Shuttlecraft Construction

[Reliant121]

Probably the anti-matter/matter pellets.

[KuvahMagh]

It is a bit odd to contrast the limits seen in the Nemesis battle, the low torp loads of the E-D and Voyager, with the fierce battles in the Dominion War which lasted hours without ships running out of ammo. If the Torps are packed efficiently, you could pack a few thousand into a room the size of a cargo bay easily, so even Voyager could easily have a far greater torp load (40 could fit in a large walk-in closet)

A Large walk in Closet, no way, Torpedoes are bigger than this, you wouldn't get 40 in there.

[Blackstar the Chakat]

It is a bit odd to contrast the limits seen in the Nemesis battle, the low torp loads of the E-D and Voyager, with the fierce battles in the Dominion War which lasted hours without ships running out of ammo. If the Torps are packed efficiently, you could pack a few thousand into a room the size of a cargo bay easily, so even Voyager could easily have a far greater torp load (40 could fit in a large walk-in closet)

A Large walk in Closet, no way, Torpedoes are bigger than this, you wouldn't get 40 in there.

Sure you could. It might be a tight fit but you could fit 40 in there.

[Graham Kennedy]

USS Voyager was being sent into the Badlands for her first mission, not out into the great unknown, so how many replacement shuttle warp coils would she really be carrying?

For all we know the standard ships equipment includes 200 of the things.

I'm sure, that if the warp coils are the ONLY non replicatable part of the shuttle, over time, they MIGHT be able to construct a few aboard, but to design and built not one, but two Delta Flyers? The DF is faster than an average shuttle, and it dimensions are different so wouldn't it have to use different warp coils? And where would they build these things? Granted, they could do it in something the size of a garage, but on a ship the size of Voyager, space is limited. All the cargo bays (at least I would assume) would be in use for supply storage, and I think an Intrepid class starship only has one shuttlebay (I could be wrong though, honestly I just don't remember). So, if there were constructing it there, regular shuttle flight ops would be interfered with.

Well let's be clear - there's nothing whatsoever in canon that indicates that it's difficult to replicate warp coils. In fact that I know of, living matter is the ONLY thing that we have any canon statement of as being hard to replicate. I suggested warp coils as a difficult item purely because a lot of people seem to assume that they are, and to indicate that even that would be easy enough to work around.

We do know that you can replicate complex items. We have seen a Cardassian food replicator replicate a functioning beam weapon for instance, in "Civil Defense". We are told that they can replicate a functional computer system in "The Next Phase". Weapons and computers are likely amongst the most complex elements in a shuttle. About the only major system to rival it would be maybe the warp core itself.

Just my opinion, though

By the way, why would they ONLY equip a deep space exploration vessel with a magazine capacity of 38 photon torpedos? Seems rather low to me, considering she has four tubes.

I think it's based on the Galaxy class. Voyager is about half the length and so roughly six to eight times smaller in volume than a Galaxy, so they tended to scale things down by that sort of factor. So the Galaxy's 4.96 million ton mass in the TNG TM became 700,000 for Voyager. The crew of 1,000 scaled down to about 140, and the 250 photon capacity on the Galaxy became 38.

Photon magazine capacities on Starfleet ships are atrocious in my view. You could so easily put a few thousand photons on a Galaxy. It wouldn't even take up much space - gimme ten basketball court sized rooms one deck high and I will put 6,000 photons on a Galaxy.

Ultimately, I think they planned to have Voyager somewhat hampered by shortages of various kinds - shuttles, photons, etc. In the event they seem to have decided that they couldn't be bothered once they got going on the show.

[Graham Kennedy]

Right, time to settle this once and for all.

According to the TNG TM a photon torpedo casing is 210 cm long and 76 x 45 cm across. Although not canon, the TNG TM agrees with what we have seen on screen in terms of a photon tube being approximately coffin sized, so I will use these numbers.

A regulation basketball court is 28 metres long by 15 metres across. That means, in theory, you could fit 13 x 19 photons on it - 247 casings in all. However this is not ideal; it would mean you couldn't get at the casings at the back because of all the others in the way. Ideally, you need to be able to extract any individual casing from a full magazine so that you can inspect and maintain it. Given Trek technology I suppose you could always just beam casings in and out of the magazine, but let's be conservative.

So here's a basketball court. I've put four ranks of photon casings in, with aisles to get to any one of them. The aisles are as wide as a casing is long, so you can easily extract any photon casing and move it around.

