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The age of Starships, how old can they get?

What would be a good age for a ship to be decommissioned?

  • 30 years

    Votes: 1 2.9%
  • 50 years

    Votes: 8 22.9%
  • 80+ years

    Votes: 6 17.1%
  • However long they want it.

    Votes: 8 22.9%
  • Until it falls apart, or damaged.

    Votes: 12 34.3%
  • Until its obsolete

    Votes: 10 28.6%

  • Total voters
    35
Well, you might say the Enterprise NCC-1701 went through so many odd situations and took such beatings in battle that it could explain why Starfleet retired her early. But if Voyager can be kicked back and forth like a football and be back at 100% capacity next week without a Starbase around, that argument only goes so far... ;)

Well, Voyager did have access to more advanced technology and automation compared to the 1701.
Discovery showed us SF does use robots/automation to repair ships internally and externally (and those would probably exist on Voyager too... just unseen, or the work in question was taken over by a computer in a way that doesn't require use of robots at all - and why would it next to tractor beams and more advanced transportation technology?).

In real life, humans often think that automating jobs would require robots with human like bodies to do the work... whereas in fact, you don't really need those at all... or you need only a minuscule amount (compared to relative number of human bodies that are usually needed). The huge portion of work/jobs can be done by algorithms that don't require... 'limbs'.

Replicators can either fashion new materials entirely out of energy, or they can use pre-existing matter (such as damaged hull plating), dematerialize it, and rematerialize undamaged one for a small energy expenditure.
Voyager could have also harvested a bunch of raw materials from practically any star system or stellar matter in general, shoved it into the replicators and converted into energy for later replication or storage.
Omicron particles can augment antimatter supply... so its possible the crew found new sources off screen.

This is how you can get around the issue of Voyager having more torpedoes than it should have. The crew would have found other options to augment antimatter or they would fashion its own with a couple of weeks of layover in an uninhabited star system (and for all we know, use solar power to power replicators so they can fahsion whatever is required).

With the 1701-A Constitution being retired early... well, there could be different reasons for that.
Starfleet was entering a new age of starship designs with the introduction of Excelsior and Miranda class ships for example... so its possible older designs like the Constitution were not deemed 'viable' for that... whereas the Excelsior and Miranda class were designed from the get go with more 'flexibility' in mind and survived for long enough in large numbers to allow science and technology on UFP side to adapt new technology to older designs and keep them on par with state of the art ships (and this would eventually also allow their spaceframes and ship structures to be reconfigured as time goes by).

The Constitution class was retired before then.
The NX-01 was being retired after a decade of service... which might make sense due to new influx of starship designs from a merger of 4 species into UFP, and the solely Earth designed ship might not have been deemed 'fit enough' to be outfitted with most of the new technologies (some could extend its operational life span yes, but it wasn't flexible enough to allow it to survive for longer).
 
NX-01 being decommissioned after only 10 years was likely due to a number of factors. it's possible other NX class ships were in service longer
My crazy fan theory is that the NX-01 was taken to shipyards to be used as a testbed for new starship technologies. Over the years she was taken apart and rebuilt in various configurations. Finally, when used as a prototype for the Constitution class, she was found to outperform the production line models thanks to all the legacy systems, and was taken to service again as the NCC-1701. The unmatched resiliency saved the ship and crew in situations where others would have failed, but needed a real miracle worker as Chief Engineer.
This is why NX-01 was never mentioned in the latter series: she was already there since the beginning. It also explains Admiral Morrow's line about the ship being old, she was 20 years only in the current configuration, in its core 120.
:D
 
Additional question would be how long starbases/stations keep going. Star Trek Online has Deep Space K-7 retrofitted for continued operation into 2411, and the Agents of Yesterday mission has Station K-13 (TOS era) get dragged into a temporal rift which shunts it hundreds of light-years away to be re-discovered in 2411 and gradually retrofitted as part of your Fleet holdings.

