2259.365 would seem to be just a variation on the Julian Date system, 2259.365 = 9365. I think the US Air Force and US Navy still use it on some paperwork.
NX Class: Can we take the Daedalus class serious now?
- Thread starter Commodore_Rook
- Start date
And in that case 2233.04 would mean the 40th day of 2233, not the fourth. An interesting take as such.
Of course, Kirk later on Delta Vega expresses uncertainty about the second digit. He probably isn't confused about the date by ten full days. So I sort of both agree and disagree with Boris: we don't have enough data to decipher the system, but we already have enough to completely disprove certain interpretations thereof. (Unfortunately, the interpretations already disproven may happen to include the one the writers intended!)
OTOH, there's no problem with taking the TOS digits as being based on thousand-day space years, either. Or at least no more problem than in the TNG case.
Four digits, five digits... It doesn't matter, because it is always too few. Even with five digits, the system only indicates dates up to decades, while the Federation has existed for centuries. So probably these dates our heroes quote have a few digits omitted, just like we may say "back in '72" instead of "back in 1972". And in TOS, our heroes omitted more than in TNG, perhaps because they were only discussing things in the context of their five-year mission.
Timo Saloniemi
Of course, Kirk later on Delta Vega expresses uncertainty about the second digit. He probably isn't confused about the date by ten full days. So I sort of both agree and disagree with Boris: we don't have enough data to decipher the system, but we already have enough to completely disprove certain interpretations thereof. (Unfortunately, the interpretations already disproven may happen to include the one the writers intended!)
OTOH, there's no problem with taking the TOS digits as being based on thousand-day space years, either. Or at least no more problem than in the TNG case.
Four digits, five digits... It doesn't matter, because it is always too few. Even with five digits, the system only indicates dates up to decades, while the Federation has existed for centuries. So probably these dates our heroes quote have a few digits omitted, just like we may say "back in '72" instead of "back in 1972". And in TOS, our heroes omitted more than in TNG, perhaps because they were only discussing things in the context of their five-year mission.
Timo Saloniemi
Stardates should probably be viewed as a specialized code which _can_ represent dates, but otherwise the Gregorian calendar is still used in parallel (as we can see from timespans and the occasional calendar date). This is why it wouldn't matter if stardates are periodically revised -- daily lives aren't fully governed by them. If we cannot convert stardates easily, the characters probably can't either and have to rely on computers or on memorizing the Gregorian equivalents of specific stardates.
Also, if humans can keep using the Gregorian calendar, I would imagine that the Universal Translator would allow every Federation planet to retain its own calendar, since calendar conversions shouldn't exactly be a problem for the device. This is also an argument in favor of stardates being a more specialized tool. Perhaps in addition to the date, they encode some other information as well which we don't know about at this point.
Also, if humans can keep using the Gregorian calendar, I would imagine that the Universal Translator would allow every Federation planet to retain its own calendar, since calendar conversions shouldn't exactly be a problem for the device. This is also an argument in favor of stardates being a more specialized tool. Perhaps in addition to the date, they encode some other information as well which we don't know about at this point.
Certainly our heroes keep on talking about the seven days of the week, which aren't a feature of the stardate system - but OTOH, they aren't part of the Gregorian calendar as such, either.
Do we ever hear the months of the year mentioned by name after the ENT era? There might be dates in the Gregorian style in some of the Okudagrams of TNG ("Conundrum" would be the best candidate, I guess; e.g. "Equilibrium" and "Eye of the Beholder" only seem to have stardates and years, not months).
Timo Saloniemi
Do we ever hear the months of the year mentioned by name after the ENT era? There might be dates in the Gregorian style in some of the Okudagrams of TNG ("Conundrum" would be the best candidate, I guess; e.g. "Equilibrium" and "Eye of the Beholder" only seem to have stardates and years, not months).
Timo Saloniemi
The writers have always used Gregorian timespans, so it would be hard to reinterpret them as something else (unless, of course, certain dates or timespans were explicitly said to be part of another calendar). Any alternate theories are bound to break down at some point because they wouldn't match the writers' intent. We can only try to explain how stardates and the Gregorian calendar are supposed to interoperate.
Some thoughts on the OP. One of the motivations behind the NX design I believe was to create a Human showpiece, a deliberately "pretty ship." The follow on design, whether because of the Romulan War or other priorities, needed to be a more practical vessel and (in opposition to the OP) a less fragile design. One prediction on the part of the Vulcans was true, Humans really didn't understand what they would be facing, the showpiece NX wasn't designed (or original armed) for what they found. The Daedius is obviously a more compact design, and with a simple sphere and cylinder shape, a more sturdy robust design too.
How does the Enterprise NX-01 turning edge-on to enemy fire display less targetable area than the smaller Daedius? The two Daedius images are 105 and 140 meters, the NX is 225 meters, and a much larger target even when presenting that aspect. Plus your making a assumption that the tactical situation will permit the NX to rotate "edge on." Regardless of how it rotates, the Daedius's target aspect is basically the same, small.
