Enterprise Never to Explore Again?

[Silversmok3]

Here's a thought that's been in my head about TNG,especially vs TOS.

The Enterprise-E as she is represents a flagship,a symbol of the Federation.

With that in mind, will Starfleet ever send the Enterprise-E or descendant on 5 year (or more) exploration mission,as her forebears did?

I ask because in TNG you never see the Enterprise on a long term exploration mission:even though its built just for that purpose.

And I think the Enterprise belongs in deep space,exploring the unknown instead of solving polititcal issues and disputes near home.

 

[Nebusj]

The Enterprise-E as she is represents a flagship,a symbol of the Federation.

When was this stated on-screen by a character who'd know?

 

[Silversmok3]

The Enterprise-E as she is represents a flagship,a symbol of the Federation.

When was this stated on-screen by a character who'd know?

Insurrection,IIRC.


The symbol part was me though.I'm just trying to understand If Enterprise will ever really 'explore' again?

 

[Sisko_is_my_captain]

That's funny...I expected this to be a thread about how in the latest trek movies, the E is forever in a battle against <insert threat> rather than exploring the cosmos like in much of the series. If the future movies are also action-oriented, will there ever be a new exploration-based adventure for the Enterprise in the films?

 

[JNG]

And I think the Enterprise belongs in deep space,exploring the unknown instead of solving polititcal issues and disputes near home.

I think TNG had a good balance between visits to the frontier and events in other areas. I do imagine ships still get sent out on multi-year voyages where they don't plan to be inside the Federation any of that time (I think the Olympia from DS9's "The Sound of Her Voice" was off in Beta Quadrant for eight years or something), but Kirk's Enterprise wasn't doing that during TOS either, and if that were a TV show it would have a Voyager-like disconnect from known places and things.

 

[Timo]

The E-D appears to have been scheduled to do such a long shot mission in "Encounter at Farpoint", but for some reason this gets cancelled (a good reason would be that the Farpoint support station suddenly ceases to exist!), and we get this mixture of missions instead.

One wonders if the vessel was a "Federation Flagship" at that point already, or gained that status only after the mission to deep space was scuttled... But obviously the desing of the ship was deemed suited for both types of mission profile.

Given that premise, the E-E might yet undertake a deep space exploration mission or three. Indeed, for all we know, she did: there are big enough temporal gaps between the three E-E movies. But probably any movie dealing with that ship and crew would have be writtenen to feature at least some familiar elements (that is, villains and victims), therefore not really being practicable if the ship were supposed to be in deep unexplored space.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JNG]

The E-D appears to have been scheduled to do such a long shot mission in "Encounter at Farpoint", but for some reason this gets cancelled (a good reason would be that the Farpoint support station suddenly ceases to exist!), and we get this mixture of missions instead.

I just thought it would be interesting to note that I was rereading David Gerrold's novelization of "Encounter at Farpoint" the other day and there are even several references to a fifteen- and twenty-year mission for the ship, which seems to be the very mission under discussion. Riker specifies that the ship is built for missions of such a duration. He does also refer to Farpoint as a "staging station," so that would be in support of your reasoning there.

 

[ALF]

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I always wondered what was the point of the "5 year mission" as stated in the TOS opening? Why 5 years? I think the Tech Manual stated that the Galaxy class had at least 20 years in it anyway.

On screen... Yamato, blam. Odyssey boom. And the Enterprise D pulverized by the Duras sisters. So if the Galaxy class can last long enough... sure! It could do some exploring.

 

[Timo]

Five years would probably be the maximum time Starfleet could spare one of its heavy cruisers from purely military errands on a more or less scheduled, Cousteau-style cruise through known and unknown space. It would have had little to do with the endurance of the ship, as we saw the ship do both scheduled and unscheduled stops at various Starfleet and Federation outposts during those five years.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Alrik]

Interesting question. I think that maybe the change of focus away from exploration might be due to circumstance. There were hints that Enterprise was still out exploring/meeting-greating new planets during Season One (Code of Honor-Justice-When the Bough Breaks), but perhaps due to the events that played out in The Neutral Zone (return of the Romulans-first hint of the Borg), it was decided that the Federation might be better served keeping its Flag Ship closer to home. In addition to that, you have to keep in mind that there would have likely had to have been a massive reorganization within Starfleet Command after Conspiracy, so that would likely have made an impact on what the near future would hold for Enterprise.

 

[Anticitizen]

Five years would probably be the maximum time Starfleet could spare one of its heavy cruisers from purely military errands on a more or less scheduled, Cousteau-style cruise through known and unknown space. It would have had little to do with the endurance of the ship, as we saw the ship do both scheduled and unscheduled stops at various Starfleet and Federation outposts during those five years.

Timo Saloniemi

And, can you really expect a crew to commit to longer than five years at a stretch? Maybe 5 years is the standard length of contracted enlistment, after which one could choose to reenlist/retire/etc.

 

[Alrik]

Five years would probably be the maximum time Starfleet could spare one of its heavy cruisers from purely military errands on a more or less scheduled, Cousteau-style cruise through known and unknown space. It would have had little to do with the endurance of the ship, as we saw the ship do both scheduled and unscheduled stops at various Starfleet and Federation outposts during those five years.

Timo Saloniemi

And, can you really expect a crew to commit to longer than five years at a stretch? Maybe 5 years is the standard length of contracted enlistment, after which one could choose to reenlist/retire/etc.

