All hate for Star Trek Enterprise aside, why do you people think that the UFP decided to go with a design lineage that follows Earth Starfleet?
If the Federation is made up of many races that had their own designs (seen in Enterprise) why would the newly formed Federation council decide to forgo all the great technical aspects of all the other space faring races and make their starships primarily human inspired?
Something of the external appearance of most later Starfleet ships resembles more the NX-01 than, say, some of the Vulcan designs from the ENT era, but it's quite a leap to say that "great technical aspects" of the other members aren't included in early Federation designs. We haven't actually seen any early Federation designs (aside from a glimpse at a model of what was intended to represent a
Daedalus-class ship), and we don't know what technologies from Federation members are key to their internal workings, so the question is based on some unfounded assumptions.
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The way I think of it is that the 24th century Federation is made of varying branches of Starfleet; Earth branches (which use the primarily human crews), Vulcan branches (with the ring shaped design lineage), Andorian branches, etc.... Since everyone is a member of the UFP they can sign up to whatever branch they wish; humans can serve on the Andorian ships for instance. Its all a matter of individual preference for one's comrades.
I don't see much evidence at all that Starfleet is branched this way. Humans appear common in it, but not to the extent that I would think there is an "Earth branch." It would be a huge leap to think that Starfleet is divided this way between its member worlds just because extras without makeup are cheaper (we know there are lots of human-looking aliens in Star Trek also, which could account for lots of them) and the writing on signage is in English; these are television production reasons. Points against the idea:
-Even in fleets of hundreds of Starfleet ships with many different designs, we see the familiar classes of ship and notable design elements common to them
-The
U.S.S. T'Kumbra is a
Nebula-class starship, but operating with a predominantly Vulcan crew (and, obviously, bearing a Vulcan name).
-The
Hera is also a
Nebula-class starship
with a predominantly Vulcan crew, but her captain happens to be a human
-the
Intrepid is a
Constitution-class starship like the Enterprise
too, and also bears a name sourced from Earth, but has an all-Vulcan crew
-The Earth Starfleet and Federation Starfleet have been established in the canon as separate organizations, whereas the schema you propose would rather suggest they coexist with one as a subset of the other
-The idea that beings can and do choose primarily to serve with their own kind in a divided exploration and defense organization is kind of depressing and doesn't really seem to reflect the close ties and integration that I have always believed Trek was trying to suggest existed. Do you think this represents a majority viewpoint? Novels and other supporting works will, in my observation, tend to show a much greater percentage of non-human crew members. TAS added lots of them, too, when budget was less of an issue in depicting them. Technical works like the
TNG Technical Manual and less official books too certainly don't depict our hero ships as purely or even primarily human in origin or in who they are intended to serve. If I remember correctly, fandom has long assigned heavy Vulcan influence to the design alterations to the
Enterprise for
Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
The NX-01 was made to have familiar Trek ship elements so it would be clearly recognizable to the public, but within the fiction, I don't think we should make too much of this. We're basically talking about paired engine pods set off from the body of the ship and a primary hull ranging somewhere from a sphere to a saucer to a cone; I don't really think this and some detailing are enough to point at such a ship and say nonhumans aren't involved. Clearly NX-01 is a breakthrough success in Earth's space program and many of the engineering principles applied to it were developed with little or no direct Vulcan involvement; perhaps something about the most basic elements of this configuration has turned out to be advantageous for the demands of Starfleet service, or is discovered to be so at some time within a century after the NX-01. The Earth technology may have turned out to be more adaptable to the contributions of other Federation members in some fundamental way. The annular warp drive which is present in some Vulcan ships is still seeing some (civilian) use centuries later, so we may assume it has differing strengths and weaknesses which call for its use in some circumstances and not others.
Yes, it's annoying when Janeway says something like "We're from Earth" when she has quite a few people who aren't standing right there on the bridge, but I imagine this is typically shorthand for the fact that Starfleet HQ is located there. The tensions still present between certain founding members at the dawn of the UFP and the diplomatic role seemingly played by humans in making this alliance happen don't make the choice of Earth to host Starfleet HQ much of a surprise.
I picture Tellarites walking around new starships ready to argue how the newest table designs on Tellar are vastly superior to the Vulcan-influenced compromise candidates that made it in.
