Probably a stupid question, but I can’t remember, has anyone brought up the German Tank Problem in relation to the issue?
Jaeger was (as stated) a meteorologist not a historian, so relying on him for an accurate assessment of the historic periodic of the decor is dubious at best (especially when our heroes tend to lump all pre-21st century dates under the catchall of "old Earth"). You bring up an interesting point - Trelane's planet is indeed mobile (as demonstrated when the Enterprise attempts to flee it) so we don't even have a reliable means to measure distance from the Earth, even assuming that his observations are limited to that of the lightspeed.
Not only that, but there are very futuristic things in that decor like a "stuffed" salt monster. Did that exist on Earth? Also, are Trelane's observations really limited to lightspeed? Afterall, he beamed off both Sulu and Kirk from the Enterprise that was passing by at Warp 3.
I like to think that the NCC numbers come from the time the class is conceived. Maybe the Crossfield Class was conceived shortly around the same time as the Bonaventure but wasn't actually built until 50 years later. Hence why they are both 1000 series ships.
That makes sense if the new CBS show is considered. But then, that would still seem to assume that the Constellation originally looked like the Bonaventure. To those who read my original post, perhaps the registry system was different in the Bonaventure's time. But I consider TOS material to be the most authoritative, except that it only includes info needed for the story and thus I supplement my interpretation with TNG-era stuff. In other words, lacking clear indication of what registry numbers mean from the small amounts of data from TOS/TAS/movies, I try to use TNG-era registries to look for a pattern. It is entirely possible TNG uses a different registry system. But without using all that extra data to look for a pattern, it would be very hard to find the original system, especially since there is debate over the Greg Jein vs. Franz Jospeh registries. On that note, I presume the Franz Jospeh registries to be those planned by Star Fleet, and the Greg Jein ones are what actually turned out to be when the ships were built. In that way, both are Star Trek canon to me. It's another way to get a data point.
I’m going with the new version of the Bonaventure class shown in the ship of the line calendar, rather than the TAS one with my reasoning. I’m not really a big fan of the TAS design.
Can you point to what year and month? Are you talking about the NCC-1000 design that looks like an NX-class ship from Enterprise but with only one hull extension, instead of two, and a more TOS-like hull patterning? In that case, it is entirely possible the ship looked like that when it had only hyperdrive, and then was updated to the look it had during TOS when it got "warp" drive. That might also explain the use of the word "installed," referring to the installation of a secondary hull.
If we go with the idea that both the NCC-10xx and NCC-17xx series of hulls are issued to the Sol System, than we have various options. A. The Sol yards took out two hundred contracts in preperation for several new classes of starships in a relative short period of time, even if it would be a decade or two before all the contracts were filled. B. USS Constitution has a much older number like USS Constellation, and USS Enterprise and several other ships of that class build in the Sol System were ordered in a later batch. C. Sometimes a ship class is planned for a larger run and the next class to come up starts with a hull number after that planned number. However sometimes the class doesn't get ordered at that number, so some hull numbers go unused. Could a 10xx class have been planned to 18 hulls, but only ordered 16 hulls, but the following class took say 1018+ hulls. Thus later an extra Constitution-class ship gets ordered and instead of a new 17xx number, Starfleet goes back and picks 1017 for that extra ship. Just some random possibilites.
Given that your three ideas would be logical given a fleet that wanted their registries to mean something but not something obvious to an enemy (and also that many fans just assume the numbers are strictly serial, when that may not be the case), here's my analysis: Let's assuming 3-7 yards at the time of TOS. It could be that the Sol/Earth shipyards built the 10 series ships, while other yards did 11's, 12's, 13's, 14's, 15's, and 16's. By the time numbers were assigned for Sol/Earth yards, 17 was up, and the cycle repeats to a degree. This is very possible, and it does not conflict with your point A. I've tried to hybridize the claim that registry numbers are serial with the claim that the first two digits relate to yard class. As such, I have begun to believe that the first two digits might relate to the architecture (Cage-style, TOS-style, refit-style, etc.) of a given ship when first built, and not its overall class. In other words, Constellation could be an older ship, now rebuilt to look like a Constitution when it was not originally. In that case, Constitution would be number NCC-1700, and any ship that looks like a Constitution but has a lower number than 1700 has been refit to that appearance. Or, it was built at the yard for 10's, 13's, or 16's and was numbered with the LAST two digits as the number for the ship, and the FIRST two digits referring to the yard. This also works well because it would explain why the FJSTM numbers are given in some sources and the Greg Jein numbers in others. Like I said above, the FJSTM numbers could be what was planned, and production issues resulted in the Greg Jein numbers being painted on the ships. Thanks for the thoughts. They seem to at least help point to the cohesive system we might hope to see.
