Escape pod
In spacecraft classification, an escape pod (also known as an evacuation pod, evacuation shuttle, life boat, life craft, life pod, or rescue pod) was a type of auxiliary space vessel found aboard most starships used in the event the crew needed to leave the ship, particularly in an emergency.

Noted uses

21st century
Escape pods were not limited to spacecraft. When the submarine  sank beneath an ice shelf after striking a mine, her crew managed to make use of escape pods, owing in part to the sacrifice of Malcolm Reed's great uncle, who remained in her engine room to keep her reactor online. ()

In April 2063, when the  was occupied by Borg after traveling back in time, her auto-destruct sequence was engaged, and her escape pods launched toward Earth. ()

22nd century
In 2143, upon surviving the destruction of the NX-Alpha, Commander A.G. Robinson made Starfleet record books for being the first to deploy an escape pod at warp, remarking that the pod itself would "make a nice addition to the Starfleet Museum." ()

In August of 2151, Shaw suggested using an escape pod from aboard the Earth Cargo Service freighter  to get rid of the Nausicaan prisoner, but Matthew Ryan was concerned the prisoner could be picked up by the other pirates and warn them to alter their shield modulation. ()

Later that year, T'Pol noted that Klingons considered the use of escape pods to abandon ship cowardly, and some Klingon starships, such as the Raptor class, lacked them. () However, other contemporary Klingon vessels, such as Goroth's, and subsequent ones, such as the K'Vort class, did possess them. (, )

In 2152, Charles Tucker III and Kaitaama utilized an escape pod to flee a Retellian freighter, and landed on an oceanic planet. Tucker compared the size of the pod to that of his first car. ()

In 2154, Commander Shran ordered the crew of the Kumari to the escape pods, after the vessel was critically damaged by a Romulan drone ship posing as a Tellarite vessel. ()

In 2155, the crew of the  was forced to use the ship's escape pods, after it was trapped in a Tholian web in the mirror universe. ()

23rd century
In May 2256, at the Battle of the Binary Stars, personnel of both the  and the  evacuated their severely damaged starships in escape pods. ()

In 2263 of the alternate reality, Captain  ordered the remaining crew on board the damaged  to use the escape and Kelvin pods to flee the damaged ship before it crash landed on Altamid. ()

In 2265, when the  located a disaster recorder near the galactic barrier that had been ejected from the  two hundred years previously, Spock noted that it wasn't even large enough to be a lifeboat. ()

In 2293, the location of lifeboat hatches was labeled on the MSD of the . ()

24th century
After the Federation freighter Odin was disabled by an asteroid collision in 2357, three of her rescue pods carried four crewmembers at sublight speed for over five months before reaching Angel I. One of the survivors, , described the duration as "an eternity." ()

In 2366, Roga Danar used an escape pod from a stolen Angosian police shuttle, in an attempt to elude the . ()

Later that year, "John Doe" used a Zalkonian vessel to flee persecution for his slow transformation to a higher being, departing the ship in an escape pod before it was destroyed by his pursuers. ()

During the Battle of Wolf 359, Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Sisko, his son, and others evacuated the doomed  in escape pods. ()

In 2367, the crew of the Arcos used escape pods when they abandoned their ship above Turkana IV. ()

In 2368, when the USS Enterprise-D was trapped in a temporal causality loop, Commander William T. Riker ordered all hands to emergency escape pods after the ship was clipped by the . The order ended up being repeated several times with each iteration of the loop, until it was broken. ()

In 2369, a Bajoran transport carrying the Bajoran criminal Ibudan conducted a lifeboat drill on stardate 46383, according to a personal calendar file reviewed by Odo while conducting an investigation into Ibudan's murder. ()

In 2370, Ensign Sito Jaxa was reportedly killed in a Federation evacuation pod, when she tried to return to the USS Enterprise-D after her mission – to bring back the Cardassian Joret Dal, who previously came aboard the ship in an escape pod – succeeded. ()

In 2371, when the  was disabled by a metreon radiation surge, Captain Lisa Cusak and Commander Gatsby evacuated in an escape pod. However, it was torn open on impact, and Gatsby was killed. ()

That same year, when the  was attacked by the Dominion and boarded by Jem'Hadar soldiers, her crew apparently readied her escape pods and prepared to abandon ship. () In fact, they were captured while still aboard, put through an elaborate simulation on the Founders' homeworld, and eventually returned. () The escape pods would later be used, this time in actuality, when the vessel was destroyed by the Breen in 2375. ()

In 2374, several crew members from the  used escape pods to leave the ship when it was being attacked by Cardassian forces. At least three pods detached from the Honshu before its destruction. ()

Later that year, the  deployed four escape pods before being destroyed by a Jem'Hadar battleship. Only one of the pods survived. ()

The following year, after the  was destroyed by a Jem'Hadar patrol, the  recovered six escape pods from the vessel. Another pod, carrying Worf, drifted into the Badlands, eventually being found by the . Ezri Dax suggested that the acoustics in the pod would have been favorable to singing, and Worf reluctantly admitted that he had indeed passed the time by singing the Klingon opera Gav'ot toH'va. ()

In 2376, during a survey of a class T cluster designed to provide away mission experience to a number of junior  crew members, Crewman Mortimer Harren deliberately piloted an escape pod from the  so as to lure away dark matter lifeforms that had been pursuing the Flyer. ()

In 2377, a corrupted holographic representation of Reginald Barclay unsuccessfully attempted to abduct Seven of Nine, on behalf of Ferengi led by Nunk, by flying one of the 's escape pods into a geodesic fold. ()

Later that year, while trying to fend off a  attack, Harry Kim came up with an ingenious plan to mask the life signs of the remaining crew in the briefing room, ejecting three escape pods which actually contained photon torpedoes. When the Quarren ship tractored them in, these were detonated, and the Quarren ships were disabled. ()

32nd century
In 3189, after Tal's ship collided with an asteroid, the survivors evacuated the ship aboard an evacuation shuttle. One of the survivors was Adira who had been implanted with the symbiont  before she departed from the ship. The shuttle was found by a rescue ship. ()

Escape pod types 
 Andorian escape pod – Kumari
 Angosian escape pod
 Cardassian escape pod
 Hauze's ship escape pod
 Kantare escape pod
 Kelvan life craft
 Klingon escape pods:
 22nd century escape pod – Goroth's starship, Bird-of-Prey
 K'Vort-type escape pod – 
 Starfleet escape pods:
 NX-type escape pod – , 
 Constitution-type escape pod (2258) – 
 313-C
 Constitution-type escape pod (2263) – 
 Kelvin pod – 
 Nimitz-type escape pod – , , 
 Antares type escape pod – Arcos
 Miranda-type escape pod – 
 10
 17
 Intrepid-type escape pod – , , 
 Sovereign-type escape pod – 
 H-46
 H-47
 H-48
 H-49
 H-50
 H-925
 H-926
 Delta Flyer escape pod –  attached to 
 Retellian escape pod
 Tesnian escape pod
 V'draysh escape pod
 Xindi-Aquatic escape pod
 Zalkonian escape pod
 Zibalian escape pod

See also 
 Lifeboat station

Appendices

Appearances
:

Background information 
According to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (p. 174), escape pods were also referred to as "Autonomous Survival and Recovery Vehicles", or ASRV, on Starfleet and Federation spacecraft. It was also stated that the cube-shaped escape pods of the Galaxy-class starship were capable of docking together to form large arrays in order to pool resources, though this design and feature was never seen on screen.

External links 
 
 
de:Rettungskapsel
ja:脱出ポッド
Spacecraft classifications