As you can see for yourself, the court very comfortably accommodates 132 photon casings on a stack 1 deep.

As for how deep you can stack them. Deck heights generally vary on Starships. Voyager is 66 m high, and has 15 decks, so 4.4 metres. Other ships range from 3.33 metres on a Galaxy upwards. I've shown a 3.5 metre deck height here, but again have been conservative; the stack of 5 torpedoes is only 2.7 metres high, easily enough to fit within any known deck height.

So, we can safely say that a basketball court can hold 132 x 5 = 660 photon casings.

A basketball court is tiny compared to a Starship. Deck 10 of a Galaxy class could hold over three hundred basketball courts. On one deck!

[Sionnach Glic]

Well said, Graham.

[Aaron]

And people say minimalism is exclusive to SW.

[Reliant121]

Jesus bloody christ. they could literally have a bloody torpedo chain gun and not run out for ages if they werent conservative with their reloads.

[katefan]

There could be a couple reasons why the torpedo load was so low:

1) Ammunition is potentially dangerous and there might be regulations regarding just how much a ship is supposed to carry at any time.

2) There was not enough room for more than forty. A science vessel, Voyager might have committed a lot of space to probes and the like rather than offensive weaponry.

3) Voyager was not going far, just to the Badlands from DS9. Since she was not a warship it would have been a higher priority to make sure ships like Defiant and other dedicated warships received photon torpedos first.

4) you would not want to stack torpedos tightly, you would need to store them in such a way that they are easily accessable. Sure, you could transport them, but what if your transporters are disabled? You would not want your offensive weaponry dependent upon another system entirely.

[Aaron]

4) you would not want to stack torpedos tightly, you would need to store them in such a way that they are easily accessable. Sure, you could transport them, but what if your transporters are disabled? You would not want your offensive weaponry dependent upon another system entirely.

As we saw in TWOK, the autoloader for the torpedos took up a lot of room. Yet the magazine and loader in TUC was quite compact.

[Mark]

Geez Graham, when you make a point you make a point. Diagrams and all.

[Tsukiyumi]

Geez Graham, when you make a point you make a point. Diagrams and all.

Ain't it awesome? Get used to that.

[Graham Kennedy]

There could be a couple reasons why the torpedo load was so low:

1) Ammunition is potentially dangerous and there might be regulations regarding just how much a ship is supposed to carry at any time.

The refitted Deep Space Nine had 5,000 photon torpedoes.

2) There was not enough room for more than forty. A science vessel, Voyager might have committed a lot of space to probes and the like rather than offensive weaponry.

Voyager has in the region of 140,000 m^2 of deck space. If even one third of one percent of that area was given over to torpedo storage it would be able to have a magazine the size of the one I just depicted. For 38 casings the ship would have to devote only one fiftieth of one percent of its deck space to it. I find it beyond credibility that the ship was so short on space that it could not spare an extra couple of tenths of a percent to torpedoes.

3) Voyager was not going far, just to the Badlands from DS9. Since she was not a warship it would have been a higher priority to make sure ships like Defiant and other dedicated warships received photon torpedos first.

That could work for Voyager. However the number of 250 for the Galaxy was given during peacetime, and was for the flagship of the Federation. Surely the E-D would have been first in line for torps under those circumstances.

4) you would not want to stack torpedos tightly, you would need to store them in such a way that they are easily accessable. Sure, you could transport them, but what if your transporters are disabled? You would not want your offensive weaponry dependent upon another system entirely.

The layout I depicted allows access to any torpedo in the magazine. You could literally drive a forklift into that room and extract any of those casings.

The one explanation that I thought of originally was that casings could be easily replicated, and so a Starship essentially had an unending supply of them. Thus they only need to keep enough on hand for any particular engagement. After the battle you make a bunch more and replenish your magazine. That worked fine up until Chakotay claimed that you can't replicate photon casings. I guess the fact that Voyager fired ninety odd photons means they got around this limitation in time, but it wouldn't apply to the likes of the Enterprise before The Cloud.

Geez Graham, when you make a point you make a point. Diagrams and all.

I've argued about the pathetic torpedo capacity on Starships a number of times, and I always wanted to make a graphic to support it - a picture speaks a thousand words! Finally got around to it.

[Reliant121]

I think we can safely say that Graham owns argument.

[Mikey]

Perhaps Chakotay was referring to a tech limitation that had been overcome since he went ex-pat.