Old ships?

What does Starfleet do with Ships that are Decommissioned? Scrap'em? Send to reserves? Sell/give them away?

 

Surplus Depot Z15

 

Given that for each lightyear in any direction explored space expands, a massive volume of space comes with it, more and more ships are always going to be required to service it.

Old ships may be retired from front line service, but they will probably stay in use.

 

Even a wreck can still be of use. Weapons testing, firing range target, decoy, training facility for rescue teams... all those things can be achieved by a wreck that still somewhat resembles a ship and has all the right materials in place.

 

I loved the idea from old FASA RPG books that old Starfleet ships were sold to private concerns, so you'd have independent planets flying old Constitution-class ships in the Triangle.

Same thing happened to the Enterprise-A post-STVI in the Shatner/Reeves-Stevens novel The Ashes of Eden. She was stripped of advanced weapons and sensors, her warp drive was capped to warp 5 and the planet Chal hired the retired James T. Kirk to be her captain.

 

I've always wondered what they did with the USS Exeter considering that it was probably infected with that disease which broke down the water in human bodies?
JB

 

Obviously we never find out. I'd like to think it was blown up like the USS Lantree in Next Gen.

 

I thought they were either given to other ventures or the raw materials were broken down and used in newer ships or something

 

Actually, some end up in the fleet museum. Picard mentions to Scotty that there is a Constitution Class ship in the museum. I don't know if there are any other canon mentions of the museum or what might be in it.

 

I understand that important ships like voyager become museums and stuff, but regular ships should just be recycled, I dont see how we have so many resources to build a fleet (I get with new worlds come new resources, but I guess I don't think we are that lucky to find what we needed to keep exploring)

 

Yeah maybe unless every person to beam over to the Exeter gets a newly found cure to the Omega IV virus?
JB

 

Yeah, it hardly seems like any get retired. Whether it's the battle at Wolf 359 or the war battles from Deep Space Nine, we constantly saw old Excelsior-class ships and various Reliant-class variants in service. Even the stardrive section of a Constitution-class refit at Wolf 359. And, though I don't recall now where, an Ambassador-class.

It seems like you have to go back to class ships from the TOS series to find classes no longer in use.

 

The Soyuz class is retired. That class dates to shortly after TOS, although that's splitting hairs.

 

Or maybe Section 31 leaked the news of an abandoned starship full of technology in orbit around that planet to the Klingons or the Romulans.

CT0760 said:

The Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carriers, approximately the size of a starship, have dead weight tonnage of 90,000 tons. That is 90,000 tons of steel, which is mostly iron.

Asteroid 16 Psyche is believed to be almost entirely nickel-iron, approximately 90 percent iron. 16 Psyche is believed to be about 279×232×189 kilometers in size, with a mass of about 2.92 times 10 to the 19th power kilograms. Thus it contains about 2.628 times 10 to the 19th power kilograms.

One ton is 907.185 kilograms. So 90,000 tons would be 81,646,650 kilograms, or 8.164665 times 10 to the 7th power kilograms. Thus the iron in asteroid 16 Psyche is enough to make steel for 3.21874801 times 10 to the 11th power starships with the mass of a Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carrier. That is 321,874,801,000 starships.

That is just a sample of the vast resources found in the small bodies of the solar system.

Neither the Federation, the Romulans, nor the Klingons are likely to run out of resources any time soon.

 

Probably exactly the same as what happens to today's naval ships. Scrapped, sold to a less advanced nation, museum, weapons testing, artificial reef, and some of the more serviceable ones get kept in mothballs in case they are needed again.

 

Indeed. USS Hathaway.

 

Good paint

 

Or just 10 years before TOS, where not a single Federation or Klingon design from the period is never used again

 

Riker and Troi mention that an NX class ship is in the museum in TATV. And the Daedalus class was mentioned by Data in “Power Play” as having been retired for 150 years.

In the TNG novel “Blaze Of Glory” The E-D faced off with a Constitution-class ship that had been sold as scrap, minus its weapons and warp drive. But it’s mentioned that Starfleet no longer allows retired ships to be sold.

 

I think that most ships, upon decommission, are sent to scrap yard depots, such at the Federation depot in the episode "Unification".