I assume that Gorkon's/Azetbur's Qo'noS One is either on permanent loan or was gifted to the Federation as a symbol of the Khitomer Accords alliance. Perhaps President Ra-ghoratreii's Starfleet One is on permanent loan to them in return.
It was the "Ship of teh Sisko". What more can you ask for? Hopefully that's coming, at least in episode 10.
Arguably the Defiant was the most prominent ship, despite being...very smol (sorry Worf) in many Dominion War engagements. The E-A, Bounty, Q-1, Excelsior and NX-01 arguably are the most logical additions there. Stargazer..sure..Picards ship, ship of the "Picard Maneuver"..but otherwise just a normal Constellation Class starship.
That'll probably piss off a lot of visiting Ferengi - glorifying the ship captained by the Butcher of the Battle of Maxia!
We can't limit our imagination on these things to simply what we've seen on TV and in movies. It's a great big Federation and no doubt there were other ships and crews that did historic things. Sure, some of them are more or less random (USS New Jersey NCC-1975 is someone's birth state & year). At least they filled out the part of the museum we've seen so far, quite nicely in fact.
So it would seem. The fan-fiction that TM liked was that it had been on an extremely long range patrol and when it returned it ended up staying in an un-modernized state, eventually going to the Academy as a training ship and then ending up at the museum
I think the difference is that the Enterprise-A = Rechristened Yorktown wasn't explicitly stated in any on screen material. But it is worth noting that it's said that rechristening a ship to a new name is bad luck.. And it cannot be said the Enterprise-A didn't run into a massive ration of bad luck from Day 1 until TUC.
I think being three ship that broke through the lines and delivered Odo to accept the female changeling's surrender would make a pretty famous ship.
Gonna say something controversial... I don't think the Defiant should be in the fleet museum. To glorify a warship, just doesn't seem very "Federation". I love the ship and it of course deserves mention in history books, but to put a warship on a pedestal, to me, kinda goes against what the Federation stands for. It should almost be thought tragic that Starfleet had to resort to making a dedicated warship. But that's me.
Museums are examples of historical events and their significance. Doesn't automatically convey glory.
Fair enough. I guess it could also be that the Federation of the late 24th/early 25th cenutry isn't so gun-shy about warships. Between the Defiant, the Prometheus, and the Inquiry class starships, Starfleet has definitely taken a step back from the moral high ground of "no warships."
I mean, they suffered intense losses. It would be even more bass ackwards and crazy to not recall it and not learn something from it.