aridas sofia said:My theory was based on the notion that the original complement of embarked craft was four --
two maintenance sleds
Aldrin 1701/1
Borman 1701/2
one short range (TOS) shuttle
Columbus 1701/3
and one intership (predecessor to the Phase 2) shuttle
Drake 1701/4
They then add one long range shuttle (the original Galileo design)
Ericsson 1701/5
And later add another intership shuttle
Faraday 1701/6
and another short-range shuttle
Galileo 1701/7
When we pick up the story, during TOS, there are seven. Later, during TAS, some are swapped out and replaced by different shuttlecraft.
The ID scheme is Terranglo-alphabetical, but as time passes the link between letter and type gets lost.
That seems like an AWFUL lot of large vessels to carry in what is, honestly, a pretty small hangar space.
(I tend to ignore the conventional definition of the landing bay as the "hangar bay" since a hangar is, by definition, where a ship is STORED, not where it's launched from. The "hangar bay" is below the shuttlecraft landing bay. That's where the ships are stored.)
If you try putting all those ships into the available space...and bear in mind that you have to deal with ceiling height, not just floor space... you'll take up a huge amount of the available volume of the secondary hull, won't you?
2 "short-range" shuttles
2 "maintenance sled" shuttles (no idea what these look like, mind you)
2 "intership shuttles" (you mention it as being similar to the "phase 2 shuttle? If you mean the "wedge" shuttlecraft, well, those are HUGE)
1 "long-range" shuttle (which you say is like the "original" Galileo design... I presume you mean Matt Jeffries' original aircraft-like sketch?)
Also, bear in mind that for a hangar, you need "taxiing room" to be able to move the various ships around to get to the elevator leading up to the landing bay.
Okay, the "maintenance sleds" are what... the equivalent of work-bees?
I actually like the "workbees under the red rectangle" that you see in the current "ships of the line" calendar a lot. That arrangement is the only one I've seen that really makes much sense, either for the rectangle or for the need for maintenance craft.
The original Matt Jeffries sketch is actually a much smaller ship than the final TOS shuttle design we got. It's more reminiscent of a Piper Super Cub or a little Cessna than anything else... hardly what I'd consider a good "long range" design, as compared to the TOS shuttlecraft. I might be inclined to consider this the TOS equivalent of a "shuttlepod" but not as something superior in range or capability to the TOS shuttle.
I'm just trying to figure out (1) what the ships you're talking about actually ARE, and (2) how you'd manage to fit all of that into what is, honestly, a pretty limited space (especially when you consider that the TOS shuttle is, per this thread at least, increasing from 24 feet up to something more like 30 feet).
