The damage to most of the ships at Pearl Harbor was too extensive, too - but the pride of the USN was at stake, so the ships were rebuilt nevertheless, even though this made no military or economical sense. Hell, two destroyers reduced to toothpicks were completely rebuilt from all-new parts, and a few surviving fragments from the wrecks were then bolted onto the new destroyers to allow the USN to pretend the ships were "never lost".
Starfleet might have been motivated to rebuild old ships that way, too, perhaps even resurrecting USS Constellation out of a surviving self-sealing stem bolt...
Indeed. Prior to TOS-R, we had evidence of other starship classes sized the same as the Constitution but shaped differently (ST2).
...And one of the old comics had Kirk's old Republic be a Baton Rouge class starship instead.
The only TOS-based argument against that, save for fan resistance, is that Spock in e.g. "Doomsday Machine" can quickly identify the guest ship of the week as "a starship, by configuration". If there were different shapes of Starfleet starships in service in the 2260s, could Spock be so sure?
OTOH, it doesn't make much sense that there would only be a single ship type in service at any given time.
Timo Saloniemi
