The Red Shirt Ship Replacement

[tonyg]

Spyone,

Yeah, I also wish tone of voice/inflection could be put into posts. My tone was one of suprise. I didn't think the Neubula was that big. I'm not anry or anything more like" Wow, I didn't think that thing was so big!"

My source for the volume of the neubla was the ICON DS9 book. Unfortunately, for me. Other sources, such as the Starship Spotter and CODA Starships book that I have looked at since give a somewhat larger beam for the Nebula, making it about twice as large as it is in the DS9 RPG book. That makes it about half the size of the Galaxy class by Volume. In RPG terms (for ICON/SPACEDOCK and CODA) the Nebula is a Size 7 ship while a Galaxy is a size 8.

Now internal volume, if you are assuming that they both use the same components (BTW another sign that they would be built at the same time), would be a bit closer.



Most sources I have looked at give the comissioning date for the Galaxy and Nebula classes as 2357. NCC regrestries and dedication plaques in Trek aren't very consistient anyway. Else we'd be talking about the Starship-class Enterprise, and worrying about the the USS Constellation (NCC-1017) being considerably older than the Constitution (NCC-1700). It also makes sense tht Starfleet would constinue producing the current class of vessels (in this case Ambassador) until they completed whatever contracts they had to fufill, and until the replaement class was fully testest and deployed. It might also means that some shipyards that could beuild the Amdassador class weren't able to build Nebula's or Galaxy class ships. We also have several instances of ships flying around with mutiple regriesties or the same name being used on mutiple ships in a manner than doesn't make much sense.There are just way to many inconsistiences with hull regestries and dedication plaques to go by them.

Pretty much every thing that I have looked at on the Neubulas indicate that they were designed at the same time as the Galaxy class in order to be a smaller/less expensive companion ship much in the same relationship that the Miranda-class had with the Constitution-class (down to the similarity of componenets and replaceable section).

The appoximately 30 year gap between the introduction of the Ambassador and Galaxy classes seems to be about right. It compares well with the 40 year gap between the Constituion and Excelsior classes, the 40 year gap between the Excelsior and Ambassador classes.

Now the 15 year gap between the comissioning of the Galaxy and Sovereign classes is interestersting. If this is due to a falure on the part f the Galaxyt design reamins to be seen. IMO, the Soveregin was designed to be more combat capable that the Galaxy-class, and desgined to deal with the new threats to the Federation-especially the Borg.

[spyone]

Most sources I have looked at give the comissioning date for the Galaxy and Nebula classes as 2357.

I missed that in the TNG Tech Manual. I saw it was launched in 2356, and that Enterprise was launched in 2358 (but not comissioned until 2363), so I assumed that whatever trials Enterprise underwent were also done by Galaxy, just 2 years earlier.
But now I see it right there, under the entry for 2357: "USS Galaxy is commissioned;". Wonder how I missed that.


For a long time, it was fan-speculation that the Galaxy was a failure. Gene had said there were 6 in the initial batch, plus 6 more stored as parts so they might be rapidly assembled, and so fans assumed those 12 were the only ones that exist.
Memory Alpha has a pretty good listing on thier page for the Galaxy Class of all the ships we've seen. (Seven named in shows, 3 of which are destroyed, at most 9 on screen in one episode ("Sacrifice of Angels") (which may have been as few as 5). Voyager "Relativity" showed 3 or 4 under construction at Utopia Planetia, but these may have been from the 6 stored as parts. Endgame shows "at least 5 and possibly 7" sent to intercept the Borg sphere at Earth, but these may have been the survivors of the Dominion War. So there is no proof that there were more than 12, but it seems likely.

BTW: Memory Alpha's pages on the ships show the Galaxy as 642 meters long, 479 wide, and 138 high. They have the Nebula at 442 by 479 by 131. Sadly, Spacedock is best set up for long skinny ships, not short boxy ones; by length, it is Size 7, but by beam it is Size 8.
Still, the Nebula has only 3/4 the crew of a Galaxy, so it must be smaller somehow.
(They also show that the CGI Nebulas used on DS9 had a secondary hull far more like the Galaxy Class than the ones using the physical model.)

I have always thought that the Nebula and Galaxy were developed at about the same time (based upon their physical similarity), but that the Nebula was easier to engineer so it reached actual production sooner. This would also allow Nebulas to serve as test-beds for new stuff for the Galaxy Class. How much earlier could it be? Well, acording to the TNG Tech Manual, the warp engines for the Galaxy Class were being built in 2349, so it would not be hard for Nebulas to be completed in the early 2350s if one so desired.
USS Galaxy took about 14 years from Project approval to prototype completion: it seems to leave room for a slightly speedier design process for a less revolutionary ship. Or for the design to borrow design elements from a class that is slightly further along in design. Whatever.

For instance, while the nacelles look the same on both ships, it is possable that the nacelle production problems that delayed the production of the Galaxy Class were caused by performance upgrades not present on their Nebula cousins.

