Distracted wrote:I've got some questions for you technophiles out there. What's the power source of the Enterprise NX-01 era shuttlecraft?
The impulse ractor(s). As discussed in the TNG Technical Manual, this is the secondary method of power production on a starship, but on a shuttle that wouldn't have a warp core anyway, the impulse reactor would provide more than enough energy to run its systems as well as providing the plasma exhaust used to propel it.
What type of engine does it have and what is the fuel source?
A scaled down version of the impulse engines used on board starships. The fuel used is the same deuterium used as the matter source in the warp reaction.
Would Romulan shuttles have a different power source than Earth or Vulcan shuttles?
Possibly but unknown. It is only established that in later eras all starships in that area have essentially the same type of impulse drives, which use superheated plasma created in the impulse reactors to propel the ship at sublight speed.
What sort of distances would a shuttle be capable of traveling without refueling?
Also unknown.
Shuttlepod One established that eventually the shuttle would have reached the distant beacon they were trying for, several weeks later, just that their life support, which at the time was just fine, would've only lasted around 10 days. Starships carry quite a bit of deuterium, as their tanks according to the canon cutaway diagrams all seem to be consistantly at least 3 decks tall and maybe 100 meters or so long at the very least, depending on the size of the ship at least. I don't think their feul consumption is very high though, as Voyager went something like 3 years before it was forced to refuel, but as contrived as the episode was that actually showed them doing that was, well, I don't put much stock in it. I'd guess that it would take a good 5 years for most starships to run bone dry, but since they usually put in at bases more frequently than that they simply top off at those times.
What fuel does an ion drive engine run on?
Elecricity. Ion drives are basically like the tube from an old TV set, but without the screen. Ion drives are pretty great for sending probes off to distant locations in our day in age, especially because eventually they can propel said probes to nearly the speed of light because it is essentially always accellerating. The drawback is that payload has to be extremely limited because they aren't all that strong, and that it takes them a very, very long time to accelerate. At least that's my understanding of them, but keep in mind that I'm only an engineering student with a fascination in aerospace, and not the real thing.