Question about the Enterprise

[Joeman]

I always took "USS" to mean United Starship, even though technically the two syllables of 'starship' wouldn't be broken up like that. Didn't Kirk once refer to the NCC-1701 as the "united starship Enterprise"? I haven't seen every TOS ep, so I don't know.

Hmmm I'm not sure either. revisiting TOS is on my agenda, as I haven't seen the entire series since the mid 80's.

I'm sure there are lots of people around here who have discussed this to death, but according to wiki answers:

"In Gene Roddenberry's original Star Trek pitch, the starship is described as a "United Space Ship."

Also, in the original pilot "The Cage," the enterprise is refered to as the "United Space Ship Enterprise." Captain Kirk also refers to the ship as such in the episode "Elaan of Troyius," as does Dr. McCoy in the episode "Space Seed." Both are episodes of Star Trek (TOS)."

Well I'll just be damned. I don't know why all these years I just assumed it was still "United States Ship". No reason why at some point it couldn't have changed. Well that certainly answers an age old question for me. Should have Googled it sooner I guess.

 

[Timo]

I'd argue that the three letters there would be the least redundant if each of the letters had a specific meaning, rather than two letters being spent on describing a single concept.

That is, U could stand for United Earth, the "native country" of the vessel; S could stand for Starfleet, the operating organization of the vessel; and the second S could stand for Starship, the type of the vessel. Or then the second S could simply tell Ships apart from Installations or Vehicles or whatever else the UESF operated or possessed.

USS would then uniquely identify the vessels of the UESF. UES might stand for UE ECS Ship if need be; UPS might be UE Prospecting Ship, etc.

After 2161, some (not necessarily all) former UE SF Ships would become UFP SF Ships - but the pennant lettering USS would stay the same, both in appearance and in structure. Sometimes it might also mean UE SpaceProbeAgency Ship. Verbal abbreviation would hit the middle ground between the three letters and the full spelled-out words: UFP SF Ship could be "United StarShip", while UE SPA Ship would be "United SpaceShip".

Timo Saloniemi