i swear, this is just like picard/janeway asking la'forge/torres and when the options are presented, they argue over them.
what about the other option, extracting the engines and using those? rthe only parts of the shuttles that have to be intact are the engines, nothing more.
edit to avoid multiposting: better yet, dont the shuttles also have some sort of antigravity generators, similar to the cruiser? again, that option only requires one part per shuttle to be done.