The is also the addition attribute that the Daedius, because of it's compact and simple design, would be easier, faster and (let's face it) cheaper to construct. With the resources required to produce a NX, two or more Daedius Starships could be made available. The NX's weapons systems weren't particular bulky, so the Daedius could likely carry a similar number of cannons and torpedoes. The 140 meter Daedius could also mount the same reactor as the NX, the 105 meter version might have to carry a smaller reactor.
It's apparently canon that the Daedius is considerately faster, combining (in the case of a 140 m.) a NX reactor and NX sized engines with a smaller pressure hull and a more compact warp field, might account for this.
A point mention by others I will concede, the NX is "prettier."
It doesn't. But if one were to build a sphere ship with as much useable volume inside it as the NX-01 offers, it would not be "smaller" any more. It would be large from all aspects, while a saucer would only be large from above and below (directions relevant for defense but not a problem if one is the attacking party), and a Vulcan needleship of equal volume would not be particularly large from any direction.
Why? Why would a sphere be faster to do than a saucer, when both need complex curved pieces? Why would a tubular neck be built faster than a thicker, structurally more forgiving NX-01 double boom?
Building small Daedaluses (Daedaloi?) might not be all that much better than building small Enterprises. And building large Daedaluses might be necessary for creating a ship that passes the battleworthiness threshold.
Naah. The only canonical Daedalus was the Essex from "Power Play", and nothing suggested she would have been particularly fast.
If we accept noncanon stuff on the Daedalus, then we have the Encyclopedia mentions that do not suggest high speed, and the older ENT novels that suggest a design that predates NX-01 and may once have been a testbed for a failed warp 7 drive but never got to mount that drive operationally. I don't know if the newer ENT novels on the subject of the Romulan War suggest a high speed for the Daedalus, but I sort of doubt it, when the overall dramatic idea there is to present the Daedalus as the poor man's alternative to the Enterprise.
Timo Saloniemi
The Dae might have only about thirty-five percent of the internal volume of the the NX, however in terms of fulfilling a combat role, how much of the NX's volume is useful, or better put useless?
We don't know. Perhaps 100% of it is absolutely needed?
The UESF supposedly built the ship for exploration, but she doesn't differ markedly from the older Intrepid in dimensions or distribution of volume. And the Intrepid would probably be the ideal pure warship, because NX-01 was supposed to be the very first explorer...
Also, when the ship sailed for a hastily launched "milk run" in the pilot episode, she had 80 people aboard. When she sailed for a pure combat mission (or armed recce), she again had 80 people aboard. This might suggest that the crew capacity / crew requirement is already ideally sized for such combat missions and that other crew sizes would require compromises distracting from the optimal combat configuration.
If something like 50% of the NX-01 volume is useless for fighting purposes, then it might make the best sense to build half-sized Enterprises for the Romulan War.
Timo Saloniemi
The UESF supposedly built the ship for exploration, but she doesn't differ markedly from the older Intrepid in dimensions or distribution of volume. And the Intrepid would probably be the ideal pure warship, because NX-01 was supposed to be the very first explorer...
Also, when the ship sailed for a hastily launched "milk run" in the pilot episode, she had 80 people aboard. When she sailed for a pure combat mission (or armed recce), she again had 80 people aboard. This might suggest that the crew capacity / crew requirement is already ideally sized for such combat missions and that other crew sizes would require compromises distracting from the optimal combat configuration.
If something like 50% of the NX-01 volume is useless for fighting purposes, then it might make the best sense to build half-sized Enterprises for the Romulan War.
Timo Saloniemi
If they left Earth for the Expanse with still 80 people aboard, that means that up to one quarter of the original crew were replaced with the detachment of MACO's.
Reducing the (non-MACO) crew compliment from 80, down to perhaps 60 would seem to be a compromise. Not simple adding the MACO's to the Enterprise's usual sized compliment could indicate a limitation in the ship's life support capacity. The Enterprise was sent into the Expanse as a matter of Hobson's choice, she was the only warp five engined Human ship in existence. She wasn't sent because she was considered a "combat vessel."
It would have been so much better had Earth sent a battle group. Not only would this have made more sense in light of the threat Earth faced, but unfortunately the writers saw fit to continue along the nonsensical lines of Starfleet not being a military despite so acting like one in so many ways. And if Starfleet was not supposed to be a military, then the majority of the Starfleet crew should have been replaced by military personnel. Not only would this have made more sense, but it would have given the writers plenty to drawn from in way of drama. Can you imagine if all of the crew, save the main characters, had been replaced by military personnel? What if the remaining Starfleet crew had been conscripted into military service for this mission and been given military ranks in order to stay in their positions? What if they'd had to fight to stay in those positions? Can you think of the implications of keeping T'Pol as a member of the crew? The possibilities are endless. Unfortunately for as much as the show-runners claimed to want to shake things up, apparently maintaining the status quo held much more interest for them.
