So why are Starfleet ships so Enterprise-ish?

[TheMasterOfOrion]

Sorry if this question has been asked before. I tried the search engine but didn't find much

I've a fair understanding of Trek history, Cochrane's Phoenix an ICBM re-made to peaceful exploration with two warp engines on the side giving us 'First Contact'. First Flight you have something a bit FlashGordon-ish.
Later the missile design was taken out and a Saucer section added along with other upgrades giving us the common Enterprise design. The Federation of planets had kicked off in the 22nd aliens Vulcans, Andorians, Us (Humans) and some other race....? all form one nice big Federation. Starfleet was the military, exploration, peace keeping wing of the Federation with a mission to explore the Galaxy and protect Federation Planets.

So anyway in all this time Cochrane's design and the Saucer section design never really changes?

I mean if the vessels are for a "Federation" why don't any of them look foreign? Why do they look so Earth-ish. Did the Vulcans and Andorians not have great designs of their own?

Or is this something that was just overlooked and maybe needs a little retcon

 

[cwl]

starfleet is originally earth based

 

[captcalhoun]

well, the out-universe explanation is that many of the ships were designed to resemble the Enterprises in order to facilitate the idea of a 'look' for Starfleet vessels and certain other races also got a particular 'look' - the K'Tinga, Vor'Cha and Negh'var all look similar for example - so that means all Starfleet ships have a saucer, a secondary hull of some type and generally 2 or 4 nacelles.

in-universe... there's no real explanation the NX looks different to an Andorian Kumari which looks different to a Vulcan ship which looks nothing like an NX... someone somewhere must've designed a new first 'Federation' class and made it look like an NX or something and it went from there...

 

[Myasishchev]

Presumably the ships from Earth's lineage eventually became better sometime in the early Federation, and so outcompeted the rival Andorian, Vulcan, and Tellarite designs. The other species, having no need to develop their own ships any longer since Earth was giving out superior designs for free, adopted the humans' classes.

Alternatively, maybe there's almost nothing directly descended from the technology of the Phoenix and NX-01 in the newer builds and in fact the innards are largely the result of the V-A-T military-industrial complex, but, since the shape doesn't matter*, the Earthlings, although contributing so very little, still pettily demanded that the Federation's ships look like theirs, be named after theirs, and have those names written in English on the hulls. It does sound very us.

And for what it's worth, the Defiant at least breaks clean from the old design lineage. It doesn't look much like the classic Fed starship at all. In fact, it looks, if anything, Cardassian (compact shape with closely-held nacelles, smaller beam-to-length ratio--imagine it painted gold and you'll see what I mean).

*Shape doesn't matter, regardless of speculation otherwise. If this were the case, all the starships in the universe, no matter its provenance but assuming similar levels of technological sophistication, would look largely alike, just as jet fighters from America look, compared to observed differences between interstellar nations' starships, practically identical to Russian jet fighters. Heck, a jet and a biplane have more in common than a Galaxy-class and a Borg cube.

 

[miraclefan]

Because ENTERPRISE came before STAR TREK O9! I mean look at the KELVIN, it's got pop-out weapons just like the NX-O1! PLUS the bridge had a nice NX feel to it.

 

[Joemac]

I always understood that the other races, especially the vulcans, didn't give us that much help with the original design of the ship. the nx01 was a result of designing by cochrane and johnathon archers father. As a species we tend to find a working designn then improve it although the shape general stays the same. Just look at the design of stealth aircraft since the 50's. The engines may be more powerful but most are based on a triangle shape. It's only natural to assumw space ships will go the same way. we had the capsule on top of the rocket for decades. Then we moved to the shuttle(a plane shape) but still have the rocket attached. eventuall we may have a ship that can take off and land unaided. No doubt this will give us a differant shape. It's just natural progress. So to

 

[Joemac]

I always understood that the other races, especially the vulcans, didn't give us that much help with the original design of the ship. the nx01 was a result of designing by cochrane and johnathon archers father. As a species we tend to find a working designn then improve it although the shape general stays the same. Just look at the design of stealth aircraft since the 50's. The engines may be more powerful but most are based on a triangle shape. It's only natural to assumw space ships will go the same way. we had the capsule on top of the rocket for decades. Then we moved to the shuttle(a plane shape) but still have the rocket attached. eventuall we may have a ship that can take off and land unaided. No doubt this will give us a differant shape. It's just natural progress. So to answer

 

[Joemac]

I always understood that the other races, especially the vulcans, didn't give us that much help with the original design of the ship. the nx01 was a result of designing by cochrane and johnathon archers father. As a species we tend to find a working designn then improve it although the shape general stays the same. Just look at the design of stealth aircraft since the 50's. The engines may be more powerful but most are based on a triangle shape. It's only natural to assumw space ships will go the same way. we had the capsule on top of the rocket for decades. Then we moved to the shuttle(a plane shape) but still have the rocket attached. eventuall we may have a ship that can take off and land unaided. No doubt this will give us a differant shape. It's just natural progress. So to answer your question, it's just the

