What does U.S.S. stand for in the 22nd century and beyond?

[zar]

Each of the three letters could expand to a longer word than our heroes use in their verbal shorthand. Say, U = UFP, S = Starfleet, S = Starship. That'd be a complete and logical expansion; mere "United Starfleet Starship" leaves it a bit short IMHO. Although it does nicely suggest that the UFP Starfleet might be the result of the unification of several other starfleets from the member cultures.

It doesn't make sense that the U stands for UFP, because there have been ships that belong to the UFP that use the "SS" registry only (http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/SS_(registry)) ... of course, that's assuming that "SS" means the same thing that it does as in "USS".

 

[OverlordSpock]

^Well, Diane Carey's Final Frontier took it to the extreme that the Enterprise was the first spaceship ever to be called a starship, which of course has been disproven by ENT. It's kind of a literalistic interpretation of the E's dedication plaque, which called it "Starship Class."

Final Frontier also solved the even bigger (to me) mystery of what the heck NCC stood for: Naval Construction Contract.

I've always gone with the TOS explanation that USS stood for United StarShip. Yes, it's awkward, but they did say it in TOS and it sounds a LOT better than United Space Ship (which they also said--Of course, TOS also gave us the UESPA, the United Earth Space Probe Agency ).

 

[F. King Daniel]

"Naval Construction Contract" goes waaaay back to Franz Joseph's original USS Enterprise blueprints and Star Trek Technical Manual.

I don't remember where it's from, but "Navigational Contact Code" always sounded cooler to me.

 

[OverlordSpock]

"Naval Construction Contract" goes waaaay back to Franz Joseph's original USS Enterprise blueprints and Star Trek Technical Manual.

Huh. I'll take your word for that. I really don't remember that. If I can find my copy of the Star Trek Technical Manual, I'll have to look to see.

 

[bfollowell]

"Naval Construction Contract" goes waaaay back to Franz Joseph's original USS Enterprise blueprints and Star Trek Technical Manual.

Now that you've gotten me nostalgic, I think I'll have to go look through my tech manuals and look up my first edition Star Trek Technical Manual and Star Trek Blueprints. I haven't looked at those in years!

- Byron

 

[Robert D. Robot]

As for the real world story, I had once read somewhere that it was Matt Jefferies who came up with NCC 1701 and had some logic for this choice. I just located the following quote from an interview with Matt Jefferies you can find at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/st/interviews/jefferies/page6.shtml. When he is talking about "commercial vehicles", I believe that he is referring to commercial airplanes- not trucks or ships, etc.

"NC, by international agreement, stood for all United States commercial vehicles. Russia had wound up with four Cs, CC CC. It’d been pretty much a common opinion that any major effort in space would be two expensive for any one country, so I mixed the US and the Russian and came up with NCC.

The one seven zero part - I needed a number that would be instantly identifiable, and three, six, eight and nine are too easily confused. I don’t think anyone’ll confuse a one and a seven, or the zero. So the one seven stood for the seventeenth basic ship design in the Federation, and the zero one would have been serial number one, the first bird."

 

[Sci]

The entire "U.S.S." thing is silly. Realistically, Federation starships would start with "F.S.S." -- "Federation Star Ship." It's really just an excuse to put an Americanism in there.

You can sort-of handwave it and assume that "United Star Ship" was adopted as a symbolic way of saying, "All Earth, Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite, and Alpha Centauri ships are now part of the same Federation Starfleet, are all united now."

But...

There's really no reason to see United Earth starships with "U.S.S." in their names in The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing. That's just silly -- and a bit irritating, too, since it contributes to the whole "homo sapiens-only club" vibe. By the same token as above, United Earth starships should probably have the prefix "U.E.S." or "U.E.S.S." -- "United Earth Starship" or "United Earth Star Ship." ("U.E.S.S.," by the way, was the prefix United Earth starships had in William Leisner's A Less Perfect Union.)

 

[shanejayell]

Weren't they still NX during the War, or has that been retconned?

 

[Sci]

Weren't they still NX during the War, or has that been retconned?

There are still NX-class starships, yeah. But there were also a number of Daedalus-class ships with "U.S.S." in their names in the recent Romulan War novel (though the NX-class ships weren't given "U.S.S.," for whatever reason).

 

[Expo67]

I always assumed that the U.S.S. stood for United Starship. As for the NCC portion, I always thought it stood for Naval Construction Class.

 

[nightwind1]

More references in TOS to United Space Ship than to United Star Ship.

 

[elaithin]

'United Federation of Planets StarShip was always the way I rationalized it, myself, though following most conventions, it should probably be the 'U.F.P.S Enterprise'.

I find I do much prefer 'navigational contact code' being the reason for 'NCC', rather than 'naval construction contract'. Neither, of course, explains the registry numbers we've seen such as NX- and NAR-, NFT-, etc.

 

[Mysterion]

"Naval Construction Contract" goes waaaay back to Franz Joseph's original USS Enterprise blueprints and Star Trek Technical Manual.

I don't remember where it's from, but "Navigational Contact Code" always sounded cooler to me.