Actually, the entire point behind the Galaxy Class Starship was that it was meant for long term deep space missions. That's the reason that it was designed to house families onboard.

 

[Silversmok3]

Five years would probably be the maximum time Starfleet could spare one of its heavy cruisers from purely military errands on a more or less scheduled, Cousteau-style cruise through known and unknown space. It would have had little to do with the endurance of the ship, as we saw the ship do both scheduled and unscheduled stops at various Starfleet and Federation outposts during those five years.

Timo Saloniemi

And, can you really expect a crew to commit to longer than five years at a stretch? Maybe 5 years is the standard length of contracted enlistment, after which one could choose to reenlist/retire/etc.

Actually, the entire point behind the Galaxy Class Starship was that it was meant for long term deep space missions. That's the reason that it was designed to house families onboard.

Thats what stuck out to me about the Enterprise-Both E and D. You build a ship that can spend 20 years in the black -and you saddle her commander with core planet political issues.

Though on a greater scale, its gotta suck when you go out for 10 or more years in deep space, and come back to a different universe.

Think about it: while it may have suited Enterprise D ( and other Galaxy class explorers) to be away for a decade or more, they'd be coming back to a Federation totally different than the one they left.

Makes one think...

 

[Nebusj]

Think about it: while it may have suited Enterprise D ( and other Galaxy class explorers) to be away for a decade or more, they'd be coming back to a Federation totally different than the one they left.

Makes one think...

Well, sort of, yeah, but that's part of what long, multi-year missions past the effective range of contact imply.

Lewis and Clark spent nearly a full Presidential Administration off the mapped end of the continent. The United States South Seas Exploring Expedition set out at the start of the worst depression the United States had seen at the time and came back to a country on the brink of the railroad bubble.

James Cook's third expedition set off with the British Empire at its peak and returned with the country stuck in a war on three continents against four nations that it would lose. The Confederate privateer Shenandoah discovered after months of attacking United States ships that the Civil War had ended and they had been pirates for nearly all their effective careers.

It can be rather a shock when people come back home, but it is also part of what they sign up for.

 

[C.E. Evans]

It's always been my opinion that the Enterprise-D was somewhat atypical of a Galaxy-class starship and that it was only such a vessel because it was the biggest and most powerful design at the time. It's duties as the Federation flagship (purely a 24th-Century honorific for Starfleet's most high-profile "public relations" starship, IMO) took precedence over its duties as an exploration vessel. The Enterprise-D did make a number of notable first contacts during its short time in service, but it was also deployed on numerous "waving the flag" missions as well.

The same might be true for the Enterprise-E. But then I've also kind of thought that both the Galaxy- and Sovereign-classes are generally the same kind of ship--large, long-range multipurpose starships--and that exploration is just what they mainly do during peacetime, but they're capable of performing other types of deep-space missions as well...

 

[Anticitizen]

Five years would probably be the maximum time Starfleet could spare one of its heavy cruisers from purely military errands on a more or less scheduled, Cousteau-style cruise through known and unknown space. It would have had little to do with the endurance of the ship, as we saw the ship do both scheduled and unscheduled stops at various Starfleet and Federation outposts during those five years.

Timo Saloniemi

And, can you really expect a crew to commit to longer than five years at a stretch? Maybe 5 years is the standard length of contracted enlistment, after which one could choose to reenlist/retire/etc.

Actually, the entire point behind the Galaxy Class Starship was that it was meant for long term deep space missions. That's the reason that it was designed to house families onboard.

Well, I was speaking in context of TOS's 'five year mission'.

 

[Timo]

One may argue that the E-D only became the Federation Flagship (and gained the associated political bellhop mission profile) after her "Encounter at Farpoint" mission was cancelled. She and her sisters might all have been designed for very deep space exploration out of contact with the Federation, and the Yamato may indeed have been on exactly that sort of a mission - judging by how her real whereabouts seemed unknown to our heroes in "Where Silence Has Lease", and how she had spent a long time doing pretty radical, even illegal stuff in "Contagion". But one of these superships might have been chosen to remain behind as a showpiece vessel, and the lot fell on E-D, perhaps because a 20-year mission takes a lot of planning and preparation, and all the work done on E-D's projected mission was wasted when Farpoint disappeared...

As for Kirk's ship, which never seemed to have a Federation Flagship role burdened on her... She did regularly pull to UFP ports, and could have rotated her crew if a 20-year mission were ordered. So I'd still argue that the mission length limitation was something dictated by the nature of the mission, and had nothing to do with the nature of the ship or her crew. Few of Cousteau's journeys of exploration were dependent on the range of the Calypso or the patience of her crew, either: the main factor was the balance of funding and spending that would allow them to do research and film the movies that would pay for much of it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JoeZhang]

As for Kirk's ship, which never seemed to have a Federation Flagship role burdened on her... She did regularly pull to UFP ports, and could have rotated her crew if a 20-year mission were ordered. So I'd still argue that the mission length limitation was something dictated by the nature of the mission, and had nothing to do with the nature of the ship or her crew. Few of Cousteau's journeys of exploration were dependent on the range of the Calypso or the patience of her crew, either: the main factor was the balance of funding and spending that would allow them to do research and film the movies that would pay for much of it.

Timo Saloniemi

I never got any sense that the original Enterprise was on form of deep space mission just that's it's "tour" was of fixed length and, at best, would encounter new planets on the current border or maybe because of the vastness of space, within federation space.

You do have the oddness of them reaching the edge of the galaxy but I just hand-wave that one away.