 

[Joemac]

I always understood that the other races, especially the vulcans, didn't give us that much help with the original design of the ship. the nx01 was a result of designing by cochrane and johnathon archers father. As a species we tend to find a working design then improve it although the shape general stays the same. Just look at the design of stealth aircraft since the 50's. The engines may be more powerful but most are based on a triangle shape. It's only natural to assume space ships will go the same way. we had the capsule on top of the rocket for decades. Then we moved to the shuttle(a plane shape) but still have the rocket attached. eventually we may have a ship that can take off and land unaided. No doubt this will give us a differant shape. It's just natural progress. So to answer your question, it's just the way we as humans work

 

[miraclefan]

Stutering, are we ''Joe''?

 

[BenRoethig]

Who says there aren't Starfleet vessels based on Andorian or Vulcan designs? We've seen Starfleet from the human perspective. There are cultural and environmental reasons why having "segregated" crews might be a good idea.

 

[Major Chord]

^ If I remember correctly, the Intrepid from (which I can't remember) a TOS episode was crewed entirely by Vulcans. I don't think we've ever seen the ship though...so no way to tell for sure if it's a Vulcan-based design, or a Standard saucer, hull, 2 nacelles ship.

 

[RobertVA]

I always understood that the other races, especially the vulcans, didn't give us that much help with the original design of the ship. the nx01 was a result of designing by cochrane and johnathon archers father. As a species we tend to find a working designn then improve it although the shape general stays the same. Just look at the design of stealth aircraft since the 50's. The engines may be more powerful but most are based on a triangle shape. It's only natural to assumw space ships will go the same way. we had the capsule on top of the rocket for decades. Then we moved to the shuttle(a plane shape) but still have the rocket attached. eventuall we may have a ship that can take off and land unaided. No doubt this will give us a differant shape. It's just natural progress. So to answer

Hmm, how well did that orbiter on the side work out for the Columbia crew? Must have something to do with why subsequient flights spend so much time every flight inspecting the thermal protection system twice and why the Orion CEV looks so much like the 1960s vintage Apollo capsules (complete with launch escape tower). If the Aries I first stage booster springs a leak (like happend to Chalenger) Orion can pull the crew away from the launcher to safety. Orion is also safely above ice and insulation detaching from the Aries I second stage (which uses a motor based on the ones used for the Saturn V third stage). Like Apollo, Orion will be primarily operated by timers and altimeters during landing and an unmaned cargo version is planned.

Stealth aircraft in the fifties? Which model was that?! The B2 is more of a boomerang shape and the more recent stealth aircraft has noticeable noses and empenages protruding past the triangle of the main wing. Only the SR71 was a true delta configuration, and while it's radar reflectiveness turned out lower than expected it wasn't truly a stealth aircraft (intended to fly fast and high enough to be hard to shoot down).

 

[BrownShatner]

Actual answer is that the saucer/nacelle design is a visual trademark of Star Trek. As in, nobody can copy it without getting sued.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Personally, I think Starfleet has been moving farther and farther away from the more "Enterprise-ish" kind of vessels and more towards single-hulled vessels with angular command sections and different warp nacelle/stardrive section configurations.

But I always was of the opinion that the original reason why saucers were used for primary hulls was so that they could serve as escape craft in the event the secondary hull was compromised or was about to blow up. The saucer shape may have been chosen as the ideal shape for a fairly large vehicle to enter a planet's atmosphere for a [controlled] landing on its surface or in an ocean...

 

[TheMasterOfOrion]

Thanks for the responses some good points made here

 

[Sci]

I'd always assumed that the "dual hull" configuration we see in the Constitution class was a result of combining Earth hull designs (the saucer) with the Vulcan hull designs' tendency to be vertically-oriented (Surak-class) and then the Andorian ships' more forward-thrusting designs (the Kumari-class). Presumably the Tellarites made important internal contributions that we're not aware of.

 

[roguephoenix]

because the enterprise is starfleet-ish.

you're making a backward correlation. that's like asking why my father looks like me. he doesn't look like me, i look like him.

however, from a production point of view. since you're producing a show about this one ship, of course you will create things in the universe around that ship. i'm sure they started with just the enterprise design and modeled other ships from there. it's done so to give consistency. things need to look similar from the same makers. albeit there would be some difference, but the basic look is the same. take cars for example.

 

[Arpy]

I think that before ENT, the look of Starfleet could have been argued to be an amalgam of different alien techs and aesthetics. When the producers came up with a new Star Trek show set before everything we knew, they imported the look of everything we knew and figured no one would care about how that made sense if the show was enjoyable enough to watch regardless. That's showbiz.

 

[Myasishchev]

When the producers came up with a new Star Trek show set before everything we knew, they imported the look of everything we knew and figured no one would care about how that made sense if the show was enjoyable enough to watch regardless.

Too bad they skipped that step.