NCC = No Canon Connotation.

 

[shanejayell]

'NX' usually refers to experimental craft, as I recall. And the original Enterprise was sorta a test bed....

 

[C.E. Evans]

The entire "U.S.S." thing is silly. Realistically, Federation starships would start with "F.S.S." -- "Federation Star Ship." It's really just an excuse to put an Americanism in there.

I always saw the "U.S.S." as an intentional nod (or homage) to the U.S. Navy, largely because Starfleet may have originated in the U.S. (San Francisco, perhaps?), IMO. I'm inclined to think that Starfleet was something of an American invention or one that was originally spearheaded by Americans, while another organization like UESPA may have been more of an international effort perhaps.

It would explain a great many "Americanish" things about Starfleet...

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

Uber Super Starship.

Unbelivable Smokin' Shooter

Unprecedented Starship Simulator

Unconventional Space Ship

Ultra Sexy Starship

Urban Society...Society

Upside-down Snake Soliciter

Unbeloved Son of Stone-Masons

Universal Stuidos of Stuff

U Shouldn't a(S)k


I'm pretty certain Picard makes refrence to the "Ubran Society...Society" thing in a couple of different episodes.

 

[Mysterion]

^^^
Picard does mention it in The Inner Light, but you have to listen real closely as he is chugging Dr. Pepper when he does.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

USS probably stands for whatever people want it to. Even within the fictional context of the show. Starfleet picked that letter combination because it sounds cool (and because for centuries, people have expected ships to be called "USS" anyway), but leaves it up to the individual to decide what it stands for.

I think one of the reasons we have USS as a writer's invention is that the concept of the Federation had not yet been invented when Trek was first written. If it had, perhaps we would have gotten UFS (United Federation Ship).

 

[Saquist]

Starship is used mostly for ships that can go faster then light. (Reach other stars.)
Spaceship is normally used for ships that can't go FTL. (Stay in local space.)

Not necessarily. Remember "Bread and Circuses?"

CLAUDIUS: You're a clever liar, Captain Kirk. Merikus was a spaceship captain. I've observed him thoroughly. Your species has no such strength.
MERIK: He commands not just a spaceship, Proconsul, but a starship. A very special vessel and crew. I tried for such a command.

http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/43.htm

If Merik had only commanded a sublight vessel, he never would've gotten to Space Rome.

Also, Cyrano Jones and Harry Mudd were both referred to as using spaceships, and while their ships were small, they were definitely capable of interstellar flight. "Spaceship" was also used to refer to the Enterprise on numerous occasions, to the Kelvans' intergalactic ship, to the Eymorgs' ion-drive ship, to the Bounty/Bird of Prey in The Voyage Home, etc.

The way I've always perceived the Trek usage is that "spaceship" is the general label for all spacegoing craft, including those with warp drive, while "starship" is used analogously to "capital ship" today, a special class of spaceship that's larger and more powerful than most.

I'd go for that explanation.
I remember reading the first flight of the Enterprise by Captain Robert April and he uses some sort of reasoning like that. He was mesmorized by it being a Starship and not just a space ship. It seems to imply that former ships were much smaller like cutters or something....

 

[Timo]

It might well be that while every ship in ENT was a "starship", it was simply because everybody else had ships so much better than the human ones that every alien vessel was a "starship" in the relative sense of "the most powerful ship in the arsenal"... And NX-01 would be Earth's response, their first starship-quality spaceship ever.

In TOS, there'd be a more obvious division to starships and non-starships within the human realm and within the Federation, as these cultures would deploy a broader range of vessels now. And by the time of TNG, every combat vessel in Starfleet arsenal would be a "starship" in absolute terms, towering over the spacecraft of the primitives, so the distinction would no longer need to be maintained...

Realistically, Federation starships would start with "F.S.S." -- "Federation Star Ship."

Makes no sense. There's no "Federation" - that's just an informal abbreviation of "United Federation of Planets". If informal abbreviations were to be used in pennants, the current Enterprise would have an SS prefix: "'States Ship"!

As for what NCC means, it's clear that it means UFP Starfleet Vessel in Active Service. This as opposed to alternate pennant codes such as NAR or NST or BTR or whatever.

Whether the letters themselves come from some obscure historical remnant such as Naval Contact Code or Naval Construction Contract is fairly irrelevant. The letters cannot carry those "original" meanings any longer, since it would make no sense for a ship with a NAR or BTR registry to somehow lack a Contact Code or a Construction Contract.

The letters may be completely randomly chosen, perhaps so that N represents the Federation and CC, AR, ST and so forth have other meanings. Or then there's some historical background to the choice of letters. Perhaps the best analogy would be the very place where Matt Jeffries originally got those letters: the national prefix system for aircraft registries. Germany has the obvious D for Deutschland, England has the obvious G for Great Britain, but the United States has the wholly non-intuitive N (and used to have NC for general aviation). My native Finland has OH, which was utterly randomly allocated; even major nations may have random letters, such as P for Brazil or B for the Chinas.

Timo Saloniemi