More shuttles and small craft?

[Unicron]

I've often felt like, even with the potential benefits of the transporter, many Trek ships don't seem to have much in the way of shuttles. The TOS Enterprise only has a handful, and those can only take a fraction of the crew. I've noted some sources like Jackill kind of improve this, as his vessels tend to carry a significant number of small craft (although it can vague as to which specific ones a ship might carry, as there are multiple heavy shuttles for example).

I also recall that Mr. Scott's Guide suggests the refit Enterprise would mainly carry the Vulcan shuttles, but it seems to me like they'd be a less ideal option due to needing the warp sled when many other shuttles don't. I've always considered it to be something of an oddball in Trek design.

What do you think? Would it seem more logical to have more small craft than we might typically see, or less if they're not plot significant?

 

[Vagabond Elf]

Shuttles aren't helicopters on a CVE or marine landing ship, they're boats-in-space. There shouldn't be very many of them, in my view.

Seen through the lens of "Hornblower in Space," the four or so that TOS Enterprise is said to carry seems right. A Fifth-rate Frigate would have carried four boats: two cutters, a launch, and the Captain's gig or barge. So that lines up.

In-universe... shuttles aren't all that useful for a starship. They exist mostly because the transporter isn't 100% reliable, and there needs to be a backup method of moving from ship to ship or ship to surface. But outside of highly contrived "so the movie can happen" circumstances, we never really see shuttles do all that much and realistically, there's very little for them to do until the transporter breaks.

As for using them as lifeboats... well, you'd need more than 60 Galileo type shuttles to lift the 430 souls on a Connie. That seems utterly unrealistic. Naval ships usually can't evac their entire crew either. Realistically, ships usually take a long time to sink, or just go so fast no-one has time to get off anyway. If you extend that to starships, and add in a dash of "if they're not near a habitable planet or rescue range of another ship I guess they're screwed" pragmatism, the shuttles role in an evacuation will either involve collecting up escape pods (the way a motor launch would collect up life rafts) or making round trips between the ship and safety (literally shuttling).

Energy is cheap in Star Trek, but it's not absolutely free. Starships still need fuel. So devoting mass and volume to shuttles is a safety feature, not a mission capability, and as a result a starship ought to be carrying the minimum number consistent with safety. The 4 to 6 we see on TOS Enterprise feels right to me through the in-universe lens, too.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

What do you think? Would it seem more logical to have more small craft than we might typically see, or less if they're not plot significant?

I'm with you, there should be far more craft on board along with dedicated personnel to pilot & maintain it.

When a Starship enters a local Star System, you can deploy shuttles to explore all the different parts of the Star System and map things independently.

Having to move the mother ship when the ship should function more as a command base allows more tasks to get done simultaneously.

 

[Vagabond Elf]

I'm with you, there should be far more craft on board along with dedicated personnel to pilot & maintain it.

When a Starship enters a local Star System, you can deploy shuttles to explore all the different parts of the Star System and map things independently.

Having to move the mother ship when the ship should function more as a command base allows more tasks to get done simultaneously.

I wouldn't want to spend more than 8 to 12 hours in a standard shuttle. We can assume there's a head, but there's no bunks, no galley (at least in TOS, I don't know if we saw a replicator on a shuttle in TNG), and no privacy. It's a bus. How long are you willing to spend on a bus? An E-3A Sentry has 22 hours crew endurance, because it's big enough to have all these things. And E-2 Hawkeye's record flight time is just over 8 hours, because it doesn't.

How much information is a shuttle crew going to gather in 8 hours less travel time? How much information is a shuttle going to get that the ships all-but-magic sensors can't? I struggle to imagine a shuttle doing anything that a cruiser can't, and a cruiser has hundreds of people aboard - it ought to be able to scan anything in a star system from anywhere in that system. Anything that needs a closer look than that involves landing parties, and a cruiser can drop a landing party via transporter as easily as via shuttle.

