Commission Dates Question

[Blackbird2009]

Okay - Here is a weird question:

I was reading about the Hermes Class Scout Ship (USS Hermes NCC 565). It says that it was commissioned through 2245 - 2260 and the remained in service until 2320.

What were those 15 years of commission? Was that the years that the Hermes was planned and built? And then it was put into space in 2260?

Also, was the San Francisco Fleet Yards in San Francisco (on Earth) or was it in Earth's orbit?

Thanks!

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Okay - Here is a weird question:

I was reading about the Hermes Class Scout Ship (USS Hermes NCC 565). It says that it was commissioned through 2245 - 2260 and the remained in service until 2320.

What were those 15 years of commission? Was that the years that the Hermes was planned and built? And then it was put into space in 2260?

Those were probably the years that new Hermes-class ships were built. After 2260 I would guess that they just stuck with existing ones. That's my interpretation, anyway. As we never saw any such ships onscreen nor heard anything about what they do (I'm guessing you read the ST Technical Manual, yes?), it could be anything...

Also, was the San Francisco Fleet Yards in San Francisco (on Earth) or was it in Earth's orbit?

We have no idea. They never showed it in the show - could be either one, or both. ('Both' is more likely, I think. For example, Utopia Planitia has both ground and orbital based sites.)

 

[F. King Daniel]

The thing about the Technical Manual, is that it gives a list of ships that were authorized, but not how many were actually built. Pages like the Dreadnought are speculative - a list of ships planned, but at the time of the Technical Manual's (ficticious 23rd century) publishing, the prototype USS Federation was "under contruction"

Also, that ship in 2320 is the USS Crockett NCC-600, destroyed in the novel "Sins of Commission"

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ The dreadnought Entente was mentioned in dialogue in ST:TMP. It even had the same registry number (NCC-2120) as the Technical Manual gave it.

 

[Unicron]

I've always tended to assume that the majority of ships in the TM were built and commissioned, personally, even though the "authorized" lists aren't particularly clear on what the construction numbers should be.

 

[Blackbird2009]

15 Years seems like a long time to build a starship.

Maybe 5 years on the drawing boards and then 10 years in construction?

BTW - Thanks for all these great answers and feedback!

 

[T'Girl]

Los Angeles class submarines were built between 1972 and 1996, 24 years, for a total of 62 boats.

The Hermes Scout Ships were likely built a few at a time, then were superseded by a different design.

.

 

[Colonel Midnight]

I would interpret it as being 15 years in "full time" commissioned service, then another 60 years as some sort of auxiliary craft, sitting in a Reserve fleet yard, or orbiting a hunk of rock somewhere in a "mothball" status.

YMMV, of course.

If you're talking the entire ship class, then the dates given are perfectly logical. Last one constructed gets commissioned in 2260, then remains in service until 2320 (60 years).

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well consider the average lifespan of a typical space probe. Voyager I and II were launched in 1977 and so far have continued to operate for forty years without an overhaul or maintenance. The Cassini spacecraft is planned to operate from 2004 to 2017, but could easily operate for another thirty to forty years as well if they wind up NOT crashing it into Saturn.

If space probes scale up to starships after three hundred years of technological development (and I think they do) then you might think of starships as following similar developmental cycles as modern day unmanned probes. Their lifespans would be pretty long, but I think that the design cycles for starships might actually have more to do with Starfleet's near-term scientific objectives--i.e. what regions of space they're planning to explore and what kind of science they want done--and not all of those missions last long enough for a starship to remain in service for more than a couple of decades.

 

[Timo]

For another angle on this, the information being quoted in the original post might simply be wrong. (To the degree pure fiction can be wrong or right, that is.)

The Star Fleet Tech Manual doesn't specify any years of commission or years of service. It only gives stardates of authorization. The earliest such stardate is 0965, while the latest is 5099. From the rate of stardate progression in TOS, all of the dates would probably fall within Kirk's five-year mission, that is, 2266 through 2270.

Novels and various other sources disagree with that, indicating much earlier construction dates than "just before the first episode of TOS". I have never heard of 2245, though: traditional fan material gives the first Hermes, Saladin and Ptolemy vessels in the 2220s already. Same material says the Constitutions date back that much, too, which was probably the original intention when Roddenberry specified the ship as having some history before Kirk comes along. And FJ does give all the ships a similar stardate of authorization, in the 0900 range.

More modern material insists that Kirk's ship is a product of the 2240s, yet this is the first time I have heard that the other FJ ships would get moved two decades to the future as well.

If we decide to believe the wording that the class was "commissioned through years XXXX-YYYY", my vote goes for the idea that ships of the class received their commissions during those years, and kept them until retirement, which might have come long after year YYYY. The first Hermes would then have been launched some time before XXXX, put through her paces, and approved for service, at which point there would be a commissioning ceremony. And the last Hermes to be built would have been launched some time before YYYY, and would have received the same treatment.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Boris Skrbic]

No, in FJ's view, the Articles of Federation were signed on stardate 0965, and you can see them authorizing starship construction, while the end of the Romulan War was placed on stardate 1200.5. I think FJ assumed that Kirk was born on 1277.1, in accordance with his gravestone date from the second pilot, and simply worked back from there.

(However, since the gravestone inscription originated in Peeples' script along with stardates 131x.x, he probably saw it as the date when Kirk assumed command of the Enterprise, especially since it was Peeples who created stardates with Roddenberry, and also the inscription was prefixed with "C".)

 

[Timo]

None of that works with what we see in TOS about stardate progression, though.

Seems I flunked reading comprehension, BTW. The original poster was asking specifically about the first-ever Hermes, NCC-565, not about the class in general. So apparently his source is writing about this specific ship being in Starfleet commission between 2245 and 2260 and then moving on to some other operating organization that doesn't keep its ships in commission. Just like Col. Midnight already suggested.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Those SFTM stardates don't work with the usual stardate progression in TOS, but we must look at FJ's intent as well as his use of stardates. The first-ever Hermes was part of that initial batch, "authorized by the original Articles of Federation of stardate 0965", although its registry number was NCC-585, not 565. Perhaps his daughter Karen could clarify what he had in mind, since she was obviously involved a bit in the creation of SFTM.