Yet the ship was still intact enough for Shelby to fly around in it for Frontier Day, and intact enough for it to attack Starbase 1 with all the other ships. So whatever was wrong with it didn’t seem to be that big a deal.
Starship Platform Lifespans
- Thread starter Vger23
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Yet the ship was still intact enough for Shelby to fly around in it for Frontier Day, and intact enough for it to attack Starbase 1 with all the other ships. So whatever was wrong with it didn’t seem to be that big a deal.
Yet they were still going to decommission the vessel at 15 years of age, that's fairly young for a StarShip of any type.
So it must've been something very severe for StarFleet to do that to such a young vessel.
Then one would think that it would be a bad idea to fly the ship around if it had something that severely wrong with it.
It was scheduled for it's "Final Flight" before entering the DeCommissioning Process on "Frontier Day".
Then we all know what happened when the Borg Incident occured.
I think with the Enterprise-F, her early decommissioning may have been more due to "economics" than anything else. Starfleet seemed to be moving towards smaller designs with more similar design elements like the Neo-Constitution-class, the Duderstadt-class, and the Sagan-class. As such, the now over-sized Odyssey-class may have quickly gone out of style and Starfleet may have decided to just retire her than spend resources properly fixing a ship that no longer fit its new design philosophy, IMO.
"Admiral Shelby, we need you to take the Enterprise-F out for its final flight before we decommission her. However, there's a slight chance that she might explode. Actually, maybe a little more than a slight chance...Well, to tell you the truth, there's a pretty big chance. It might even explode before you even get it out of Spacedock. With the critical systems failures, and all. But it's Frontier Day, and Starfleet is willing to take that chance. Good luck!"
We saw how the USS Defiant went out before it was fully ready, they had Nog relaying orders down to engineering.
So it wouldn't be the first time they were running a ship that wasn't fully "Ship Shape & Ready to Go".
And for a simple "Parade Run" before hitting the DeCommission depot, I wouldn't be surprised if StarFleet Upper brass thought it was fine for a "Parade Run", it's not like they were anticipating a Terrorist Attack.
I doubt it was going to explode or anything dramatic, might lose power and go a drift or something silly like that.
But I highly doubt the Admiral was in danger from the Vessel exploding on itself.
There is real world precedent for it though - the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious spent 1950-1958 being heavily modernized, outfitted with the latest technology, etc, only to be pulled from service and scrapped after seven years in its new configuration after a minor fire in the ship's mess, as the UK government determined it was too cost expensive to keep the ship in service as the Navy was experiencing a budget shotfall and a manpower shortage.
Or maybe they don't want to remind the public of what happened by decommissioning the Enterprise-F & letting it stay decommissioned.
Remember Admiral Shelby got a phaser to the gut leaving a big hole there before the whole terrorist attack occured & the public transmission was cut off.
Any sort of decommissioning that was going to happen, it's best to leave the ship decommissioned (even if you fixed the problem) since the public would eventually know if you brought the ship back.
That would bring back memories of the poor Admiral getting blasted a giant hole in her torso, that would be horrible PR, especially from her family.
They probably have a new Enterprise planned, but it won't be finished for several years. Because of the events of Frontier Day, it was decided (probably by the Federation Council) that a new Enterprise be commissioned "now" to keep up spirits in both Starfleet and the Federation after such a costly loss. With the heroic actions of the crew of the Titan-A and the Enterprise-D, it was likely a political choice to rename the Titan to Enterprise.
I'm not entirely in agreement, as many modern sailing vessels share similar characteristics to those built decades before. In part because they're simpler than designs using more advanced technology, and in part because there's less reason to change what works. I think that with the level of exotic technology Trek is generally assumed to have, it's more likely for designs to have a reasonably long life span. Just as today, our medical technology has increased general life spans and protection from many diseases far beyond what they once were.
A lot of the legacy mechs in Battletech haven't changed too much artwise over the course of several decades, even though in-universe there might easily be a difference of decades or centuries between variants of the same mech. Designs like the Warhammer and Griffin have been mostly consistent, while others like the Locust and Marauder have had more aesthetic changes (in no small part due to the Unseen legal problem). And even with the technology loss during the Succession Wars, the abilities of a given design didn't necessarily change that much. It depended on how many advanced systems had become unavailable.
