Of course the real "bigger franchise" reason for the rarity of the Ambassador class is that after the filming of the Battle of Wolf-359 scenes for "The Emissary pt. 1" the Ambassador class model was too damaged to film new clips of the ship for future scenes.
Oldest Starship Classes In Service in a Post Nemesis Star Trek Series
- Thread starter Samuel
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IIRC, it was improperly packed away, or the crate it was in was dropped. Such things happen.
Moreover, there was unfortunately no in-story reason to create a CGI model. If there had been, I'm sure we'd have had lots of them around during the Dominion War and afterwards, as the VFX guys picked ships to populate various background scenes. Would have been nice, but I'm sure time and budget constraints kept them from building more than just a couple models expressly for background use.
Mark
Moreover, there was unfortunately no in-story reason to create a CGI model. If there had been, I'm sure we'd have had lots of them around during the Dominion War and afterwards, as the VFX guys picked ships to populate various background scenes. Would have been nice, but I'm sure time and budget constraints kept them from building more than just a couple models expressly for background use.
Mark
I do hope that, if there ever was an HD remaster of DS9, they'd take advantage of all the TV-quality CG models being rebuilt and reconstructed for the Eaglemoss starship model magazines to fill out the fleet scenes with some more variety. I'd love to see some Ambassadors, Constitutions, both types of Excelsiors, all three types of Mirandas, a couple Constellations, definitely the four BoBW ships so the Galaxy and Nebula aren't just sad, curvy orphans of their design style, not to mention the alien fleets.
That's what I heard. Not as cool a story regarding how the "All Good Things" Klingon cruiser was smashed in half while traveling through U.S. customs because agents suspected it might contain drugs. Fortunately they were able to salvage it to use in later Star Trek episodes.
I now remember a short remark about it in a science fiction magazine said "a minor shipping accident radically altered the deployment patterns of Starfleet for the next 100 years!"
I can imagine the Sovereign class being intended as the direct replacement of the Excelsior class, to be supplemented by somewhat smaller Akiras. The Sovereign and Akira projects were far enough along to see combat during a period of Crisis.
So by the early 25th century, I see the Excelsior's role being handled by the Ambassadors, Sovereigns, Akiras, Intrepids.
The aging Ambassadors would have been pulled from deep space exploration, being few but available. That would leave a handful of Galaxies for exploration, but I think the Federation would have been in a period of Reconstruction.
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I would think they would be rather large for milk runs.
Maybe colonial support, or starbase resupply missions.
Or convert them into large science vessels capable of several hundred to thousands of different experiments at once. They might be aging, but they still have a lot of internal volume and presumably quick warp drives with ample power output.
(She also has a round saucer...for Spore Drive experiments......)
Maybe colonial support, or starbase resupply missions.
Or convert them into large science vessels capable of several hundred to thousands of different experiments at once. They might be aging, but they still have a lot of internal volume and presumably quick warp drives with ample power output.
(She also has a round saucer...for Spore Drive experiments......)
With many ships lost by the end of the Dominion War, I would keep the Ambassadors close to home because of their defensive capabilities. In the meantime, they could serve other roles in Federation space, such as scientific research, disaster relief, etc. No, these aging but capable ships would still be too important for milk runs.
23rd century ships still in service by the 25th century? Well, Excelsior, Miranda and Constellation classes were still in use in the TNG era. So I can imagine the surviving ships still in use, held together with duct tape, glue...prayer....
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http://www.trekships.org/antares.htm
I can imagine ships of Discovery vintage being taken out of mothballs. To handle milk runs during the Dominion War, while the Mirandas and Excelsiors are thrown into battle. Actually, with Star Fleet depleted by the end of war, and the Mirandas/Excelsiors decimated, I can (oddly enough) see a few of these antiques still in use at the beginning of the 25th century.
I can imagine ships of Discovery vintage being taken out of mothballs. To handle milk runs during the Dominion War, while the Mirandas and Excelsiors are thrown into battle. Actually, with Star Fleet depleted by the end of war, and the Mirandas/Excelsiors decimated, I can (oddly enough) see a few of these antiques still in use at the beginning of the 25th century.
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Maybe the Ambassador class were on deep space assignment, so their are maybe a lot of them.
And in the battles in DS9 we saw many Galaxy class starships in the fleet, Sisko mentioned even a Galaxy wing.
So I think they are well represented in the 25th century
And in the battles in DS9 we saw many Galaxy class starships in the fleet, Sisko mentioned even a Galaxy wing.
So I think they are well represented in the 25th century
Real life commercial ships are built with a hull life of 30 years, and warships with a hull life of 50. They might get another 10 years if rebuilt, but there isn't much which can be done to get too many more years out of a hull once it experiences enough material fatigue. In comparison, fighter jets can have a hull life in the 50,000 flight hour range, and might get extended another 10,000 flight hours near the end of their life. I'm not sure, but I think that works out to maybe 30 years before being sent back to the factory to be rebuilt, retired, or scrapped.
A huge exception is the B-52 which is expected to make it to the year 2040, and the last ones built are from 1962, for a life of just under 80 years.
Inertial dampeners and structural integrity fields might mitigate a lot of fatigue, and if Trek ships are built more like sea ships than aircraft, which seems to be the case given known Trek ships, then maybe, given a wild guess, we would see 200 year old hulls. Anything older is going to either be too worn out, or require so much rebuilding it would be cheaper to build a new ship. But, that's for an individual hull, not a class.
