Moving shuttlecraft & runabi

[Shik]

Here I am looking through the DS9TM for a lark while stuffing frozen cookie plugs into my craw before bed, reading the Danube-class section where it talks about the design of the runabout launch & maintenance bays & something occurs to me: how in Cthulhu's name do they move the damned things? Or shuttlecraft for that matter?

In modern times, any craft like that are either self-taxied or towed by a small tractor, but this always involves the use of wheels, which these craft don't have...or do they? Perhaps they all have sliding panels on the bottom with retractable wheels behind them. But if so, how are they used? Do they just extend & lift the craft up so it can be rolled away? That seems a little off. Are there little antigravity Trek tractors that float along to tow them, mayhaps? (Which gives rise to an image of crew racing them in the larger shuttlebays...)

Possibly they have antigravity plates installed that allows them to hover. But again, how are they moved? Twelve guys lay their shoulders into it while one "drives"? I can't see use of impulse engines or even RCS thrusters in a bay to simply push the craft 50 meters or so. Large AG units stuck to the sides so the crews can float them along? AG plates that slide underneath & lift--upscaled versions of the smaller cargo trucks we've seen used? or maybe they detune the local gravity mat, but again--wasteful & inefficient.

I'm seriously having problems figuring this out. Yeah, we see shuttles & runabi at the ready all the time, but not ALL of them. We know they're put away in slots & bays for storage & maintenance. I just...motive power escapes me here.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

What's wrong with simply hopping in the cockpit, engaging antigrav, and tapping the ubiquitous four-directional LCARS thing?

We've seen examples of in-bay tractors locking onto stuff outside and drawing it in. Why not use that? And then let Wesley miniaturize it and take all the credit?

Mark

 

[F. King Daniel]

Into Darkness is the only time we've seen anything like this, with a gigantic crane in the shuttlebay to move shuttles between racks, or cargo.

Since there never seems to be any similar apparatus in TNG/DS9/VOY, I guess they just beam them wherever they need.

 

[Melakon]

If there's a runabout in a hangar/repair bay that can't move under its own power, I'd guess they're using some sort of portable tractor beam gizmo, or anti-grav assist whatchamacallits.

And apparently the topic-specific ads here are working fine, because when I opened this page, there was an ad for a local moving company.

 

[Timo]

Let's not forget the ubiquitous TNG warning signs about "VARIABLE GRAVITY AREA" on the shuttlebay sets. If an inert shuttle needs to be moved around, the problem isn't lack of means and methods, but an excessive number of those: indoors tractor beams, slap-on antigravs, adjusting of gravity in the room either across the whole bay or selectively along the path of the shuttle, slap-on aggregates to power up the inert shuttle for just enough oomph to hover from A to B...

The mechanical crane in STXI could be an artifact of the sorely behind-the-times Academy hangar. Perhaps this facility isn't just low priority, it's also a historical landmark (it is an old aviation hangar, after all ) with laws and regulations in place to preclude any modernization? The Sidewinder forklift might be there for the same reason... Either an allowed replica, or a multicentenarian original!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

People still use wheelbarrows.

Forklifts do not require mental contortions to justify.

 

[Timo]

No, but specific late 20th century brands sorta do.

We can pretend that a 21st century barcode reader isn't a barcode reader if we must, but it becomes more difficult when the items in question become larger or more identifiable. Kirk's ancient suitcase from "This Side of Paradise" yells at us to accept it as a family heirloom or a fashionable replica, even if generic electric drill carry-cases suitably taped up to look futuristic might be accepted as being of 24th century manufacture and design... And when we get to entire vehicles, it's simply not plausible to say they look like specific 20th century hardware by pure chance.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[HIjol]

Picturing a wheel-less "bedded" apparatus, larger but not unlike the hospital bed that goes by the screen in the early part of STID...seems to have been anti-grav, or at least re pulsar-like technology...

...or maybe tribbles coated with 23/24 century Teflon...

...or maybe not

 

[F. King Daniel]

No, but specific late 20th century brands sorta do.

We can pretend that a 21st century barcode reader isn't a barcode reader if we must, but it becomes more difficult when the items in question become larger or more identifiable. Kirk's ancient suitcase from "This Side of Paradise" yells at us to accept it as a family heirloom or a fashionable replica, even if generic electric drill carry-cases suitably taped up to look futuristic might be accepted as being of 24th century manufacture and design... And when we get to entire vehicles, it's simply not plausible to say they look like specific 20th century hardware by pure chance.

Timo Saloniemi

Sometimes a suitcase is just a suitcase, and a forklift is just a forklift.

 

[Shik]

What's wrong with simply hopping in the cockpit, engaging antigrav, and tapping the ubiquitous four-directional LCARS thing?
Mark

Until someone drives through a wall. Or toasts the paint on the opposite site of the thrust exhausts.

 

[Timo]

Driving through the wall is a problem with tug-tractors, too (ITRW, that is)... Why should the craft be less controllable from the cockpit than from some slapped-on antigrav's control board?

We have seen the runabouts very precisely parked in some episodes. Fitting them onto the hangar roof/elevator takes some precision to begin with. In contrast, the TOS shuttles had seemingly excessive deck space around them, and in TOS-R we saw them taking off like helicopters in severe crosswind. Now those would have benefited from some sort of a tug or tractor or catapult!