Now of course, I'm making an assumption about the capabilities of the cruiser's sensors. You're making a different assumption, I think. If the cruiser had to be in orbit to get go information on a planet, the argument for survey shuttles gets stronger but even then I wouldn't want to use a standard utility shuttle for the job.

I can imagine a dedicated survey small craft that would have all the features a standard shuttle is missing, but the maid-of-all-work nature of a cruiser precludes, in my view, deploying such a small craft on a cruiser. These would be limited to dedicated survey ships. I could imaging a surveyor that had a larger than normal hanger bay (because it doesn't need phasers and torpedoes and shields and redundant power systems and super-long-range coms that work without the subspace buoy network and all the other things the cruiser does need) filled with dedicated survey shuttles. But those aren't the ships the shows are about, and that sort of configuration would be a specialist, not the fleet in general.

And yes, obviously there are dedicated small craft pilots and hangar crew. We don't see them in the shows because the bridge crew does everything. Set aside "Main Cast Syndrome" though, and the way shuttles are shown in the show seems reasonable to me.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I wouldn't want to spend more than 8 to 12 hours in a standard shuttle. We can assume there's a head, but there's no bunks, no galley (at least in TOS, I don't know if we saw a replicator on a shuttle in TNG), and no privacy. It's a bus. How long are you willing to spend on a bus? An E-3A Sentry has 22 hours crew endurance, because it's big enough to have all these things. And E-2 Hawkeye's record flight time is just over 8 hours, because it doesn't.

Sounds about right for the mission duration I expect the Shuttle Crew to be on.
Usually < 24 hrs in the vast majority of cases for:
1) Going to the Target Destination within the Local Star System
2) Do your mission
3) RTB (Return To Base)

How much information is a shuttle crew going to gather in 8 hours less travel time? How much information is a shuttle going to get that the ships all-but-magic sensors can't? I struggle to imagine a shuttle doing anything that a cruiser can't, and a cruiser has hundreds of people aboard - it ought to be able to scan anything in a star system from anywhere in that system. Anything that needs a closer look than that involves landing parties, and a cruiser can drop a landing party via transporter as easily as via shuttle.

We don't know how tight a schedule is for the ship and how long they are alotted to each Star System before they're scheduled to move on to the next Star System.
While a Mother Ship can get high level preliminary information at a great distance, the best way to get detailed scans is to be near the object.
If a local Star System has dozens to hundreds of interesting Planetoids of various sizes including their moons, sending in shuttles might be the fastest way to gather all the data necessary instead of sending the Mother Ship to each Planetary Body within the System.

Think of it as Single-Tasking vs Multi-Tasking.

The travel time wasted by moving the mother ship to each Planetary Body could've been saved by just sending in all your shuttles to do the surveying and coming back with the data.

Now of course, I'm making an assumption about the capabilities of the cruiser's sensors. You're making a different assumption, I think. If the cruiser had to be in orbit to get go information on a planet, the argument for survey shuttles gets stronger but even then I wouldn't want to use a standard utility shuttle for the job.

Given Starfleet's 'jack of all skills' nature, I wouldn't be surprised if their shuttles sensors are pretty damn good, that's why we see them used for all sorts of things without heavy customisation.
A planetary survey is a basic stock feature on all shuttles and fighters given that it's Starfleet, not the Klingons or Romulans who would make their shuttles tweaked for combat or spy craft.

I can imagine a dedicated survey small craft that would have all the features a standard shuttle is missing, but the maid-of-all-work nature of a cruiser precludes, in my view, deploying such a small craft on a cruiser. These would be limited to dedicated survey ships. I could imaging a surveyor that had a larger than normal hanger bay (because it doesn't need phasers and torpedoes and shields and redundant power systems and super-long-range coms that work without the subspace buoy network and all the other things the cruiser does need) filled with dedicated survey shuttles. But those aren't the ships the shows are about, and that sort of configuration would be a specialist, not the fleet in general.

Like the Oberth class who gets easily blown up?
Those are what I think of when doing dedicated survey ships.

