Runabouts are small starships for personal transport over longer distances than a shuttlecraft. The Danube-class runabouts are equipped with an interchangeable mission module and an optional photon torpedo module at the top of the spacecraft. The ships which have been introduced in 2368 are usually named after rivers on the planet Earth.
Though probably not more than three runabouts are assigned to DS9 at a time, at least ten of them were lost. Most of the ship names have been mentioned.
The speed of Warp 4.7 is taken from the DS9 Writer's Bible. As with the shuttles too, there is the porblem that the runabout would need months for a distance that starships could bridge in a few days. Traveling from DS9 to Earth in a runabout, as shown several times, would be very impractical, even though the distance is only about 50 lightyears. At least one on-screen reference supports the maximum speed of Warp 4.7, though. In DS9: "Dax", Kira searches for ships that could outrun a runabout, and specifically mentions a lower limit of Warp 5.
Runabouts may be modified with an additional torpedo pod. |