Is Earth Spacedock the same station in STIII and later TNG eps? In STO it's heavily damaged in battle and rebuilt internally to explain the visual differences once they got better graphics.
 
Is Earth Spacedock the same station in STIII and later TNG eps? In STO it's heavily damaged in battle and rebuilt internally to explain the visual differences once they got better graphics.

It wasn’t just a graphical improvement. STO Spacedock was originally a new design which was pretty unpopular, so they replaced it with the mushroom exterior, but left the interior (meant to match the original design) in place for a while. The new interior, in addition to being more spectacular overall, was also designed to fit into the mushroom station explicitly.
 
I thought the size of the door precluded that.

In TNG, we could easily deduce that the mushroom type starbase is the same... except for the space doors (which were enlarged so they can fit in larger ships like the Galaxy class)

We have no reason to think that the mushroom starbases have been decommissioned past 24th century.
I just think they would be continuously upgraded, and at some point their designs would be changed down the line as upgrades come in (as we saw going from TOS seried to 1701 refit - every 50 years or so), such design changes could pop up, which would be integrated on the spot ... in which case, they would simply harvest the old starbases/sections and use the raw material to replicate new ones for same or less raw material it took the original starbases to build).

Going from TOS to Phase II was basically such a design change... I can see this being the case. Its also how SF/UFP can easily keep old designs going pretty much indefinitely.
At some point, ships designed in the 23rd century would probably become radically different (shape-wise) in the 25th century for example... but would still be deemed same 'classes' of ships (just modernized for the era).
Same could apply to starbases.

I doubt DS9 will remain the same (design-wise) in 100 years time for example. Similar perhaps, but UFP will likely modify it further.
 
Sticking a new warp engine onto an old space frame might not be feasible. Ex. try to install a Excelsior-type engine (and supporting power source) onto the Enterprise-A. Might not work out to well.

All-enterprises.png
That actually looks way better than I ever thought it should. Are those scale images like they appear to be?

I have suggested for a while that perhaps what makes an Excelsior the "new generation" of Starship in ST:III is that its modules are NOT compatible with the modules of older designs; the older designs, given the look of the Horizon model, might have compatible from the founding of the Federation to the refit Enterprise.

This image does not help my argument, lol.

However, if the slope of the rear cargo bay from the Excelsior lines up that closely in scale, and if the upgraded warp core equipment could be in the bulge between the nacelles, I could ALMOST see this working as a ship for Star Trek V, given everything else going on in that movie.
 
My crazy fan theory is that the NX-01 was taken to shipyards to be used as a testbed for new starship technologies. Over the years she was taken apart and rebuilt in various configurations. Finally, when used as a prototype for the Constitution class, she was found to outperform the production line models thanks to all the legacy systems, and was taken to service again as the NCC-1701. The unmatched resiliency saved the ship and crew in situations where others would have failed, but needed a real miracle worker as Chief Engineer.
This is why NX-01 was never mentioned in the latter series: she was already there since the beginning. It also explains Admiral Morrow's line about the ship being old, she was 20 years only in the current configuration, in its core 120.
:D

Please absolutely take this as a compliment, but that is some high quality bullshit there <3

dJE

When the series Enterprise came out 2001, there were those who simply thought that was how the show was going to work. One was a coach at my school. I talked to him briefly about it in 2012, and he still thought the writers intended the ship to eventaully get a secondary hull and become Kirk's ship.
 
Interesting, thanks for the added perspective. I've seen Doug Drexler's proposed refit, including the secondary hull.

dJE
 
For voyager, they can easily stop in an uninhabited red dwarf system with a gas giant and refuel and repair without a space dock.
May take awhile longer but can be done.
They may have also built an industrial replicator just for repair purposes.
Do wish they showed Voyager at alien starbases getting supplies and refits
 
For voyager, they can easily stop in an uninhabited red dwarf system with a gas giant and refuel and repair without a space dock.
May take awhile longer but can be done.
They may have also built an industrial replicator just for repair purposes.
Do wish they showed Voyager at alien starbases getting supplies and refits

Deuterium, yes. Antimatter, no.

