USS Vengeance - design build?

[Lyon_Wonder]

How long do you think it took Starfleet in the Abramsverse to design and build the USS Vengeance, which is a huge purpose built warship that dwarfs the Abrams-timeline Enterprise.
I doubt the Vengeance's basic design was a direct result to the events in ST2009 since Nero's destruction of Vulcan in 2258 occurred only a year before ST Darkness took place in 2259, and taking less than a year to design a large, complex starship like the Vengeance from scratch to a complete and ready-for-service ship stretches plausibility.

Supposedly Khan (who was revived by Section 31 under Admiral Marcus’s direction) helped design the Vengeance. I don't find it plausible Khan designed the Vengeance by himself since he would still have had late 20th century engineering knowledge when Section 31 revived him. Though, as seen as “Speed Seed” in the prime timeline, Khan was a quick learner and studied starfleet technical manuals, and Khan might have suggested refinements to the IMO already designed ship. Still, I doubt the basic design of the Vengeance was laid out by Khan and it's design was on Starfleet's drawing board for several years, and refined into a warship-oriented design by Marcus and his pursuit of a more military-oriented Starfleet.

In the prime timeline it took almost 20 years from the Galaxy class to go from scratch to a commissioned in service-class. And I imagine it took a decade prior to 2259 to get the Vengeance off the drawing board and service-ready.

It's also interesting the huge USS Vengeance took the opposite approach to the purpose-built warship concept, when compared to the small easy to build in quantity USS Defiant in the TNG-era prime universe.

 

[SeerSGB]

Marcus probably started his warship project shortly after Nero's ride of hell through Federation space. So three years or so before Khan shows up. He stumbles on Khan and Khan adds his special touches to the design.

I figured that the Vengance started life as either an off the shelf Constitution class ship or some other new build class--maybe something design around deep-range (5+ year missions) exploration. Khan gets woken up and he helps Marcus file off the serial numbers and god-mod the living hell out of the thing. Whatever it was before Marcus and Khan got their hands on it, was probably (re)designed out of it to the point that it was a totally new ship and design.

 

[anh165]

I don't think it would have been difficult to build a larger ship or space structure especially for a minimal crew, the main issue was that the advancements in defence and propulsion would have to be made quickly enough within the space of a year to bring their battle ship upto the task of dealing with unknown threats.

Khan's superior intellect possibly gave starfleet/S31 engineers the help they needed to unlock some of the mysteries that limited their understanding in weapons and warp technology.

The Vengeance project would have not needed the go through usual Federation red tape and meet approval of commitees so this would have saved possibly years of delay in a starship project.

 

[OpenMaw]

I'd wager such a project would have been in the works, or on and off the table ever since 2233.

I get the feeling that the Vengeance was a ship of it's own purpose before Marcus had it re-allocated and the interior functions were changed around to make it a death ship.

Khan's input would have likely been in the design of new weapons, and the notions of making a single ship capable of fighting several ships. (Usage of drone craft and minimizing the crew required.)

 

[Jeyl]

I get the feeling that the Vengeance was a ship of it's own purpose before Marcus had it re-allocated and the interior functions were changed around to make it a death ship.

lol. So Starfleet openly made a Dreadnaught Class ship? Kind of hard to sell the message that you're a "peacekeeping and humanitarian" armada when one of your ship designs has the word "dread" in it's class name.

 

[The Wormhole]

The Enterprise took something like 5-10 years to build. In order to build Vengeance within a year, Marcus must have taken every welder from every shipyard on Earth and had them working non-stop.

 

[OpenMaw]

lol. So Starfleet openly made a Dreadnaught Class ship? Kind of hard to sell the message that you're a "peacekeeping and humanitarian" armada when one of your ship designs has the word "dread" in it's class name.

Not quite what I said. The hull of the Vengeance could have been used for anything. Hell, for all we know SF might have had it in their mind to build a large-scale exploration and research vessel.

 

[anh165]

I get the feeling that the Vengeance was a ship of it's own purpose before Marcus had it re-allocated and the interior functions were changed around to make it a death ship.

lol. So Starfleet openly made a Dreadnaught Class ship? Kind of hard to sell the message that you're a "peacekeeping and humanitarian" armada when one of your ship designs has the word "dread" in it's class name.

The dreadnought/vengeance project need not require approval from the diplomatic wings of the federation.

It could simply have been like this:

Day 1) Having lost Vulcan and the word on the street is that the Klingons smell blood and might want to fight us and Starfleet prepared is not prepared for war.