[tonyg]

It's hard to tell about the Galaxy-class. I think just about every Galaxy-class ship that we've seen on TV has been destroyed, not a good sign. Then again, the ones destroyed during TNG weren't transhed by any defect in the design. Part of this can also be due to the changes in Trek in the post-Rodenberry era. The ENTerprise-D got trashed mostly because the ENT-D sets weren't considered to be good enough for the big screen (people might see all the injokes that were put on the displays and such). The number (12) doesn't mean much. There were only 13 Constitution class ships per cannon, and the Connie was considered to be a highly successful design that was in service for half a century (if not longer). We just don't know how big Starfleet is. Plus Starfleet never seems to have more than a dozen or so of their top of the line ships.

Personally, I suspect that the Galaxy class ships are still out there, just that the Federation's situation (Borg threat, Dominion war) has prompted a charge in design philosophy to more combat capable designs (not to mention a rethinking of putting civilians in harms way). We do seem to get a whole new gneration (pardon the pun) of ships from 2368 to 2374 (Akira, Danube, Defiant, Intrepid, Nova, Prometheus, Steamrunner, Saber, Norway, Sovereign, and Talon-class). That's almost 2 new classes each year.


Several things I've looked at also give the Nebula's saucer the same dimensions as the Galaxy-class. That's the prt that surprised me, I always considered it a bit smaller. Oh well. Yup Spacedock, and Starships are both geared towards ships that are longer than they are wide (not surprising since most of the ships in Trek are longer than they are wide). ased on the saucer's being the same size, and the warp engines having the same performance (most sources list them as the same type LF-41), the only real differences would be in the engineering section and the Nebula's pod section. This would seem to reinforce the Connie and Miranda relatioship. The differences in crew complenet could simply be the lack of civilians. Maybe some crew qualters were sacrificed to make room for things moved from the smaller engineering hull.


Considering the difference between the launch date and comissioning date for the Galaxy (5 years!) it seems likely that Starfleet was still working out some bugs. Since the Nebula and Galaxy-class seem to use all the same major components (Type X phasers, Mk80 photorp launchers, CIDSS-3 defelctors, LF-41 Warp engines, same computer core) it would seem to make sense that the Nueblas had teehing problems too. I suppose it could have been lauched prior to 2357 (but not comissioned) and took time to work out the bugs. It might have taken 6 or 7 years to get the warp engines up to par. The Nebula-class also had to test out all those differenet pods too. Hmm, the CODA STARSHIPS book mentions that the components on the Galaxy class saw deployment on the Neubla class first, despite both having the same commisioning date. SO it does look like the Neublas were used as a testbed for the Galaxy-class.

[spyone]

Just in case people care:
The 3 Galaxy Class ships we've seen destroyed were:
USS Yamato, 2nd ship of the class and sister to USS Enterprise, destroyed by a warp core accident induced by an Iconian computer virus.
USS Odyssey, destroyed by the Jem'Hadar in 2370.
And of course, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), destroyed at Veridian III in 2371.

(I hear that originally, USS Odyssey was to be USS Enterprise, but they decided to change it when they decided to do Generations.)
Apparently, in all the space combat footage on DS9, not a single Galaxy Class is destroyed on screen (except for USS Odyssey in "The Jem'Hadar").

[JALU3]

There is nothing wrong with the Galaxy Class . . . she packs a punch if all her weapons systems are utilized correctly . . . However, in a time when well-trained personnel are in short supply . . . will the fleet be able to properly man this class of vessel in the near future?

[tonyg]

There is nothing wrong with the Galaxy Class . . . she packs a punch if all her weapons systems are utilized correctly . . . However, in a time when well-trained personnel are in short supply . . . will the fleet be able to properly man this class of vessel in the near future?

Probably. The Fedeation's a big place, and even the losses suffered in the Dominion War are rather slight compared to just the losses that Earth suffered durring WWI or WWII. Starfleet ship compements are no where near those of 20th century Battleships and Carriers. Losses also applied to vessels as well as personel, so when you lose a ship than takes 1000 people to crew, you no longer need those 1000 people to crew that ship. Starfleet also had suvivors of lost ships joining the crews of survivng starships. I just think that Starfleet will be a little smaller for a couple of years.


What we probably won't see is Starfleet rushing to built more Galaxy-class ships (or other big crew ships) for five or ten years. Long enough for cadet training procedures to return to normal and for the fleet to build up in size.

[JALU3]

If you look at the design of the Galaxy Class Explorer, I think that it was built for a mission that may be rather rare in the current era of Star Trek. That is the grand long-term, long-ranged exploration mission. It is designed with a large crew, with many overlapping disciplines in the sciences, in a relatively safe environment that one can take a family on. However, if you look at the Alpha Quadrant map . . . most of the area on the fringes of Federation Space, are restricted access . . . thus leaving only small corridors of for new discovery.

But if all goes well . . . imagine if the space outward of the Romulan and Klingon Empires become accessable . . . what of the Gamma Quadrant . . . there is alot of possibility . . . but the near future (5-15) years show that this may be difficult to achieve.

[spyone]

Well, the DS9 novel "Avatar" has been afforded "quasi-canon" status, which is to say that Paramount has said they will try really hard not to contradict it in films or series, and in it the Founders, through Odo, send word to the Alpha Quadrant powers that they will allow exploration of the Gamma Quadrant and trade, so long as the borders of the Dominion are respected.