The TNG Tech Manual suggested ships could convert deuterium to anti-deuterium using transporter/replicator shenanigans, but it was inefficient and would burn 10 units of deuterium for every unit of anti-deuterium you made. Their logic was that the Federation could make use of almost perfect solar collectors to compensate, but a ship couldn't, so it would always be a stopgap.

But then I suspect they hadn't worked out that the energy produced from deuterium versus the energy from a 1:1 antimatter collision was negligible.
 
For voyager, they can easily stop in an uninhabited red dwarf system with a gas giant and refuel and repair without a space dock.
May take awhile longer but can be done.
They may have also built an industrial replicator just for repair purposes.
Do wish they showed Voyager at alien starbases getting supplies and refits

They did this for supplies a few times, but there was no ship design upgrade. At one point, the ship does have to stop and rework its warp coils. This was during seasons 4-6 somewhere, and given that Voyager is potentially going fast than usual longer than typical, it may explain where 5-year missions come from: that's how long the warp coils might last without an overhaul.

Interesting, thanks for the added perspective. I've seen Doug Drexler's proposed refit, including the secondary hull.

dJE

In an interview with Trekyards, Drexler explains the refit with the secondary hull would have shown that the ship got stronger and rather than barely a match for other races' ships, it was now slightly above them, as Starfleet would stay, in his mind, until at least the Galaxy class..until the Borg arrived.

The saucers of the NX-01 and 1701 are similar in size, actually, the spaces are just laid out differently.

As far as I'm aware there is no canon evidence that the NX-01 and 1701 are meant to be the same ship, but it is interesting to think some fans thought that way.
 
Deuterium, yes. Antimatter, no.

The TNG Tech Manual suggested ships could convert deuterium to anti-deuterium using transporter/replicator shenanigans, but it was inefficient and would burn 10 units of deuterium for every unit of anti-deuterium you made. Their logic was that the Federation could make use of almost perfect solar collectors to compensate, but a ship couldn't, so it would always be a stopgap.

But then I suspect they hadn't worked out that the energy produced from deuterium versus the energy from a 1:1 antimatter collision was negligible.

The TNG technical manual is not considered canon though.

Voyager did discover omicron particles in that alive nebula. Janeway said the particles can enhance their antimatter supplies. That particular source didn't pan out, but there's nothing indicating that they couldn't have found another source of omicron particles down the line.

At any rate, its possible the crew can manufacture more anti-matter on the go. Replicators could probably be powered via say solar, or large amounts of raw materials in uninhabited star systems.
A 2 week layover in an uninhabited star system would probably be good enough. B'Lanna was also able to convert one of the impulse reactors into a dilithium refinery... no reason why she couldn't have made an anti-matter one for example.

And the crew probably could have traded for antimatter with other species.

As for Deuterium... its seemingly easy to find almost anywhere.

They did this for supplies a few times, but there was no ship design upgrade. At one point, the ship does have to stop and rework its warp coils. This was during seasons 4-6 somewhere, and given that Voyager is potentially going fast than usual longer than typical, it may explain where 5-year missions come from: that's how long the warp coils might last without an overhaul.

It was near the end of Season 3 I think that Voyager had to reconstruct the warp coils (but this was mainly due to the damage they sustained over the previous years in combat which was mentioned in dialogue... not due to traveling at Warp itself - although that would contribute to overall degradation).

Voyager also had a larger layover in Season 7 on an uninhabited moon (episode 'Nightingale') where the whole ship was undergoing a major repair and refit.

The crew probably didn't have opportunities to find 'safe harbor' in the first 2 years due to the Kazon constantly being on their tails (it was also a time when they had to ration their resources - plus, the initial pull to the DQ caused a lot of damage and shortages)... so finding alternate sources of dilithium, deuterium and anti-matter would have been done off-screen or in some trades with other species.
 
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