In real life the Burke class is around its 5th version, the M1 Abrams is getting a 4th and then 5th upgrade package ending on, I think, the M1A3 SEP 2, and the F-16 might be up to its 8th iteration. There is a limit to how much a platform can reasonably be upgraded, but upgrades can go on for decades and maintain reasonable combat effectiveness. In Trek this might result in a 50 year construction program for a single class, such as, I guess, with the Excelsior and Miranda, and for the final ship of a class making it through its hull life of 50 years, then being rebuilt for another 10 years of life. That low ends a class lasting 110 years assuming raw numbers of hulls are more important than staying up to date, and in the TNG period that seems to have been the case until the Dominion War, after which all the old ships disappear.
I realize my previous wild guess for hull life would make that 310 years for a single class.
Post Dominion War it seems unlikely we would see ancient hulls, except for ships returning from multi-decade, or multi-generational missions. A ship was dispatched to intercept Voyager, with an expectation of it taking, I think, 10 years, so missions like that exist.
P.S. - That might explain why Wesley is allowed to be an acting ensign, if there is already a system in place which the Enterprise-D had no use for, but which exists for other mission types.
P.P.S - That might also explain why a captain staying on one ship forever, thus blocking promotion for everyone beneath, is considered kosher. Unless that is merely an aberration of Picard and Kirk.
A huge exception is the B-52 which is expected to make it to the year 2040, and the last ones built are from 1962, for a life of just under 80 years.
Inertial dampeners and structural integrity fields might mitigate a lot of fatigue, and if Trek ships are built more like sea ships than aircraft, which seems to be the case given known Trek ships, then maybe, given a wild guess, we would see 200 year old hulls. Anything older is going to either be too worn out, or require so much rebuilding it would be cheaper to build a new ship. But, that's for an individual hull, not a class.
In real life the Burke class is around its 5th version, the M1 Abrams is getting a 4th and then 5th upgrade package ending on, I think, the M1A3 SEP 2, and the F-16 might be up to its 8th iteration. There is a limit to how much a platform can reasonably be upgraded, but upgrades can go on for decades and maintain reasonable combat effectiveness. In Trek this might result in a 50 year construction program for a single class, such as, I guess, with the Excelsior and Miranda, and for the final ship of a class making it through its hull life of 50 years, then being rebuilt for another 10 years of life. That low ends a class lasting 110 years assuming raw numbers of hulls are more important than staying up to date, and in the TNG period that seems to have been the case until the Dominion War, after which all the old ships disappear.
I realize my previous wild guess for hull life would make that 310 years for a single class.
Post Dominion War it seems unlikely we would see ancient hulls, except for ships returning from multi-decade, or multi-generational missions. A ship was dispatched to intercept Voyager, with an expectation of it taking, I think, 10 years, so missions like that exist.
P.S. - That might explain why Wesley is allowed to be an acting ensign, if there is already a system in place which the Enterprise-D had no use for, but which exists for other mission types.
P.P.S - That might also explain why a captain staying on one ship forever, thus blocking promotion for everyone beneath, is considered kosher. Unless that is merely an aberration of Picard and Kirk.
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I had the impression that by the TNG era the Mirandas, Excelsiors, and Constellations were near the end of their service lives. The mission of the Excelsiors was to serve as a bus, ferrying passengers out to the shiny new Enterprise D. And by the end of the Dominion War, most of these old ships would have been wiped out.
So in the aftermath of the Dominion War you have a depleted fleet, in terms of both ships and crews. So what do you do?
The Excelsior's will be around forever!
I see no reason that hull fatigue (if it exists in an era of inertial dampers) couldn't be fixed in situ using some variant of transporter/replicator technology.
I've long considered space frames to have modular capabilities swapping out tech and equipment so shouldn't be overly difficult to keep relatively up to date.
I've long considered space frames to have modular capabilities swapping out tech and equipment so shouldn't be overly difficult to keep relatively up to date.
Spaceframes are weird things. Archer's Enterprise was reduced to toothpicks and then completely repaired (by a planet that had limited resources but did have a replacement ship recently completed), suggesting the hull or the keel is actually a consumable that can be replenished at will - sometimes in field conditions, even! That Kirk's second Enterprise got a hole in the saucer and was written off need not contradict the above - if repairing a hull is trivially cheap, then it can also be trivially left undone when every other concern is more relevant.
But turning A into A1 or A2, let alone B, seems to be unpopular unless A1, A2 and B all look identical to A. Why are looks that important if hull reconstruction is trivial as shown? Is it a "warp dynamics" thing, with construction and reconstruction beign easy but designing a new shape (even slightly new) extremely difficult? Perhaps there are no valid computational models, and "warp tunnel" testing of modifications with full-scale ships is really expensive?
Timo Saloniemi
But turning A into A1 or A2, let alone B, seems to be unpopular unless A1, A2 and B all look identical to A. Why are looks that important if hull reconstruction is trivial as shown? Is it a "warp dynamics" thing, with construction and reconstruction beign easy but designing a new shape (even slightly new) extremely difficult? Perhaps there are no valid computational models, and "warp tunnel" testing of modifications with full-scale ships is really expensive?
Timo Saloniemi
A shame they didn't have something like the Cylon Biological Spackle™ or at least some other nano-based stuff that could get into every micro fracture and turn itself into the surrounding material.
Probably not too far from the replicator tech you mentioned.