So there may be a greater need for Explorers in the near future than a look at the map would suggest.

That and, I doubt the Cardassians would mind if we took a look at what's on the other side of them.

[tonyg]

The UFP is also a 3 dimenion object being depicted on 2 dimeional maps, so there is probably room for them to go "above" or "below" some of the other powers to continue exploring.

I spsuect though that the Galaxy-class ships probably won't carry civilians anymore and will probably have a weapon and shield upgrade (some of the Galaxy-class ships seen during the Dominion war appeared to have more phaser arrays). Sort of makes sense. The 2269 refit in CODA is pretty close. Drop the missle weapon protype for Q-torps (the +1 misslie protype is against the design rules anyway), and spend the space on another Type X phaser array and it is suddenly not that far behind the Soveregin-class. Certainly able to stand up against front line threat vessels again.

[spyone]

Well, the reason 2d maps are used so often (aside from being easier to draw ) is that space isn't very 3d right here.
The Milky Way Galaxy is a disk, not a ball. Well, the vast majority of it is within a disk.

There is a noticable bulge near the middle, and there's a fair amount of stuff out past the "outer edge", but otherwise the galaxy looks a lot like a frisbee.
The Milky Way is about 100,000ly in diameter, and about 1000ly thick near Earth (26,000ly out from the center).
I have seen other figures for the thickness: 2000ly appears a lot, and I have even seen 3000ly given. I imagine it matters how recent the surveys involved are (Hubble changed everyything, really).
Another part of the variation in reported thickness is the standard used: IIRC, 65% of the stars are within 167ly of the "galactic equator" (the midpoint between top and bottom), while 95% are within 1000ly. So how thick it is depends on how you define the "edge": stars just keep getting less and less common as you move further out, but it may be a LONG while before they stop completely.

The stars that are far from the disk are old Population 1 stars. (Stars come in 2 basic types: Population 1 and Population 2. Population 1 stars were made by coalescing hydrogen because that is all there was in the universe when they were formed: Population 2 stars were made by coalescing the debris from dead Population 1 stars which, in their deaths, created heavier elements. Thus, to have planets (which are made of "heavier elements" and not hydrogen), you really need to be a Population 1 star.) Since Population 1 stars will not have planets, an area that contains nothing but them is really boring from a Trek space-exploring standpoint.

Further, the TOS Enterprise visited the "Energy Barrier at the edge of the Galaxy". This either involved a trip of about 25,000ly out to the rim, or a much shorter trip up to the "top" or down to the "bottom". (Though why there would be an "energy barrier" in any of those places is questionable.)


Anyway, what I'm saying is that if you give the Federation a diameter even as small as 500ly, there's a really good chance that it completely fills the galactic disk top-to-bottom at its center, and as it gets bigger it will look less like a sphere and more like a cylinder, and a fairly flat cylinder at that.
Thus, a 2d map works perfectly well, since the objects being represented fill the galactic disk vertically.

All of which has very little to do with what ship would take over the job of the Miranda and Excelsior classes.

[tonyg]

Spyone,
While you do have a point about the Milky Way being disc shaped, the main reason why most Sci-Fi Shows and rpgs use 2D maps is just because it is a lot easier to do so. 3D maps are a lot more difficult to draw (especially on paper-a 2D form), and the math is a bit more complicated. Not a lot more complicated, but bad enough to discourage a lot of gamers (I've know players who can't work out travel times using TOS warp Factors with a calulated and premeasured distance ). A "flat" map just makes most things easier. Still, all that "empty" space might not be empty (Dark Matter?). Even if it is emepty, it gives the Federation a way to go "up and over' a border to explore what lies beyond. The 3D thing is ueful through for explaining some of the variosu maps (like the ones in STAR CHARTS) where you have Paches of Federation Space cut off from the rest of the UFP by Klingon or Romulan Space.

In a way, all this junk does have something to do with what ships (if any) take over the Miranda and Excelsior classes. It helps us determine if those jobs are still needed (You only need explorers if you have someplace left to explore).

I think that the crew requirements are not going to be that big of a limiting factor to Starfleet. My main reason being that the numbers of calsuaties taken were fairly low-in comparsion to the population of the Federation. I think that when Dominion War started a lot of young people decided to join Starfleet and defend the Federation. So Starfleet probably has enough bodies to man their ships-it just that the crew qualitiey isn't up to the old standards anymore.

As for ships, the Excelsior is propaly still in service with "Lakota" upgrades, and there are several other ships that have been mentioned as being able to relace the Miranda The Neubla has the same modulairty and looks like the ship that was supposed to replace the Miranda, but if you think the Nuebula is too big, go with the Intrepid. It has a much smaller crew complimenet that the Miranda so you can put more ships out into space. There are problaby some COnstellation class ships out there too.

It seems that most of Starfleet's new classes appear to be combat oriented (no spurprising considering what the last few years have been like). Other designs are probably going to be put on the back burner until the UFP beleibes that Starfleet is tough enough to defend the Federation.