Day 2) Marcus decides that he wants a prototype warship capable of defeating all possible threats from the Klingons, dont tell Starfleet or anyone else about it though, so lets get started!

Day 3-14) Ship builders and suppliers are invited to tender to anonymous representatives of Marcus and S31 (Khan is awoken)

Day 15-300) Construction goes underway, Khan is forced to participate in the development of the ship aswell as perform special covert missions on behalf of Marcus.

 

[BillJ]

There is no way that the Vengeance wasn't already under construction when Khan was brought out of his deep-freeze.

 

[Kemaiku]

There is no way that the Vengeance wasn't already under construction when Khan was brought out of his deep-freeze.

Even if Vengeance was a fast build, and there's no reason to think she was, Marcus has been scheming and planning this war for a long time.

Maybe even before the Narada incident, a deep-seated hatred for the Klingons and always pushing for preemptive military action.

After losing the Kelvin, I could see him pushing hard to become head of Starfleet and being behind a lot of the more overt militarisation and starting the Dreadnought project as a long term solution to further events.

But always personally hoping/planning to use it to bring a war with the Klingons, having Vengeance and perhaps a second sister ship in operation by then.

Of course Kahn put a spanner in the works, Marcus tried to salvage his plan, thinking one ship would be enough to tip the balance in their favour in a conflict.

 

[drt]

I'm in the "she was around for a longer time" camp - obviously, the basic design wasn't a complete secret as Marcus had the display model in his office to stare at lovingly, so I'm guessing it was an existing design/prototype repurposed into a new class. I'm also not convinced that Khan played a huge role in a lot of the technology she carried*, but was involved more in refining her to be a better warship.

* = could be the basement of the "Kelvin Memorial Library" was where Section 31 was reverse enginneering Narada's technology based on scans made by Kelvin.

 

[M'Sharak]

I get the feeling that the Vengeance was a ship of it's own purpose before Marcus had it re-allocated and the interior functions were changed around to make it a death ship.

lol. So Starfleet openly made a Dreadnaught Class ship? Kind of hard to sell the message that you're a "peacekeeping and humanitarian" armada when one of your ship designs has the word "dread" in it's class name.

That would have been a lame critique even if one weren't aware that "dreadnaught" (or "dreadnought") literally means "fear nothing".

 

[DEWLine]

I'd agree with the "already under construction, planned possibly as a consequence of Narada's arrival" camp on this one. Makes more sense that way. Marcus is a "long game" planner or he wouldn't have gotten to his post as of Into Darkness.

 

[The Wormhole]

At the time of Narada's arrival Marcus would only have been a Commander or Lt. Commander. Countdown to Darkness tells us he was first officer of April's Enterprise in the late 2230s, so if Vengeance was borne out of Nero's presence, Marcus wouldn't have been involved from the beginning.

 

[USS Triumphant]

You know, I only beat this horse sparingly, because I know that for whatever reason it isn't a popular theory among fandom (even though it makes too much sense to be wrong), but the Abramsverse did not have its original point of divergence from the Prime timeline when the Narada came out of the wormhole. It happened at least as far back as the NX-01's participation in the Temporal Cold War, and possibly even further back (but including those events) to the interactions of the NCC-1701-E crew and the Borg with Cochrane and the Vulcans.

The reason I am bringing this up now is because I see what I believe to be some serious mischaracterization of Abramsverse Starfleet. This isn't Kirk Prime's Starfleet. This Starfleet grew out of a humanity whose father of warp drive and whose founding Vulcans knew at least a little about the freakin' BORG, and humanity's first Warp 5 capable ship encountered them. That didn't happen in the Prime timeline. The TCW resulted in a swath of destruction in Florida and an attempt to destroy the whole planet that probably never happened in the Prime timeline. The Romulans have warp drive earlier. And on and on.

Point being, do you honestly think this Starfleet wouldn't be working on some serious muscle, for defense if for nothing else? They'd be criminally stupid and negligent NOT to be! Marcus hijacked the project to add automation and the tinkering of a geneticly modified superintellect for his personal benefit, but that ship design without those changes may still be seen in the line, I think.

 

[Mage]

People claim that the Vengeance was a result of the encounter with the Narada. But the first encounter with this massive supership was during the incident with the Kelvin, during which many Starfleet officers escaped and were able to report back to Starfleet. For all we know, Section 31 was developing this ubership from that moment on, with a basic hull and interior already done by the time the Narada attacked Earth. Marcus gets antsy, steps up finishing the Vengeance, and stumbles upon Khan, who helps him more powerfull weapons and engines. And yes, with Khan being supersmart 'n' stuff, I see him not only understanding the basics of warpdrive, but also enhancing it. Compared to how long it took Bashir to learn new skills or languages or rules to games (he learned Tongo by looking at a padd for three seconds).