Part of it is also to keep newer models from seeming like too much of a departure and less recognizable. There's still a fair amount of debate over the extent that the TMP refit is really a refit and not effectively a new class.
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It kinda reminds me of the situation with the A380. By the time it was put into full production, airlines were moving away from the hub-and-spoke system that it would have benefited from. Many of the airframes have already been scrapped after a very short life. Conversely, the 747 is still going strong, partly due to the design being easily converted to a freighter (which you can't do with an A380).
As for the 1701-F itself, a minor bit of head canon: We never saw it go to warp, so maybe whatever issue that was causing its early retirement affected the warp systems specifically, and was otherwise perfectly fine to fly around at sub-light speeds.
That's exactly my hypothesis for the Enterprise-A. Starfleet was going to have a new Enterprise-A built after decommissioning the NCC-1701 (which would have been what eventually became the B), but because of the Whale Probe incident, they made a 'provisional' ship the A, and once the B was ready, they decommissioned it. Which would make sense as to why the A was decommissioned so early.
If I'm not mistaken in my reading of the dates in Trek, the Ent-A only did a single 5-year mission after the events of ST:V, and there's only 6 months between the events of ST:VI and ST:G's opening with the Ent-B, meaning the Ent-B was already under construction and the Ent-A and Kirk both retired mere months before the launch of the Ent-B.
With regards to starship lifetimes, the ships involved in Project Galaxy, per the TNG Technical Manual, were designed to have 100-year lifespans given that their systems were mostly modular to include their bridges, weapons, shield generators, nacelles and warp cores, meaning they could be refit and overhauled as many times as needed to keep them operational.
Even pushing forward into DIS, the ships of the end of the 32nd Century are actually shown to have been in service during the 31st Century, meaning most of those designs are nearing 100 years old by the time of DIS S3-S5 and they all seem to be working perfectly fine, likely thanks to the use of things such as programmable matter and significantly more advanced materials engineering present in those ships. Who's to say that 31st Century ships couldn't continue serving into the 33rd Century without any issues and they'd still be just as advanced and capable as the day they launched provided they could be upgraded to use the new Pathway Drive from S5.
The Ent-A was commissioned in 2286 and decommissioned in 2293. So either a brand-new ship was only operational for 7 years; it was an older ship that was renamed "Enterprise" and was given to Kirk as a reward with the understanding that it would be decommissioned permanently once the B was ready; or the ship was brand-new and was recommissioned under a new name and registry once the B was ready. Thanks to PIC, we can omit that last option, as we see that this didn't happen and the ship still has its NCC-1701-A registry. Also, option 1 seems sketchy, since there'd be no reason why a 7 year old ship would need to be permanently decommissioned. So it seems most likely that the Ent-A was an older ship hastily given a new name and given to Kirk temporarily. Even though he commanded it for 7 years, there's no indication that it was ever given a 5-year mission.
Normally I would say that this is needlessly convoluted, but with the whole Saratoga nonsense, I’m not so sure.
They did sort of do that with the USS Saratoga. The one in the museum is the one seen in Star Trek IV, but it was renumbered to match the one lost at Wolf 359. It is possible that the USS Enterprise-A was renamed after Kirk retired from command and the USS Enterprise-B was commissioned. It remained in service for a number of years before it was decommissioned. At which time it was renamed again to USS Enterprise-A for the museum.
There was a museum ship like that. One that was built for one nation, sold to another after some time in service. Spend a lifetime in that country's service and when it retired, it was given back to the original country, who made it a museum ships with its original name. USS Slater (DE-766), a Cannon-class destroyer escort was decommissioned after World War II and sold to Greece in 1951. Renamed Aetos, she served there until decommissioned again in 1991. She was repurchased as a museum ship in 1993 and sits in Albany, New York as USS Slater.
There was a museum ship like that. One that was built for one nation, sold to another after some time in service. Spend a lifetime in that country's service and when it retired, it was given back to the original country, who made it a museum ships with its original name. USS Slater (DE-766), a Cannon-class destroyer escort was decommissioned after World War II and sold to Greece in 1951. Renamed Aetos, she served there until decommissioned again in 1991. She was repurchased as a museum ship in 1993 and sits in Albany, New York as USS Slater.