And yes, obviously there are dedicated small craft pilots and hangar crew. We don't see them in the shows because the bridge crew does everything. Set aside "Main Cast Syndrome" though, and the way shuttles are shown in the show seems reasonable to me.

Fair enough.

 

[Takeru]

And yes, obviously there are dedicated small craft pilots ...

Is it that obvious? Shuttles are usually portrayed as space cars pretty much anyone can drive, we saw Nog learning to pilot small ships before he even got into the academy, this does not appear to be a highly specialized skill.

 

[Vagabond Elf]

Is it that obvious? Shuttles are usually portrayed as space cars pretty much anyone can drive, we saw Nog learning to pilot small ships before he even got into the academy, this does not appear to be a highly specialized skill.

Fair; I'm thinking more TOS where we know there are specialist crewmembers, they just get overshadowed by the main cast. Even then, we're left with the impression that controlling the shuttle is skilled work.

Even so, I think in TNG it's probable that even if most crew can fly the shuttles, there will be someone aboard who's job it is, even if only to make sure that they aren't pulling someone away from a more important task to go drive the bus. It's likely that "shuttlecraft pilot" is a secondary tasking, though - a part-time job being done in addition to some other (probably also part-time) job.

But ultimately this is all speculation, and so it's going to be very heavily influenced by how each of us imagines Star Fleet working.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Fair; I'm thinking more TOS where we know there are specialist crewmembers, they just get overshadowed by the main cast. Even then, we're left with the impression that controlling the shuttle is skilled work.

Think of piloting a shuttle to different levels of driving proficiency.

There's normal every day drivers like you and I.
There's stunt drivers who can do crazy tricks with cars.
There's professional drivers who actually use their cars in police scenarios and need defensive/offensive driving tactics
There's race drivers of all sorts of levels.
There's drift driving.

The world of driving and flying is very deep and the skill levels of drivers / pilots is far deeper than most average people will ever think about.

 

[Unicron]

Shuttles aren't helicopters on a CVE or marine landing ship, they're boats-in-space. There shouldn't be very many of them, in my view.

Seen through the lens of "Hornblower in Space," the four or so that TOS Enterprise is said to carry seems right. A Fifth-rate Frigate would have carried four boats: two cutters, a launch, and the Captain's gig or barge. So that lines up.

In-universe... shuttles aren't all that useful for a starship. They exist mostly because the transporter isn't 100% reliable, and there needs to be a backup method of moving from ship to ship or ship to surface. But outside of highly contrived "so the movie can happen" circumstances, we never really see shuttles do all that much and realistically, there's very little for them to do until the transporter breaks.

As for using them as lifeboats... well, you'd need more than 60 Galileo type shuttles to lift the 430 souls on a Connie. That seems utterly unrealistic. Naval ships usually can't evac their entire crew either. Realistically, ships usually take a long time to sink, or just go so fast no-one has time to get off anyway. If you extend that to starships, and add in a dash of "if they're not near a habitable planet or rescue range of another ship I guess they're screwed" pragmatism, the shuttles role in an evacuation will either involve collecting up escape pods (the way a motor launch would collect up life rafts) or making round trips between the ship and safety (literally shuttling).

Energy is cheap in Star Trek, but it's not absolutely free. Starships still need fuel. So devoting mass and volume to shuttles is a safety feature, not a mission capability, and as a result a starship ought to be carrying the minimum number consistent with safety. The 4 to 6 we see on TOS Enterprise feels right to me through the in-universe lens, too.

You make some good points. I think in part, it depends on whether you'd want to treat them as more of a boat in naval analogy or more of an aircraft in a support capacity, as I think both can work depending on the needs of the story.

I also agree that dedicated lifeboats and escape pods (as seen on designs like the Galaxy) are more viable for that role than shuttles, although the shuttles do make a good alternative. The large escape pods on the Saratoga seem to be an interesting level between the smaller lifeboats and the more typical shuttle range.

