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Detaching the saucer a) keeps the entire crew together, b) provides a big shiny target for SAR ships' sensors to find and c) has much better firepower in case trouble shows up. Lifepods scatter people all over the place, provide small targets that could be hidden by terrain or foliage, and have zero tactical abilities.

So then lifepods for planets and saucer in space. Sounds like a good idea.

Saucers are better both ways, hence my point about it being easy to spot and being better armed.

But not all saucers can land. The connie's would flip like a coin and kill everyone in it before they even came to a halt. If you want to keep the saucer then just take the life pods and land near the saucer once its stopped moving.

Why go through all the buggering about of loading into lifeboats and launching, only to land right next to the saucer (assuming you don't get scattered over a wide area), when you can simply move into the saucer, use its far greater energy reserves to land, ensure you keep everyone together, and have plenty of equipment available to sustain yourselves until help arrives? Certainly some designs, like the Connie cn't be used like this, but if you've got the capability, use it.

I was more thinking of all the ones that can't be used. We would need a plan for them as well.

If th saucer can't be separated or can't be landed (like the Connie) then the lifeboats would be your only remaining option. Resorting to lifeboats when you've got a perfectly serviceable saucer is frankly stupid.

I fully agree.

I agree that having the ability to seperate is good but the amount of times it would be used would be next to none.

As I see it, the problems we saw with the saucer separation of the GCS were not ones of the idea, but with the implementation. In Generations, there really didn't seem to be much of a mechanism included to land the thing safely or easily; and in the show, we never got an indication of the available power, range, duration, or speed, much less how long it would have regarding life support, etc.

The restriction on max impulse speed would be lifted, I'm sure, for such an emergency situation, and top impulse would probably be greater for the saucer compared to an entire ship - same engines, much less mass. But all those other things have to be answered in order to call it a viable evac system.

I dont think you could land something that size and shape unless you devoted a rather large amount of space to it which is rather wasteful for something that may never be used. It doesnt really need to land. It has shuttles.

Then why separate at all?

To get away from the engineering section while still maintaining a good level of survivability.

But only if you're really close to a Starbase or another ship capable of evacuating 1,000 people, right? Part of having to ditch is having to get to safety. As I said, we don't know the duration of the flight or systems of the saucer, but we do know that it doesn't have warp. It is a temporary solution at best. If you can't land it, then I don't know if it's worth installing the system on a starship at all.

But whats the point of landing? They have shuttles and transporters if they need to move stuff. The Saucer is more than capable of living for a long time by its self. The benifit landing offers does not out way the costs of installing the system.