiny", our first shot of it shows it hovering above the ship, as if deployed through dorsal doors. And sure enough, the topside has what looks like a shuttlebay atop, between the twin rows of four blue glowing things, with a rolling door pointing aft - although it'd only be good for truly midget shuttles, really. I'd rather believe in a ventral bay.
That the bottom ring of the ship looks different before and after "The Sound of Her Voice" need not be all that significant. It could always have featured sliding doors at the bottom of a cylindrar shaft - PLUS a retractable tractor beam emitter that moves up and down that shaft, and sometimes peeks through the doors, sometimes (read: only in "TSohV") doesn't.
Timo Saloniemi
GodThingFormerly
A Different Kind of Asshole
Great to have those images available at last!
It's surprising to see a quad of familiar-looking little domes on the ventral side, around the shuttle door roundel. Are those perhaps TMP-style phaser turrets?
Similar although smaller domes are paired just under the lip of the deflector. How about saying that the bow phaser comes from these emitters and not from the round little hole on the deflector face? That'd remove another annoying "double functionality", as the hole has already been shown firing probes.
Fancy how such a characteristic element of the ship as her pulse phasers are appears to be but an afterthought, with the emitter greeblies glued on seemingly late in the design/construction process...
Timo Saloniemi
It's surprising to see a quad of familiar-looking little domes on the ventral side, around the shuttle door roundel. Are those perhaps TMP-style phaser turrets?
Similar although smaller domes are paired just under the lip of the deflector. How about saying that the bow phaser comes from these emitters and not from the round little hole on the deflector face? That'd remove another annoying "double functionality", as the hole has already been shown firing probes.
Fancy how such a characteristic element of the ship as her pulse phasers are appears to be but an afterthought, with the emitter greeblies glued on seemingly late in the design/construction process...
Timo Saloniemi
On two different computers, logged in or out of TrekBBS on either and with the two using different Internet connections, I didn't get any such thing. I am at a loss to explain, but will readily apologize for any difficulty.
The Drex Files images are dynamite; it seems like the comments indicate the escape pods are definitely supposed to be the same as the Voyager ones, and I'm pretty sure the ship wouldn't be 120m long relative to those.
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