How much information is a shuttle crew going to gather in 8 hours less travel time? How much information is a shuttle going to get that the ships all-but-magic sensors can't? I struggle to imagine a shuttle doing anything that a cruiser can't, and a cruiser has hundreds of people aboard - it ought to be able to scan anything in a star system from anywhere in that system. Anything that needs a closer look than that involves landing parties, and a cruiser can drop a landing party via transporter as easily as via shuttle.

For my part, I think it's a factor that could vary greatly. If you're dealing with a culture (or perhaps several cultures) that don't like outside contact, or with whom contact might be limited due to things like the Prime Directive, then a shuttle or small craft might be more ideal than a capital ship. As a non-ship example, DS9 seemed to do pretty well with a small contingent of runabouts even though it seldom had any capital ship support (the Defiant was an exception of course).

One thing I have noted in non Trek series that employ more small craft, especially fighters, is that dedicated carriers seem to be more rare if non-carrier capital ships tend to have their own fighter or small craft complements. They're not entirely absent, but they're not as common as modern naval equivalents either (where aircraft carriers have a very prominent role). A universe like Star Wars is kind of an interesting case, in that ships like Star Destroyers have attributes of several naval warship types.

We don't know how tight a schedule is for the ship and how long they are alotted to each Star System before they're scheduled to move on to the next Star System.
While a Mother Ship can get high level preliminary information at a great distance, the best way to get detailed scans is to be near the object.
If a local Star System has dozens to hundreds of interesting Planetoids of various sizes including their moons, sending in shuttles might be the fastest way to gather all the data necessary instead of sending the Mother Ship to each Planetary Body within the System.

There's also the possibility that if the system has unusual phenomena or potential hazards, particularly if it's being explored and mapped, then a shuttle or smaller craft might be easier to modify for gathering initial data than the sensors on the mother ship. The latter might have more of them, but it would take longer to do and anything particularly hazardous might be more dangerous, if you have more sensors to be affected.

I always had a soft spot for the robotic Protoss Observers in StarCraft (which my avatar is ) because they're among the few non-combatant units in the game, but they're extremely useful. They're robotic drones with a very sophisticated sensor grid, and they have no weapons but do mount plasma shields and a permanent cloak. Observers can detect other cloaked or hidden units, and they make excellent scouts for the Protoss military.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

There's also the possibility that if the system has unusual phenomena or potential hazards, particularly if it's being explored and mapped, then a shuttle or smaller craft might be easier to modify for gathering initial data than the sensors on the mother ship. The latter might have more of them, but it would take longer to do and anything particularly hazardous might be more dangerous, if you have more sensors to be affected.

It's also better to risk losing a shuttle vs losing the mother ship, any CO would make that decision.
But with modern drones being so common, we make a bunch of drones, if we loose a few of those cheaper drones compared to losing lives, it's ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I always had a soft spot for the robotic Protoss Observers in StarCraft (which my avatar is ) because they're among the few non-combatant units in the game, but they're extremely useful. They're robotic drones with a very sophisticated sensor grid, and they have no weapons but do mount plasma shields and a permanent cloak. Observers can detect other cloaked or hidden units, and they make excellent scouts for the Protoss military.

The Protoss are my favorite race to play in StarCraft. They have the most interesting units IMO.
The Observers were great scouts, I'm surprised a species like the Romulans don't have a cloaked equivalent of those just lurking around randomly.

I know that we in the US have so many drones now, it's kinda crazy, especially when you see what one of those "ARGUS-IS" Surveillance Modules can do.

Spoiler: ARGUS-IS Surveillance platform

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This was with "OLD 2013 Camera Phone Tech". They can ID things as small as 6" on the ground & cover 15 mi² back then.

Imagine what they can do now in 2026 with MUCH more advanced modern optics & modern video codecs for storing data.

You can literally monitor a giant chunk of city and rewind the video feed on any portion of the area, observe people as they go about their lives as they're watched by ARGUS-IS mounted on a drone flying super high up in the atmosphere.

