Depending on when exactly we make it, and assuming the great experiment is something of a success/not an outright failure, we could be incorporating an entirely new kind of engine operating on a different scale.
Congratulations, by the way.
Yeah, having multiple pods (if the modular pod idea kicks off and I do hope it does) would allow more flexibility then a single large pod. Even with just two pods would allow options like a cargo pod and a hospital pod for disaster relief while just normally carrying around two cargo pods normally.
Star Trek was advertised as a wagon train to the stars, so the next logical step is to go full on Ancient West and make a flying train, pulling along a number of general and more specialised pods from 'town' to 'town'!
Do my nerf football design from earlier, quad nacelles for speed and quad small cargo pods for cargo.
People laugh like you're joking. Building a hospital is absolutely the right move, and we've got the supplies to do it
About the only real issue is the large medical and chemical stocks required for a fully fledged hospital (since most of those can't just be fabricated like engineering components).
At that point, you're probably making comparison to a tugboat pulling cargo barges.
The really hard to manufacture bit is the doctors and nurses.
The problem with that idea is the need to go from wherever you are to wherever the triage pod is, grab the pod (and the doctors, who aren't going to be assigned to the pod, usually), and only then rush to the disaster site. That all takes time, and time is of the essence for this kind of thing.
mine as well. Those pods are roomy, you can do a LOT with that kind of space in terms of containerized infrastructure. We do this kind of thing in real life with shipping containers (or at least the formfactor) for all kinds of things, after all, and I can't see all the very smart fellows over at Starfleet failing to come up with something similar. Might even do some deck plans for such things later.
sure, but in terms of disaster response containerized infrastructure is extremely valuable, especially since you can, you know, leave it behind while a more mobile ship goes off to deal with the next crisis. Or if you have multiple such things happening at once and don't have enough hospital ships to cover all of them, a concern for the Federation given the fairly rapid expansion it is undergoing for the next... well, century, basically.
I actually like this idea. Just include space for an optional mount on all ships turns every warship into a peacetime ship too.