I read about this briefly on Wikipedia and it seems like an interesting approach to figuring out the number of ships and what the registry numbers mean. I'm not sure if running these numbers could help us know if the first two digits are a yard or architecture, or if the last two digits are a construction number, but it could be very interesting. I don't feel that I can do the calculations to my satisfaction, but I bet someone on here can so here is the relevant data, counting only ships and not cargo containers: TOS Only: Lowest registry given: NCC-1017 (USS Constellation) Highest registry given: NCC-1718 or NCC-1831 (Court Martial Chart) Movies (complicated): Lowest registry given: NCC-585 (image on computer screen) Lowest registry heard: NCC-595 (dialogue from TMP) Lowest registry seen: NCC-638 (USS Grisom) Highest registry seen: NCC-2000 (USS Excelsior) Highest registry given: NCC-2048 or NCC-3801 (image on computer screen) Highest registry heard: NCC-2120 (dialogue from TMP) TNG and more: Lowest registry given NCC-42 Highest Registry given: NCC-87270 I am going to stick to my hypothesis that first 2 digits are the yard or architecture, allowing for several batches to be the same architecture (i.e. 20's ans 21's might be from the same ship run), and in addition to that, the last 2 (or 3 when applicable) digits refer to the construction order of the ship in that architecture. Hopefully there will be math-friendly takers, and we'll see what the data suggests...
That's what I've figured. It seems like the simplest explanation, that sometimes numbers get reserved, go unused, and are eventually released back into the pool and given to a new ship. We might've seen an example of this with the Prometheus in VOY; The BTS explanation given for its registry mismatch is that the hull's number was assigned when the project was started, and it was renumbered with the higher registry seen inside the ship once it was actually launched. In that case, presumably, "NCC-51461" might've gone to another random ship (or it might've just been left unused, since the TNG era is a little better about incongruous registry numbers, and Starfleet might've given up on the practice once there weren't any more precious four-digit numbers that might go to waste).
Chronological. It never ceases to amaze me the lengths gone to defy the bulk of the evidence of how registry numbers are handed out to Starfleet ships.
Mainly because it is inconsistent. Even chronologically if USS Discovery (NCC-1031) is newer that USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) that throws the whole concept into a loop of "what the hell is going on in Starfleet's Shipyards?"
For a real world example, this is how Streetcars in New Orleans are numbered: Every new model of car has it's own batch of numbers, 400 series, 500 series 600 series, etc. There are never over 100 of each one so numbers never run into each other. Saint Charles Line has 900 series cars from the 1920s The 1000 series of car was eventually scrapped for being too fast (complicated story) there were no more new classes until the 1990s when they reopened the Canal line All those Cars are 2000 series (not 1100 as would have been logical) The Riverfront line uses 2000 series cars but they are all Numbered 400 because the original cars on that line were of that series, so it's traditional. So if Starfleet is any more logical than that, they are dong just fine.
...Never mind Starfleet, the logic of the Okudas takes care of the observed trends just fine. That is, the Okudaic, simplistic chronological numbering kicks in late in the game, with the 24th century, the five-digit registries and the thousands of active starships. Which is right about when this fictional Starfleet would stop micromanaging and start assigning simple running numbers, out of sheer exhaustion and disgust at the trouble they had gone through before. What came before could follow byzantine systems of all sorts. Or then be strictly chronological - only, for the first hundred years, there would be few if any truly new ships. The first thousand or so would simply have gotten their registries all in one massive tidal wave when Romulan War surplus was turned into UFP Starfleet assets. Timo Saloniemi
Bob Kline, the designer of the TAS Bonaventure, doesn't remember the specifics, but said it's possible it was going to be 102-81 (you can even see there's a space between the 2 and 8). There was another sketch in that round of designs that had NCC-15. The registry was changed after it left his hands. He's a big Trek fan and never would have let it go out with the NCC after number, but retconning it we both speculated that early registries might have been different and if it was an early Federation starship (instead of early Starfleet which people seem to think automatically) it could be weird because it was a bunch of alien species ironing out the format...before retuning to the Terran format :-) Also, for the NX-01 refit Doug Drexler looked at the Bonnaventure which sort of places it around the dawn of the Federation. We postulated it was the first ship with modern warp drive (the ship that Tripp was referencing in the final episode of Enterprise) We did a whole episode on it last year on Saturday Morning Trek
I find it awesome that a simple registry fragment on the saucer ("CC") has become those great looking saucer-sensors-whatever they are! Blame the original artists for coloring them white thinking they were actually a feature of the ship.
Yeah that probably was the original intent though no one can find Bob's original illustrations - someone scooped them up when Filmation dissolved. Surprisingly since it was in 1973 and he had do about 100 more illustrations for that same ship afterwards he doesn't remember exactly what was there! So, with Bob's blessing, we turned them into deflector enhancers. In the Enterprise blueprints there are 3 forward circles (I've seen them called out as lights, windows and navigation deflector enhancers) and we thought it was a nice visual echo.
Interesting! If Bob mentioned the registry was meddled with after he sent in his drawings, he may have nothing to do with whatever ended up on the saucer.
Also it would be really lopsided, as most of the registry would be on the starboard part of the saucer!