 

[gerritfaber]

i thought starships had probes for surveying planetary bodies in a star system, so no need to send a shuttle craft to do that job when a unmanned probe can do it. In starfleet probes are also retrievable and the ships seem to carry quite a number of those.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

i thought starships had probes for surveying planetary bodies in a star system, so no need to send a shuttle craft to do that job when a unmanned probe can do it. In starfleet probes are also retrievable and the ships seem to carry quite a number of those.

Most modern day probes have fairly limited sensors & compute on board compared to what can be found here on terrestrial Earth, especially compared to those sensors mounded on dedicated platforms like a ship or aircraft, or fixed installation on land.

The Power Output, Processing Power, Sensor Resolution all go up the larger of a platform you are on.

The good part about probes & satellites is that you can place them in advantageous positions to observe a target.

That's why you usually want to send probes for initial surveys but get more detailed images as you bring higher powered platforms to bear on the target.

That general rule shouldn't change too much moving into the future with more advanced tech.

The sensors that you can mount on probes/satellites will pale in comparison to a Shuttlecraft mounted one, which in turn will pale to the one mounted on a Starship, which in turn will pale to a Starbase or land facility.

Each platform will have it's role to play and you bring each one online as needed when you make scans.

 

[Vagabond Elf]

For my part, I think it's a factor that could vary greatly. If you're dealing with a culture (or perhaps several cultures) that don't like outside contact, or with whom contact might be limited due to things like the Prime Directive, then a shuttle or small craft might be more ideal than a capital ship. As a non-ship example, DS9 seemed to do pretty well with a small contingent of runabouts even though it seldom had any capital ship support (the Defiant was an exception of course).

Runabouts aren't really shuttles, though. To go back to my AWACS analogy, they're E-3s to the shuttles E-2s, or a camper van compared to a minivan. They're larger, they have small bunk areas for crew privacy, if memory serves they have small galleys - they're not as long term habitable as a true ship, but they're a lot more livable than a utility shuttle. A runabout's entire job is to be a small interstellar vessel, rather than a backup transporter. So it's not an apples-to-apples situation.

Now, okay, I can see situations where making the final approach in a shuttle is called for for diplomatic or cultural reasons. But that's hardly a day to day situation. Your shuttle is gone for a day, maybe two tops - remember, the actual flight time is only going to be 3 or 4 hours because no-one is going to launch a shuttle so far away from the system that it couldn't turn around if it had to, and your crew endurance limit is 8 hours, so you're not talking about sending the shuttle off for a week of travel. If the mission is longer than two days, the shuttle's probably not hanging around on the world.

Your cruiser is probably just hanging out in quick response range anyway, not doing anything else of note, so she probably won't need any shuttles while your diplomats are engaged; and even if she does, she's surely not going to need more than two, leaving one in reserve. The scenario is plausible and I might well steal it for fan fiction, but it doesn't speak to a need for building larger shuttle capacity into a ship.

The same logic applies to the unusual spacial phenomenon: it might well happen from time to time, but it's not a daily occurrence, and while you have crew stuck out there in a relatively slow, fragile, unconfortable box - which, again, is not going to be for more than 8 hours - the cruiser or surveyor that launched it is going to be standing by as close as possible just in case. They aren't going to be farting off to scan the gas giant on the other side of the system, so it doesn't matter that 25% of your small craft are employe don this mission. You need some shuttles aboard, in case the situation arises. You don't need an entire Cold War carrier air wing, because you almost never need more than one or two at a time.

Heck, even the Imperial Star Destroyer you mentioned doesn't carry more than a half-dozen utility craft, according to most sources. 72 TIE Fighters, sure (we're back to a Cold War aircraft carrier with that number, of course, and that was invented by WEG - I don't know that we've ever seen an ISD launch more than six TIEs on screen) but usually only 4-6 TIE shuttles or assault landers, and 0-2 Lambda transports.

