Well, the Federation better not put 10000 people on a Galaxy class ship with only 400 escape pods that support 4 to 6 people. That is only 1600 to 2400 people. Better to have emergency transporters and an escort ship.
What if the Escort Ship is also under attack and needs to use it's escape pods as well?
Even if you have Transporters, there are plenty of areas in space where you're far away enough from any habitable planet that you should just use the Shuttle or Escape Pod to get out.
Part of the advantage of having a emergency "Site-to-Site" transporter linked is that it can beam you to the nearest Escape Pod or Shuttle and let you evacuate quickly in a worst case scenario.
We saw how tiny the 24th Century
Emergency Transport Unit that Data pinned onto Captain Picard was.
It was the size of a over grown cuff-link that opened out. Granted the range was probably only 2-Digit to 3-Digit km's. But given the vastness of space and the size of a StarShip or how close 24th Century space battles are, that's more than enough.
That's plenty for "Get out of a Life & Death" situation so that you don't sustain a critical or fatal injurie(s).
Just look at the Zhat Vash and how they probably had those ETU's when they sent their assassins after Dahj in the opening episode of Star Trek: Picard. So many of their goons would've suffered fatal falls or critical blows if it wasn't for the ETU's automatically Emergency Transporting them away.
The ETU (
Emergency Transport Unit) is great for keeping people alive if they make a critical mistake or need to get out of a sticky situation.
It doesn't have to transport you "Very Far", just "Far Enough" so that you can figure out a new solution.
And given how tiny those are, imagine how many of those types of devices you can stash across your person in the future =D.
It'd make StarFleet Officers "VERY" hard to injure or kill.
One problem with automation and smaller amount of crew would be that a hostile species could potentially beam a lot more people on board to overpower the crew with larger numbers and comandeer the ship... assuming the automated internal intruder containment systems aren't working (and technically, those systems should be independent and fully functional in such situations so they could automatically erect forcefields around invaders who come onboard uninvited... and the ship should really have transport inhibitors in place as well).
Every Corridor and door way should have a Holo Camera at every Ceiling corner w/ a built in Phaser Turret & mini Shields that is programmed to target non StarFleet Officers and strange people objects or creatures that invade or board without authorization.
Imagine every room and corridor being hostile to alien intruders.
One Phaser Turret was this effective, imagine a hall way with Dozens of these firing at intruders simultaneously with power supplied from the EPS taps and it's own mini battery pack as well to run independently once EPS taps are drained / disabled / cut-off.
Imagine how much easier Riker & Worf's job would be if they had auto-turrets all over every corridor of the ship ready to deal with invaders, even with the Enterprise-E battered, bruised, immobilized.
The Turrets can still do their jobs independently and fight / slow down the boarding party.
Consider this: the pod is arranged into a sort of triangle pattern like this: /_\
So if each side can have 3 people sitting next to each other... then maximum number of people per pod would be 9... and for 3 escape pods, that makes enough space for 27 people onboard which could be evacuated.
Funny, I came to a similar conclusion, but I used a "
DiTrigon" shape instead of a pure Triangle. The housing for the Escape pod on the Parent StarShip would have a
Isoceles Trapezoid outter hatch that has two outter hinges for lifiting up and out (not blocking the launch path of the Escape Pod) and the tip of the hatch would have a typical locking ring to keep the hatch locked when closed. The cavity would obviously be a perfect fit for the DiTrigon shaped Escape Pod.
On the outside of the vessel, the Isoceles Trapezoid doors can be in an alternating pattern to form a smooth line of hatchs, similar to a old fashioned submarine launch hatch, but instead of missiles, you'd launch Escape Pods from within.
On the inside of the vessel, you could only enter the Escape Pod from one side.
I was also thinking the Escape Pod would fit exactly 9x Standard BiPaBs (Bi-{Pedaloid & Brachialoids}) around a Table like control center that has a touch-screen & holographic UI that also doubles as a replicator dining table and control UI.
The Escape Pod would have 3x Windowed Doors on all sides that can be used as Emergency Shelter if they decide to land on a Habitable planet.
It has 3x small Warp Nacelles on the Outter posts that move the Escape Pod like a Borg Vessel.
With Impulse Drives & Warp Nacelles running on a similar Condensed Energy Matrix Power Cell (Similar to the one used by the
Druoda Long Range Anti-Matter Nuke).
By my 26th Century Head Canon, each Escape Pod would be capable of up to Warp 9 and a range of 80 ly at best.
That would take a total of ~19¼ days to cover that distance at Warp 9. Which is reasonable.
That should be more than enough distance to get you to a habitable planet nearly anywhere you get lost.
More likely you would make landfall early on and not have to spend that much time cooped up.
If you need to make landfall on a planet, you can use the inflatable heat shield similar to what
NASA's HIAD has.
This allows a small Escape Pod to enter nearly any atmosphere and have a giant inflated heat shield that can self retract and deflate before it uses it's Anti-Grav units to land the Escape Pod on solid ground.
