10 Starship "Holy Grails"
- Thread starter Dukhat
- Start date
That's entirely possible, and would explain why, say, that the Ambassador class has registries of only 1XXXX-2XXXX, while the Excelsior has registries of 3XXXX-4XXXX (when the latter class is 100% older than the former.) Another possibility is that registry numbers were assigned by duty: 2XXXX regs are for deep-space explorers, while 4XXXX regs were for regular-duty ships. All I know is that there is no logical reason why Excelsiors (and Mirandas, for that matter) should have higher registries than Ambassador classes when they are clearly older.
(The IRL reason was that Okuda flipped the first two numbers on the Zhukov's original registry (NCC-62136) when Greg Jein labeled it on his second Ambassador filming model, because it conflicted with an Okudagram showing that the Zhukov was a Rigel class ship with that registry. Okuda's actions really made no sense, but it was followed up on when the model was labeled for the Excalibur and Yamaguchi, making 2XXXX the standard registry field for Ambassadors.)
The registry for the Zhukov was never changed in the canonical starship mission status displays. It remained NCC-62136. This is proven by Okudagrams made for the episode "Aquiel", which were later put up for auction.
That screws things up even more. Now there's a 6XXXX Ambassador alongside 8 other ships of the class with 1XXXX and 2XXXX registries, not to mention that 6XXXX is too high for an Ambassador, chronologically speaking. I wonder if, when Greg Jein built the second Ambassador model, he meant it to be a Rigel class starship, with the differences it has with the original Enterprise-C version, however minimal they are.
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At one time, I considered that the "Rigel-class" was actually what we are seeing in episodes where the Excelsior was rendered at a larger size relative to the Enterprise-D, like in Encounter at Farpoint. As rendered there, the Hood and the Enterprise-D would be about the same length, but the Enterprise-D would still be newer and have a wider saucer.
At one point I made a list of NCC numbers and tired out some ideas for how the 5-digit vs. 4-digit situation might work and had some interesting results. For example:
A ship with a number of something like NCC-10178 could be either the 178th ship of series 10, or the 78th ship of series 101. That means that an Ambassador with a number like 10578 would likely be the 78th ship of series 105, but an Apollo-class ship with a number like 10579 would be the 579th ship of series 10. (Assuming that the Apollo-class is a more compact Constitution-like ship as shown in the Star Trek: Legacy video game, the Apollo-class would likely be constructed in much greater numbers than the Ambassador, and that could explain the number discrepancy.) In other words, the next number that makes sense is taken, even if it causes overlap.
Looking at 3-and-4-digit numbers it gets interesting.
Is 2593 the 93rd ship of series 25, or the 593rd ship of series 2? I suggest the former as that keeps with Jefferies concept of 17th build and ship 01.
638 for the Grissom actuallly works well with the FJSTM, which had numbers in the 500's for scouts and destroyers, with the cruisers starting in the 1700's. The have made a bunch of scouts in the for the series in the 500's, and are now, with a ship that resembles the Exelsior's nacelles, saucer, and more, building scouts that are part of series 6.
I put this in another thread recently:
This is another opportunity to suggest that the registry of the TAS ship called Bonnaventure is actually 1028I-NCC, and that this would have been the originally appearance of the Constellation, which was NCC-1017. Not sure why the "I" would be dropped and NCC moved to the front, but it works fairly well for me
It essentially says the model builder used screencaps and extrapolated the design, especially the rear since that was never seen, and that there was no documentation on the original model.
Is it possible that SF decided to build more at a later time.
The ENT-C was from mere 22 years prior to ENT-D...
6xxxx registry for an ambassador class doesn't seem that odd to me to have that registry.
VOY had 74656 in 2371.
ENT-C was from 2340-ies. By this time, energy to matter replicators would have been coming into play, so SF's ability to make more ships in a given time frame wouldn't conflict with everything.
Having other 8 ships of the same class with lower registry could be an inherited thing... maybe they were new designs/builds but got assigned other names and registries (much like the Defiant had - after it got destroyed, the crew was given permission to rename Sao Paolo to the Defiant, and the thing got the original registry without the A suffix).
I'd say DS9 was the first instance where we got an identical name and registry for a follow-up vessel without a suffix letter, but SF could have been doing that since before.
To me, the problem isn't so much that they built an Ambassador class ship much later than other Ambassadors were operating at the time. Because if we assume that registries are mostly chronological, then Starfleet built lots of Excelsiors and Mirandas much later than when they were initially produced.