How do you send a battle group if you only have one ship? That was more or less the whole point of the entire show.
On the issue of how "military" the UESF was, the only time its supposed "nonmilitariness" is brought up is when Archer and Forrest discuss bringing the MACO team aboard. In that scene, the MACO are the military, and the UESF is something else. It looks, sounds and quacks like interservices rivalry more than anything else. That is, the MACO are the army (or what was called "the military" in English until very recently), while the UESF is the navy (which was very definitely not a "military" in English just a few centuries ago, and you'd have gotten yourself keelhauled if you claimed otherwise).
The same could apply to our sole TNG piece of "Starfleet is not military", from "Peak Performance". Picard there could be arguing that since Starfleet is the navy and not the army, Starfleet doesn't do mindless drills such as the one he is now ordered to conduct. Starfleet has better things to do in peacetime, just like any old-time navy would, while the army just sits in its garrisons (or doesn't necessarily even exist) unless there's a war.
Clearly people wearing Archer's kind of uniform are supposed to be Earth's leading space combat experts. It may happen that Archer himself is not a particularly good expert in that field, of course: being Henry Archer's son may have counted for more in the original selection process. But replacing Archer with, say, Hernandez or Ramirez would be a bad move when Archer is the only military skipper with two years of real deep space experience.
Archer himself never shies away from considering himself a soldier. He just happens to be an explorer as well, much like ol' Cousteau. Picard doesn't go out and say "I'm not a soldier", either; he just at one point argues that UFP Starfleet isn't a military organization, whatever he means with that.
And that's the point; the original crew featured a bunch of scientists and whatnot, the combat mission crew featured the like number of Marines, and neither configuration suggested there was any excess fat as regards space combat capabilities. 3/4 of the crew was always considered essential for that, and then there was 1/4 more for the groud combat side show.
We thus lack any and all evidence that the ship would have "excess" that could be trimmed down. If we had witnessed an initial exploration crew of 160 being trimmed down to a Xindi-hunt crew of 80, we'd be aware of 50% excess. But this did not happen.
Granted, Archer might have wanted to sail out with an exploration crew of 160, and was prevented from doing so because he never launched for an exploration mission, but only for a premature ferry mission where certain items and perhaps personnel had to be left behind. Perhaps the ship really is rated for 200 people, and a smaller one would do for the Romulan War. But we can't use ENT as evidence for such speculation, because the crew size stayed constant.
True enough. But the only difference between her and the Intrepid seemed to be the warp five engine. And the Intrepid wasn't an exploration vessel, because NX-01 was supposed to be the first. So it would appear both the Enterprise and the Intrepid represent the UESF ideal for a space combat vessel... Whether that ideal would somehow change at the onset of the Romulan War is unknown, but again ENT doesn't suggest a reason as to why this would be.
Timo Saloniemi
and
At the beginning of The Expanse, the Enterprise is attacked by a Klingon vessel. The Enterprise is assisted by three other Starfleet vessels, one of which (IIRC) is the Intrepid. Those three ships would compose the hypothedical "Battle Group." Operating separately from the Enterprise, this battle group would have trailed behind the Enterprise, where it took six weeks for the Enterprise to reach the expanse, the Intrepid battle group would have arrived after three or four months (or more).
Sending the Enterpise in solo is a classic example of putting all your eggs in one basket. Yes, at maximum warp both the Enterprise and the Xindi ship would have run circle arround the Intrepid group. But that's not the point. At the beginning of world war two in the Pacific, many of the ships and aircraft operated by the American forces were hopelessly obsolete in comparison to the Japanese, and the Americans took heavy losses, But we won battles through perserveance and tactics.
Going back to a earlier point, one of the reason Archer should have been replaced in favor of a "military commander" is tactics. Archer obviously wasn't trained in them. Even after entering the expanse he was still learning, formulating knowledge in a area that a trained military commander would already have been knowledgeable in.
Even with two years experiance with the Enterprise, in many ways Archer was still a rookee.
Or you could have split the difference, leaving Archer in 'operational command' and assigning a 'mission commander' to Enterprise. Which would've created an interesting dynamic.
Sending a military commander in place of Archer would have ended in disaster. If Archer hadn't made peace with the Xindi humanoids, aquatics and sloth they wouldn't have helped stop the reptillians and insectoids.
Why would a military commander been any less capable making peace than Archer?
Just a musing: could Starfleet really be called that if it only consisted of one ship?
A military commander would have been looking for opportunities to create alliances, friendships and (let admit it) generate division in the ranks of the people who attacked Earth.
And probably be more concerned with smashing up as much Xindi stuff and killing as many Xindi as possible than in looking for the right Kumbaya moment.
