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Retirement Age in Starfleet

James Wright

Commodore
Commodore
What do you think the retirement age is for Starfleet personnel, do you think a person could retire a Captain and have a successful career?
 
McCoy was 140 and still serving as an admiral in Starfleet and Picard was in his 70s during Nemesis. Given that various species have different life cycles any retirement policy would have to be flexible to deal with short lived races like Ocampans to the very long lived, like Vulcans.
 
Starfleet seems to let anyone serve as long as he's physically capable of doing it. However, they obviously don't work on a strict seniority principle for promotion, or all the top posts would be filled with Vulcans.

They also don't seem to have any up-or-out policy, so you can stay in a post forever, if that's what suits you.
 
Seems so.

McCoy was 140 and still serving as an admiral in Starfleet

Or then not. He was out of uniform, after all. For all we know, he was long since retired, and was allowed to perform an "inspection" or two every now and then for old times' sake.

In TAS "Counter-Clock Incident", Starfleet retirement age in the TOS era was set at 75, but the episode ended with Commodore Robert April (ret) heading off to make a recommendation about raising that limit.

He may have been successful, as in TNG "Too Short a Season", Admiral Mark Jameson was 85 and, according to himself anyway, would have been fit to command a starship if not for the debilitating disease that made him look like an old man at that early age...

Now, retirement age in militaries tends to be different for different types of personnel. Typically, flag ranks would serve the longest - but the TAS episode concerned flag ranks specifically, as the regulation was forcing Commodore April to retirement. Line officers might have to retire at 65 or whatever in the 23rd century, where human lifespans probably weren't that futuristic yet.

All the above examples are of humans, to be sure. Perhaps the limitations on retirement or enlistment age are species-specific, taking into account that an Ocampa is already fully mature at 1, while a Vulcan might still be fully active at 300. Or then they depend on the individual (after all, there are plenty of single-individual "species" out there if we count the assorted unique hybrids), and are defined in a medical examination.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Picard was in his 70s during Nemesis.

Where do you get that from?

He was born in 2305, making him 74 by Nemesis. In Generations, going by age alone Picard was 6 years older than Kirk when Kirk died.

Wow, I just read the official biography on startrek.com

He served on board the Stargazer for over 20 years, yet Riker got a hard time for serving on the Enterprise after about 4 years.
 
Yeah, but who knows if Picard was getting promotion offers before he took command of Stargazer like Riker was on the Enterprise?
 
Where do you get that from?

He was born in 2305, making him 74 by Nemesis. In Generations, going by age alone Picard was 6 years older than Kirk when Kirk died.

Wow, I just read the official biography on startrek.com

He served on board the Stargazer for over 20 years, yet Riker got a hard time for serving on the Enterprise after about 4 years.

Riker got a hard time because he kept turning down promotions. Picard was already captain, which is considered the sacred job that everyone in Starfleet wants. Even Admirals yearn to be demoted to Captain.
 
In the DS9-R novels, Commander Elias Vaughn is a human in Starfleet over 100 years old and there is mention that there are more centenarians serving in Starfleet than most people notice.
 
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