The problem is why Starfleet would even do this in the first place. You don't randomly start building Ford Model-T's when you're also building 2023 Ford Mustangs. And that's the issue here. Starfleet was designing and building newer classes of ships throughout the 24th century, which were undoubtedly more advanced than a Miranda class. So why keep making the Miranda? And why make a new Ambassador when there was really no reason to?
Well, I hypothesized that when a new starship design is approved, usually, SF builds a set number of them and then ceases production.
New ships of that class would continue to be produced to make up for loss of ships in the fleet, etc. that may arise, however, past a certain time frame (say first 10 to 20 years after the design went into production), they wouldn't make any more.
Its possible that in the 23rd century, the Miranda and Excelsiors may have been the exception and were built for longer periods, or SF just enjoyed a period of relative stability and exploration that didn't cause those ships to be destroyed, etc.
Meaning, SF just upgraded them internally as technology improved and there was no reason to remove them from the fleet.
The USS Lakota was a testament to that when SF proved they can upgrade the Excelsior to match the Defiant in terms of tactical prowess, and likely surpass it in Warp speed.
When it comes to the Ambassador class, its possible that SF produced them for slightly longer than the 'expected time frame'.
If the usual time frame for starship design production is about 10-20 years, its possible that the Excelsiors and Miranda's were produced for 20-40 odd years instead.
The Ambassador class in turn could have been produced for 15-30 years instead... so not as long as the Excelsiors and Miranda's but still longer than average.
Then comes the mid-late 24th century when the TNG era was also a testbed for new technologies, encounters with the Borg and other advanced races which may have prompted UFP to rethink some of their designs.
So it looks like by the 25th century, they finished modernizing most of their fleet. The Excelsiors were upgraded to mark II version (intermediary upgrade just after the USS Lakota upgrade period would probably be the Obena class seen from lower decks 'a Sovereign-esd Excelsior essentially - this period looks like it was rife with Sovereign-sation of ships - it has the most similarity to Excelsior II which brought back the ugly angular nacelle pylons etc. - mind you, I wasn't a huge fan of the Excelsior to begin with).
As for why would SF do this... they probably wouldn't. Its the writers fault for introducing this level of inconsistency and being willy nilly with everyhting.
PIC S3 also made things worse which gave both the Stargazer and Excelsior refits, so they kept the names, but got completely different registries and started 'from scratch' essentially.
The point behind this decision makes very little sense to me personally. What would have made more sense is that the 25th century Excelsior and Stargazer inherited the old registries with suffix letters - because for most of Trek, that's the impression we seemingly got.
Some odd renaming of the ship to previous registry and name without suffix might happen here and there, but PIC S3 never mentioned an iota of info that either the Stargazer or Excelsior ships distinguished themselves (not the classes, but the names - had they given us that in a line of dialogue or two, it could have introduced extra consistency - but hey, same thing happened on VOY, where a few seconds worth of extra dialogue could have said something like: 'we are continuing our efforts to restore expended torpedoes, lost shuttles, etc. by using raw materials we found on our last stop' and that they crew made concise effort to mine raw materials in most star systems they stopped in - which is what they were doing in the early seasons - I guess the writers stopped paying attention to it).
But yeah, there are some glaring inconsistencies within Trek that would welcome some retconning or 'fixing' and that can be done with just a few seconds of dialogue, but since its all said and done, we just have to live with it.
For my part, I think it's logical for Starfleet to design ships (particularly line vessels like cruisers, along with support vessels like transports) to have an ideally long life span with regular service and refits. It doesn't make sense to me to have a built in "time limit" even allowing for potentially strong improvements, like those in designs such as the Excelsior and the Galaxy. I also think that, setting aside the speed of plot, having more ships available is generally better.
There is also the possibility that, given an organizational structure for the Federation like that suggested by FASA and the Spaceflight Chronology, not every world in Federation space is actually a member or even a full member. Some planets don't want the responsibilities of membership because they're concerned about cultural integration and assimilation, but they understand the political and economic benefits of Starfleet's military protection. It could be that for some of those worlds, they wouldn't necessarily have the technology to build super-advanced designs but could service older, reliable ones like the Miranda more easily.