Does any of this make sense??

 

[F. King Daniel]

You know, I only beat this horse sparingly, because I know that for whatever reason it isn't a popular theory among fandom (even though it makes too much sense to be wrong), but the Abramsverse did not have its original point of divergence from the Prime timeline when the Narada came out of the wormhole. It happened at least as far back as the NX-01's participation in the Temporal Cold War, and possibly even further back (but including those events) to the interactions of the NCC-1701-E crew and the Borg with Cochrane and the Vulcans.

The reason I am bringing this up now is because I see what I believe to be some serious mischaracterization of Abramsverse Starfleet. This isn't Kirk Prime's Starfleet. This Starfleet grew out of a humanity whose father of warp drive and whose founding Vulcans knew at least a little about the freakin' BORG, and humanity's first Warp 5 capable ship encountered them. That didn't happen in the Prime timeline. The TCW resulted in a swath of destruction in Florida and an attempt to destroy the whole planet that probably never happened in the Prime timeline. The Romulans have warp drive earlier. And on and on.

Point being, do you honestly think this Starfleet wouldn't be working on some serious muscle, for defense if for nothing else? They'd be criminally stupid and negligent NOT to be! Marcus hijacked the project to add automation and the tinkering of a geneticly modified superintellect for his personal benefit, but that ship design without those changes may still be seen in the line, I think.

The problem with that theory is that Enterprise ties directly into "The Tholian Web" via "In a Mirror, Darkly" and "The Pegasus" via "These Are the Voyages", and that Voyager and Deep Space Nine both reference the events of Star Trek: First Contact.

It's also worth pointing out that the idea of Starfleet having big Dreadnought-class deathships goes back to 1975, in the original Star Fleet Technical Manual. The "Dreadnought Entente" from that manual is mentioned in radio chatter during the Epsilon 9 sequence at the start of ST: TMP.

Diane Carey's 1986 novel Dreadnought! also features an invincible Dreadnought-class ship, the USS Star Empire, and an insane admiral hellbent on war with the Klingons.

 

[Jeyl]

That would have been a lame critique even if one weren't aware that "dreadnaught" (or "dreadnought") literally means "fear nothing".

Yeah, I don't think "fear nothing" is a Starfleet or Federation motto, let alone the kind of direction you would want to give your officers when exploring the great unknown. Plus every use of the word dreadnought in Star Trek, including STID, has been used to describe something that's primarily built for destruction.

 

[austen_pierce]

That would have been a lame critique even if one weren't aware that "dreadnaught" (or "dreadnought") literally means "fear nothing".

Yeah, I don't think "fear nothing" is a Starfleet or Federation motto, let alone the kind of direction you would want to give your officers when exploring the great unknown. Plus every use of the word dreadnought in Star Trek, including STID, has been used to describe something that's primarily built for destruction.

from: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dreadnaught?s=t
dread·nought

[dred-nawt] Show IPA
noun 1. a type of battleship armed with heavy-caliber guns in turrets: so called from the British battleship Dreadnought, launched in 1906, the first of its type.

2. an outer garment of heavy woolen cloth.

3. a thick cloth with a long pile.





Having a dreadnought or a dreadnought class doesn't necessarily imply evil intentions, although it does sound cool. It is merely one type among various assets of the organization.

 

[The Wormhole]

The reason I am bringing this up now is because I see what I believe to be some serious mischaracterization of Abramsverse Starfleet. This isn't Kirk Prime's Starfleet. This Starfleet grew out of a humanity whose father of warp drive and whose founding Vulcans knew at least a little about the freakin' BORG, and humanity's first Warp 5 capable ship encountered them. That didn't happen in the Prime timeline. The TCW resulted in a swath of destruction in Florida and an attempt to destroy the whole planet that probably never happened in the Prime timeline. The Romulans have warp drive earlier. And on and on.

1) On Enterprise, it was mentioned that when Cochrane mentioned the Borg, he was ridiculed and forced to recant the story. Starfleet would not have prepared for what they believed to be a tall tale from a notorious drunk.

2) Aside from Archer getting intel from the mysterious "Future Guy" the Xindi story arc had nothing to do with the TCW.

3) There's no evidence to suggest the Romulans didn't have warp drive in Balance of Terror. Indeed, they would need it in order to fight a war against Earth. All we know for certain is that the ship in the episode wasn't warp capable.