Ever wondered why the 7th NX-class ship wasn’t the Buran? Here’s the answer! From the recent Star Trek Online lore blog “First Impressions”, by Thomas Marrone, released 22 April 2019. On Starfleet ships named Buran: “This ship will be named in honor of several other Starfleet ships who have come before her…” she paused and looked back at Whetu, who hadn’t moved very far into the room yet. “Do you know what they all have in common?” “Destroyed,” the lieutenant replied softly. “Every ship with this name has had the same fate, lost in action with the enemy. Romulans. Klingons. Borg. Dominion.” Background: NX-class ships were postulated to be named after space shuttle orbiters, in order of their construction/deployment. Following the Endeavour NX-06 (ENT novel: Beneath the Raptor’s Wing) the Russian Buran was due. But TNG: Indistinguishable From Magic called the NX-07 the Intrepid. Huh? The only other new space shuttle is the Renaissance (TOS: The Rings of Time) which may be the OV-165 (or predecessor) from the ENT opening credits. Then came along @Christopher L. Bennett’s ROTF - Live By the Code novel, giving us the Columbia-class USS Buran (NCC-08). Gap closed! Problem: We got the Buran, but what’s the in-universe reason for skipping it? “First Impressions” finally prompted by my brain to stumble upon a solution. Speculative solution: Here’s the potential timeline for ships who share the name Buran - and its fate. By 2150, Earth Starfleet has commissioned a Buran. It remains in service throughout the fifties and serves in the Romulan War. When the time comes to name the NX-07, the designation Buran is simply skipped because the old Buran is still around. Thus, we have the NX-07 named after the (fictional) pioneering 21st century crewed spacecraft Intrepid. Buran is either decommissioned, or destroyed by Romulans, making way for the USS Buran in 2165. Th’Pev tells us (Federation) Starfleet ships named Buran are destroyed by Romulans, Klingons, Borg and Dominion. This could mean each foe destroyed one Buran but the statement leaves room for more Burans destroyed by the aforementioned enemies. If Th’Pev, a non-Human, refers only to Federation ships, the United Earth Starfleet Buran may have lived to see decommissioning, and the NCC-08 is eventually destroyed by Romulans in spite of their isolation. This is supported by her lack of familiarity with the shuttle Buran. If we allow for a double-count, then the UES Buran is destroyed by Romulans around 2159. The USS Buran NCC-08 falls in a Klingon skirmish in the late 22nd or early 23rd century. Lorca’s USS Buran NCC-1422 is lost to Klingons, too, in Burnham’s War in 2256. The Challenger-class Buran is wrecked by the Borg at Wolf 359 in 2367. An otherwise unknown USS Buran falls in the Dominion War. 2410: launch of the Buran-class USS Buran NX-96400 under Captain Th'Pev. Caveat: I know some people don’t like cross-property continuity. Apart from that, could this be a satisfactory explanation why there was no Buran NX-07?
For the NX-07, the most straightforward explanation is that the "classic" Earth spaceship tribute names aren't coming in chronological order (the shuttle Buran was finished before Endeavour), or even chronological-by-class (since the Columbia-class Apollo and Soyuz were slated to be built even later), so as long as your hypothetical spaceship Intrepid either an individually-named one-off or a series like Apollo (so you don't expect to get a bunch of the spaceship Intrepid's classmates coming after it), you could just slip it in there after the US shuttle and before the Soviet/Russian one.
I'm gonna be honest; I had no clue what you were talking about when I first read through this post because I habitually expect mainstream Trek to be so U.S.-centric that the Buran would not be perceived with the same reputation as NASA space shuttle orbiters.
No surprise there. The ENT opening credits only show US-American space travel achievements, plus the ISS. As a kid, I read up on space pioneering by any nation. Probably because of my European background.
Which was the very reason I wanted to include some more international spacecraft names in my list of later NX/Columbia-class vessels in Rise of the Federation.