While it's true we don't see a lot of people driving Model Ts today, many drivers do have used cars that are easily a decade or more old and still perfectly drivable. My last car before my current one was a 2007 Honda Civic which I purchased in 2017, and had until 2022. I'd imagine that most modern generations of cars are not that technically different from each other, relative to the differences between a modern airliner and the Wright Flyer.
Yep. My Toyota Camry is over 20 years old with nearly 200,000 miles on it. It's only just now starting to throw unfixable check engine lights (bad wiring harness to O2 sensors), which really hasn't hindered performance or gas mileage - at least, not in a noticeable way.
Hell, up until recently, the only real work I've done on it is a new catalytic converter and front struts. Everything else was just new tires, spark plugs, air filters or oil changes - general maintenance stuff. And I plan on driving that bitch into the ground before I get a new one, because I'm a cheap bastard like that.
And my other car is a 1996 Impala SS with a (relatively) new 383 LT-1 Stroker, new Turbo-Cats, rebuilt transmission and aluminum drive shaft. At over 300,000 miles (with a new drive train), the thing still drives like a scalded cat, putting close to 400HP to the tires. Clean emissions and everything and still going strong. Apart from a leaky transmission fluid pan gasket and rusted exhaust (from over 20 years of winter on salted Virginia roads), she runs awesome and could blow the doors off of most cars on the road today.
Hell, up until recently, the only real work I've done on it is a new catalytic converter and front struts. Everything else was just new tires, spark plugs, air filters or oil changes - general maintenance stuff. And I plan on driving that bitch into the ground before I get a new one, because I'm a cheap bastard like that.
And my other car is a 1996 Impala SS with a (relatively) new 383 LT-1 Stroker, new Turbo-Cats, rebuilt transmission and aluminum drive shaft. At over 300,000 miles (with a new drive train), the thing still drives like a scalded cat, putting close to 400HP to the tires. Clean emissions and everything and still going strong. Apart from a leaky transmission fluid pan gasket and rusted exhaust (from over 20 years of winter on salted Virginia roads), she runs awesome and could blow the doors off of most cars on the road today.
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Some makes like Hondas and Subarus tend to be pretty good in terms of reliability, if they're properly maintained and taken care of. My Civic was a good car for five years with no major issues, and it had been through two prior owners who (from my very basic understanding) took proper care with it. Pretty much the only thing I was lacking when I got it was the code for doing radio resets. 
There's also real life cases like the B-52, which is still in service today after 70 years of operation, even though the production window of actual construction was much smaller (a decade between 1952-1962). The Battletech gaming universe has a wide variety of designs that have been in overall service for centuries, with some individual units even lasting a century or more. The current era doesn't allow for many large scale space vessels, but many of those also survived for a long time in part because of the expense in building new ones. And that's in a primarily military setting where there's usually a few minor wars, if not major ones, going on.
There's also real life cases like the B-52, which is still in service today after 70 years of operation, even though the production window of actual construction was much smaller (a decade between 1952-1962). The Battletech gaming universe has a wide variety of designs that have been in overall service for centuries, with some individual units even lasting a century or more. The current era doesn't allow for many large scale space vessels, but many of those also survived for a long time in part because of the expense in building new ones. And that's in a primarily military setting where there's usually a few minor wars, if not major ones, going on.
Cool about the Hondas, although I think they and their Acura counterparts took a beating with that whole Takata-airbag-in-the-steering-wheel-blowing-up-like-a-Claymore-in-people's-faces thing that hit them a few years back.
I have a fifty year old car. A Dodge Dart. It is becoming more difficult to find parts, but the old slant six engines are very reliable.
As for the Ambassador-class I would imagine Starfleet would add more of them in the late 2340s and early 2350s while waiting the nearly 20 years before the Galaxy-class started to enter service.
As for the Ambassador-class I would imagine Starfleet would add more of them in the late 2340s and early 2350s while waiting the nearly 20 years before the Galaxy-class started to enter service.
Unique mission profile, maybe? Whatever it is... We no little-to-nothing about any of those ships, aside from names and registries.
Maybe most of those other designs were still on the drawing board, or prototyping in the late 40s and early 50s. That would makes sense it they are all based of tech from the Galaxy-class Project. Starfleet probably needed a few reliable technology based explorer type starships before the new tech ships were ready, or even proven. Might also be way there are some very late build Miranda and Excelsior type starships to fill in a gap in numbers prior to a new tech starship entering full fleet service. By the 60s and certainly the 70s with the Dominion War Starfleet would have moved on for new built ships while having a massive upgrade program due to the war.
