According to most calculators I can see online, we're looking at about a month at warp 5, or around 15 days at warp 6. I think a traditional "shuttle" wouldn't be up to the task - you'd want a vessel with bunks and space to walk around, at the very least.
this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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I think a traditional “shuttle” wouldn’t be up to the task - you’d want a vessel with bunks and space to walk around, at the very least.
They can probably do it in a pinch. In Relics, Scotty is given a shuttle to roam around in, and it's doubtful that the Enterprise would have given him one if it was something that would only be capable of short-range operation.
But normally, I'd imagine that you'd just rendezvous with a starship, who would take you the rest of the way, with or without the shuttle, which would get close enough, and then you'd either have another ship, or use another shuttle to get you the rest of the way.
Sort of like a car using a ferry.
Yeah, if you go back and watch the video I posted on YouTube, the welcome message that plays when you’re in line specifically says shuttle. It would’ve made more sense if they were runabouts but there’s no evidence that runabouts are even used during the period of Picard season 3.
Based on what I can remember from DS9, runabouts are faster and generally used for longer trips.
EDIT: Is the Federation even adhering to the warp five speed limit anymore? I know it doesn’t get addressed after “Force of Nature”, but is there anything suggesting that the speed limit has been dropped completely by the 25th century?
EDIT 2: The site I linked says 28.19 days.
EDIT: Is the Federation even adhering to the warp five speed limit anymore? I know it doesn’t get addressed after “Force of Nature”, but is there anything suggesting that the speed limit has been dropped completely by the 25th century?
Nothing explicit, though there's behind-the-scenes materials. The nacelles on the Intrepid-class were designed to mitigate that for example, but that never made it on-screen.
On-screen, we just know that warp engines didn't significantly change, and that the Enterprise was able to exceed those speeds after a bit, so it was presumably fixed behind the scenes.
I think the word "shuttle" could plausibly be applied to long-range, low-capacity transports - maybe even something as large as the USS Raven.
Is the Federation even adhering to the warp five speed limit anymore?
I just assume they've fixed that issue.
I mean, today, we use shuttle pretty broadly, to refer to anything from buses to a space vehicle that went to the ISS.
Not everyone works in Starfleet, so civilians might have a different definition of shuttle.
Yeah, I think in terms of a regularly scheduled passenger transport, something like a runabout or even larger could be considered a "shuttle" by civilian standards.
Voyager's "variable geometry pylons" were designed to allow greater than warp 5 travel without the damage to subspace. It's also entirely possible that Starfleet adapted the borg technology from the Delta Flyer to increase the travel speed of shuttles. The warp scale is logarithmic so even a fraction of a point increase can shave significant portions of time off a trip.