(Perhaps they did have a catapult, or a RAST system of sorts? That is, the dark line on the bay floor that guides the model forward towards the doors might be a "non-artifact", a real RAST rail vital for the safe launching of those craft. But we don't see such lines criscrossing the deck for post-recovery reshuffling purposes...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shik]

Have we actually seen any form of AG drive in use, though? Or has it been mentioned? MA sayeth nyet. That being the case, & knowing how propulsive tech works in this universe, I still have problems with someone firing up particle beam thrusters or fusion rockets in an enclosed space just to move a craft some 20 meters. Logic.

 

[Nebusj]

Have we actually seen any form of AG drive in use, though? Or has it been mentioned? MA sayeth nyet.

Well, we know they have antigravity units: Kirk and Spock slap them onto Nomad to move it around more easily, and Kirk and Garrovick use one to haul around the cobalt bomb. The latter even works on a planet surface, so it's not just a thing that tells the Enterprise deck plates to turn off in this area.

There are … issues … with making a gravity-free zone (see Asimov, ``The Billiard Ball''); but, given the way we see it working, and that it can be set up in handheld units, it's hard to think of a clear reason that it wouldn't be used for hauling big, bulky things like shuttlecraft around.

 

[T'Girl]

Have we actually seen any form of AG drive in use, though?

To move a shuttle or runabout I personally think they would use a large version of the thing we saw outside of engineering during TMP.

Outside of a doorway we saw a crewman with a small floating pallet, he was holding a control of some kind, there was a physical cord connecting the control to the floating pallet.

To move a shuttle, you would place an appropriate number and sized AG units on the shuttle, lift it, use the AG's to move the shuttle (they move it, not you physically. If they can lift up, they can lift sideways), maneuver it where you want it, lower it, put the AG's back in a locker.

 

[Shat Happens]

I have no problem accepting there's a version of this thing in the Star Trek universe.

 

[scotpens]

To move a shuttle, you would place an appropriate number and sized AG units on the shuttle, lift it, use the AG's to move the shuttle (they move it, not you physically. If they can lift up, they can lift sideways) . . .

On what do you base that assumption? Gravity works in one direction -- down. I figure that antigravity works in one direction -- up.

Back when Trek TOS had its original network run, I imagined shuttlecraft maintenance crews slapping those portable antigrav units on the sides of a shuttle, levitating the craft a foot or so, and manhandling it around the maintenance deck. Probably one person at each corner for control and stability.

I'm seriously having problems figuring this out. Yeah, we see shuttles & runabi at the ready all the time, but not ALL of them.

What are "runabi"? Is that the plural of "runabus"?

 

[T'Girl]

On what do you base that assumption?

On screen evidence.

Nomad weighted 1,100 pounds, after attaching a couple of anti-gravs, Kirk and Spock moved Nomad easily. It wasn't a case of them having to "put their backs into it," The two had their hands on the AGs handles the whole time, I believe pressure on the handles were controlling the lateral movements of the AGs

It was the AGs that were moving Nomad's mass, not Kirk and Spock's muscles.

 

[Shik]

Tetchy. AG units have always been shown as floaty, not movey. In order to have an AG drive, you'd have to turn it sideways (the Wraith shuttles from Prime Directive & their "controlled bouncing" not withstanding), as far as Nomad goes, I think they were moving it but also making sure it didn't get away or fall down go boom if it fried its brains on the spot.

And yes, scotpens, "runabi" is the quirkier plural of runabout, because many years ago friends & I agreed that "runabouts" sounds weird.

 

[scotpens]

Nomad weighted 1,100 pounds, after attaching a couple of anti-gravs, Kirk and Spock moved Nomad easily. It wasn't a case of them having to "put their backs into it," The two had their hands on the AGs handles the whole time, I believe pressure on the handles were controlling the lateral movements of the AGs

It was the AGs that were moving Nomad's mass, not Kirk and Spock's muscles.

The antigravs don't have to generate lateral force; they only have to nullify inertia, making it possible to move any object with equal ease regardless of mass.

Of course, cancelling inertia is impossible according to our current knowledge of physics. But then, so are antigravity, transporters and warp drive.

And yes, scotpens, "runabi" is the quirkier plural of runabout, because many years ago friends & I agreed that "runabouts" sounds weird.

Do you think knockabouts, roundabouts, roustabouts, whereabouts, walkabouts, gadabouts, and layabouts sound weird? Just curious.

 

[Timo]

On what do you base that assumption? Gravity works in one direction -- down. I figure that antigravity works in one direction -- up.

But there is no up in space. The deck plates of a starship create pull in a completely arbitrary direction, and OTOH negate the pull from the deck directly above, again in a completely arbitrary direction. And tractor beams can hold objects at an arbitrary 3D position by creating the right balance of push and pull (with gravitics, sez the TNG Tech Manual, although YMMV).

Just because there happens to be another gravity manipulation device around (or perhaps a natural gravity source), we don't have an a priori reason to assume that other devices couldn't do their own thing, in different directions of their own choosing.

Many a hovering thing in Trek moves around without using rocket thrust in any direction - or then the thrust is invisible and doesn't hurt anybody, which is good enough for our purposes. Heck, we don't even know if impulse drive involves exhaust, save for the "tailpipe" sort.

Timo Saloniemi