Question, Starfleet Registy Numbers TOS, Movie and TNG

[Timo]

Umm, so the Enterprise was the first experimental vessel in the history of human spaceflight?

Or in the history of UE Starfleet at least?

I could easily buy her being the first Xplorer in that organization: it takes a warp 5 engine to reach a location worth exploring, i.e. one where no Vulcan has gone before.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

Umm, so the Enterprise was the first experimental vessel in the history of human spaceflight?

Or in the history of UE Starfleet at least?

No more than the Rockwell B-1 was the first bomber ever built, or the F-4 was only the fourth fighter ever built...

 

[aridas sofia]

Umm, so the Enterprise was the first experimental vessel in the history of human spaceflight?

Or in the history of UE Starfleet at least?

I could easily buy her being the first Xplorer in that organization: it takes a warp 5 engine to reach a location worth exploring, i.e. one where no Vulcan has gone before.

Timo Saloniemi

Timo's suggestion comports well with Jefferies' own numbering of the ringship Enterprise as "CVX-330". Since the original designation of carriers as CVs referred to their role as free-roaming cruisers that just happened to be involved in flight, it makes some sense that a space cruiser would have a hull classification symbol "CV" with the "C" meaning "cruiser" and the "V" meaning "voler" (French for "to fly"). The "X" then means "explorer". CVX = exploratory space cruiser.

But what about "NX"? What naval hull designator is "N"? There is none. But there is a "NR". NR designates a "submersible research vehicle." Its not a big stretch that a UEN using USN precedents and embarking spacecraft might use the NX hull classification to designate a space research vehicle.

 

[Timo]

There is also N=Nuclear to denote an exceptionally capable type of power/drive system. While it's usually added to the end of the string of code letters in USN, not to the beginning, Starfleet might do it the other way around - and the dilithium-regulated warp 5 drive of NX-01 is certainly an exceptionally capable type of power/drive system...

(Indeed, NR-1 has the N come first, even though it apparently refers to "nuclear" even in that context - NR-1 is the world's first and AFAIK only fission-powered research/covert ops submersible.)

So NCC in that code format would be a dilithium-engined cruiser, the bread-and-butter vessel of a mid-to-late 22nd century space navy - which might be where the UFP Starfleet initially gets the code, thereafter perverting it to an organizational or even national identifier of sorts.

Timo Saloniemi