So there are several sources of information on different starships from the Robert April era onward, especially after Kirk. And there is SOME information (mostly from Enterprise) about the pre-Federation era. Some books fill in a little about the Romulan war. Is there are extant information about what starships are functional in the period between Enterprise and TOS? I'm looking to run an RPG set in that era, and right now all I know is that the Daedalus is retired just before 2200 and the NX class was the next big thing.
The only canon ships are the Kelvin, and that ship model in Sisko's office. And there is some doubt about the one in the office, although I take it as actual.
Ah, yes, the Kelvin. If we speculate the life of a starship is maybe 50 years, the Kelvin could have been brought into service around the turn of the 23rd century. It would have been getting long in the tooth by the movie, but it didn't exactly look state of the art.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/steven.bacon/vintage_starships. May not be canon, but this is an excellent look at a believable "prequel" to TOS.
The old 1979 Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology book has some pre-TOS ship designs. DC comics used one of them, the Baton Rouge-class, as Kirk previous command, the USS Saladin. I'd also suggest that the Kelvin kitbashes seen in STXI (Newton, Mayflower, Armstrong etc - all built from the same components), or at least their classes, are as old as the Kelvin.
Yeah, basically the name "Daedalus" is canon (and the Essex, the ship that class was reffering to in TNG's "Power Play"). However, there's no true canon evidence that the ship with the spherical primary hull is a Daedalus class ship, despite what the ST Encyclopedia says. Of course most people connect the two anyway, so it's up to you what to believe. It was stated (and shown) in the Star Trek '09 documentaries on the BluRay that the Kelvin was already an old ship by the start of the movie. I don't know if it would be as old as 50 years, though. I would disagree, if only because their registry numbers were far higher than the Kelvin's...unless those particular ships were the brand-newest ships in existence (one ship's reigstry is even higher than the nuEnterprise's, so that's possible) As far as any other canon ships go, here's what I came up with: 1. The "warp 7 beauties" Malcolm Reed speaks of in TATV (but that we unfortunately didn't see...obviously these were the successors to the NX-class). 2. Various DY-class ships that were in operation both before and after the formation of the Federation, although there's no evidence that Starfleet used DY-class ships. 3. The old "Class-J" training starships with the baffle plate problems that Pike was injured aboard. I would prefer that Harry Mudd's "Class-J cargo ship" was NOT the same type of ship as the Starfleet training vessel. 4. The Horizon, the Archon, and the Valiant, all pre-TOS Starfleet vessels, none of which have canonical class designations (The former two ships being Daedalus class is from the Encyclopedia).
We can probably assume that the Kelvin seen in NuTrek would have it's Prime counterpart. The way I see it, there could have been several Constitution prototypes before the series that included Defiant, Constellation and Enterprise. If you look at it from an "in-universe" perspective, you can imagine the NX class slowly gradually evolving into the Constitution class.
...Most of the popular noncanon sources don't assume an evolution from NX-01 to NCC-1701, though - because most of them were created before ST:ENT was. RPGs and fan fiction feature numerous ship types for these intervening years. One popular type quoted by several RPGs, including the modern but sadly abortive ones from the past two decades (Last Unicorn and Decipher), is the Ranger, an ovoid-hulled design derived from Matt Jeffries's old drawings and sort of spanning the gap between the Daedalus (the sphere-and-can take on it, anyway) and Kirk's Enterprise. Many sources also speak of the Horizon class, although each has a different take on what she might have looked like. The "Vintage Starships" page covers such things nicely enough; another place to look from is Steve Pugh's old page: http://steve.pugh.net/fleet/early.html One can also browse through Jim Stevenson's collection and hunt for "pre-TOS" ships through the handy filter function: http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/federation_data.php?filter=PTOS Anything with a "bibliography" entry there is worth having a look at: even if the original art itself happens to be uninspiring to the modern eye, it probably has inspired at least some fans or Trek employees in its time, and might be connected to surprising noncanon and canon appearances... Or it might end up inspiring you! Timo Saloniemi
Really? I thought it made sense that an old Class-J (side note: the same as the J-class freighter seen in ENT?) would be used as a cadet training vessel.
If you don't mind something that is non-canon, and ignores Star Trek: Enterprise, then I highly recommend this site: http://www.starfleet-museum.org/ Some very excellent work to be found there.
I think you misunderstood me. I believe that there are three distinct ships with the name "Class-J" or "J-Class." The ENT freighter, the old Starfleet training vessel, and Harry Mudd's cargo ship. As has been shown on several occasions (most famously with the "Antares class"), Starfleet, the Federation, civilian authorities, and even aliens can have the same class designations for their ships. That doesn't mean it's the same ship. The freighter seen in ENT seemed to be the property of the Mayweather family (or at least under the auspices of the ECS), and there's really no reason why Starfleet would need to add them to it's fleet (if it even had the authority to do so). Similarly, I have a hard time believing that Harry Mudd would own a ship that was formerly Starfleet property, regardless of how old it was. So I believe that the Class-J training starship was a different ship entirely.
But militaries do possess their own freighters - cargo ships. I would imagine that Earth Starfleet would need dozens, if not hundreds, for the Romulan War. Ammunition (torpedo) carriers, tankers, personnel transports, general logistics. After the war, and as Starfleet upgraded to faster freighters, the older models could be sold into civilian service. There are still frieghters in use today that date back to the second world war, on backwater runs. A century old ship during the TOS era wouldn't be impossible.
But again, these freighters do not belong to the Earth Starfleet. They belong to the Earth Cargo Service, which ENT made perfectly clear is NOT a part of Starfleet. Furthermore, they seem to also be privately owned by families. Unless Starfleet bought them from the Mayweathers et. al (or pressed them into service against the will of their owners), there'd be no reason why Starfleet would own them in the first place. But would a 100-year-old freighter be a viable vessel for a Starfleet cadet training ship?
Nothing suggests the Boomers would have built their own ships. Whoever builds them, Starfleet can buy from him just as well as the Boomers can. And Starfleet does need transports, and it's not as if we'd a) see other available designs besides the Boomer ones b) see faults in the Boomer ships that would make them unsuited for Starfleet work. As for ancient freighters being good training ships, my vote is a solid yes. Cadet training ships in general need to be capacious floating barracks, with the basics and fundaments of (spatial) navigation in place, but without too many class-specific bells and whistles to confuse the students. No need to listen to my vote, though. Many cadet training ships today are century-old freighters, or replicas thereof. Or then there is a category, the J class, that encompasses dozens if not hundreds of designs spanning several centuries. Timo Saloniemi
You have a point there. Sorry, while that might be true of the real-life military, I just don't see a fictitious interstellar military from 300 years in the future going by the same rules. For the purposes of my post however, I was referring only to the differences between the three ships that were actually referred to as such in dialogue.
Why? Okay. If not for TOS-R, all three could well have been identical in design. With TOS-R visuals for "Mudd's Women", the designation must somehow be shared by at least two designs. Timo Saloniemi
Because, fictitiousness aside, spacecraft aren't the same as seagoing vessels. Do I need to elaborate further? But again, you're implying that Mudd's ship (TOS or TOS-R versions) is the same as the Starfleet cadet training ship just because they share the same class name. There's a Starfleet Antares class, and there's a Bajoran Antares class. Clearly they are not the same ship.
Ford's F-Series trucks originated back to the year 1948. It is currently in it's twelfth generation (2008–present). They come in different configurations, and with different engines. This might be the same story with the J-Class freighters, a on-going line of commercial spacecraft that that originated in the 22nd century, and are perhaps still being produced well into the 25th century.