Long-Range Shuttle Notes

For the longest time I have oppposed the thought that this is a "Vulcan-only" shuttle, now, for my own reasons, I must come to the conclusion that it is Vulcan-designed, at least.

Chiokis Starship Construction comes from Mr. Scott's Guide, where they are described as those who designed and built the similar Standard Shuttlecraft of the early Motion Picture era, which the TMP Blueprints describe this shuttle as being a larger version of. I don't know if the name comes from FASA, or if it is even meant to be Vulcan.

The date of service is my conjecture for increasing technology just prior to TMP.

The TMP Blueprints are the source for the "Performance Maximum Velocity" which I take to be emergency speed. Their listing of its hoped-for missions reads: "to relieve starships of such duties as personnel transfers, diplomatic courier missions and special equipment transports". The fact that we never saw it again led me to make up excuses for why it failed in these missions. (I am sure the real reason we didn't see it was not necessary enough for precious limited running time in any of the follow-on movies. If a TV series had followed TMP, I'm sure we would have seen many rendezvous with various shuttles, making it a true progenitor of DS9's Runabout.)

A magazine published this set of sketches by Andrew Probert for add-ons to the standard shuttlecraft

The long-range shuttle presumably has its own share of modules. It can at least dock to such habitable volume extenders as the Medical Unit seen above.

The Akyazi Class book notes that the Akula group ships (at least those built at Avondale) carries an emergency escape warp shuttle. This is the shuttle proper of the long-range shuttle mounted on a smaller warp drive sled (limited to warp 2) and docked to an extension module -smaller than the medical unit above- that has its own docking ring. It is carried externaly at the deck 3 docking port.