The sensors that you can mount on probes/satellites will pail in comparison to a Shuttlecraft mounted one, which in turn will pail to the one mounted on a Starship, which in turn will pail to a Starbase or land facility.

Will they, though? The sensors on a modern recon drone don't pale (as in colourless or insubstantial, not pail as in bucket) compared to a Blackhawk or Griffon. The only real advantage the helos have over drones, in terms of information gathering ability, is that the crew is on-site and not watching through a remote camera.

In Star Trek, even the starship's sensors are feeding to displays, there's no "I'm here in person" advantage. Couple that with FTL coms and literally hundreds of people so you can have a dedicated driver for the probe, is the shuttle really going to have any meaningful advantage over the probe? I remain unconvinced.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Will they, though? The sensors on a modern recon drone don't pale (as in colourless or insubstantial, not pail as in bucket) compared to a Blackhawk or Griffon.

Depends on how high tech of a Drone Platform you're going with.
If you're using a Predator or Reaper Drone Platform, they're probably going to be very similar class EO sensor packages compared to what's mounted on a Blackhawk or Griffon.

But I'm talking about even cheaper Drone platforms, like the Scan Eagle and numerous Drone tech based off of CotS parts.
Those do not have sensors on the same caliber as a Predator or Reaper Drone, but the financial cost / lost isn't nearly as great.

The only real advantage the helos have over drones, in terms of information gathering ability, is that the crew is on-site and not watching through a remote camera.

And they can react to situations changing in real time or make adjustments to the mission on the fly based on what they're seeing.

In Star Trek, even the starship's sensors are feeding to displays, there's no "I'm here in person" advantage. Couple that with FTL coms and literally hundreds of people so you can have a dedicated driver for the probe, is the shuttle really going to have any meaningful advantage over the probe? I remain unconvinced.

The Shuttle along with the mother ship and various other shuttles/fighters/probes can expand your sensor network, that's part of the point.

You can be much further out with a Shuttle than a probe by itself and respond if necessary.

Say a opponent is messing with your probes at multiple locations, your one mother ship can't be in two places at once.

With numerous shuttles, they can usually take care of the situation and just report back to the mothership if need be.

The wider the sensor net and the more Shuttles / Fighters you have on the field, the more simultaneous responses you can do without having to expose the mothership unless absolutely necessary.

 

[mithril]

I wouldn't want to spend more than 8 to 12 hours in a standard shuttle. We can assume there's a head, but there's no bunks, no galley (at least in TOS, I don't know if we saw a replicator on a shuttle in TNG), and no privacy. It's a bus. How long are you willing to spend on a bus? An E-3A Sentry has 22 hours crew endurance, because it's big enough to have all these things. And E-2 Hawkeye's record flight time is just over 8 hours, because it doesn't.

the type 15's have to have at least a basic replicator, since Geordi had a drink in a somewhat fancy glass with him in his shuttlepod on the way to Risa in the opening for "The Minds Eye", and i don't think there was any chance he brought it with him when he left. the opening personal log by him says he's on a 3 hour trip to Risa*, so i'd guess he replicated something to drink while he sat out the trip.




*i can only assume that the enterprise just dropped him off on the edge of the system in the pod, since it didn't have warp capability. given that the enterprise never left krios but Geordi still rejoined them, i can only assume he and the pod hitched a ride on some other ship going towards krios.

 

[Unicron]

The funny part is, we see other episodes where it's implied the shuttlepods have some warp capacity even though it's been stated otherwise in dialogue ("Time Squared" specifically says they lack warp, but Data used a shuttlepod in "The Ensigns of Command" and one of the transformed crew used another in "Identity Crisis.")

Some of that could just be production convenience, as TNG only had a few shuttles built.

 

[Tosk]

though it's been stated otherwise in dialogue ("Time Squared" specifically says they lack warp

Not to split hairs, but Time Squared doesn't state that all shuttlepods lack warp. Riker says that "...the shuttle doesn't have warp capability". Plenty of canon-salving wiggle room to say that a pod class does not have a blanket rule regarding warp capability.