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Originally posted by TSN:
Who said anything about keeping up w/ Intrepids and Sovereigns? They said the ship would still be useable, not top-of-the-line.

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Even the Constellation NCC-1974 herself was going to DS9 to pick up the 'cargo' of the Jem'Hadar child.

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Originally posted by Dukhat:
There is zero canonical evidence to support that this was the same ship as the prototype.

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It was mentioned in the June 2001 issue of Star Trek Magazine. Not strictly canon, you're right, although 'authorized'.

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Stephen L.
-Maritime Science Fiction Modelers-

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Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:
This strikes me as an extremely unusual assertion to make, for several reasons. First, the original Constitution-class (including its refit) apparently had a service life of approximately 50 to 60 years.

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Then there's the Galaxy-class, which was built for a 100-year hull life as mentioned in the TNG:TM.

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Finally, a vast majority of the movie-era starships (mainly Excelsior, Miranda, and Constellation) have been portrayed as old, slow, and nearing obsolescence.

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Furthermore, I wonder just how much a starship can really be upgraded during its lifetime. Certainly refits and added equipment can add to its usefulness over time, especially considering the cutting edge of technology continually advances. I recall someone mentioning that the carrier USS Enterprise had completely new nuclear reactors installed in the early 1980's, so this kind of replacement is certainly believable for any starship as well.

However, the simple design and appearance of starships also seems to imply an important factor in their capabilities. Starships have become ever faster, and the hull frames have become sleeker and more streamlined. (The cursed NX-01 will be ignored for this treatise.) The TNG:TM also suggested that streamlining had something to do with a ship's speed and efficiency.

Therefore, I'm not sure if I believe the implication that Starfleet could simply install a more powerful warp core, swap out some warp coils, and end up with an old Excelsior-class starship capable of keeping up with an Intrepid or a Sovereign.

Then there's the fact that a starship's internal volume must be allocated and occupied by certain equipment for certain purposes. The Galaxy-class had an abundance of space available, but earlier starships certainly didn't have this luxury. Therefore, something akin to a complete remake of the ship would be required to bring a 23rd century starship up to the standards of 2375. The Constitution-class certainly benefitted from this overhaul in TMP and beyond (apparently, anyway), but there's no real evidence of the Excelsior, the Miranda, or any others having gone through a similar refit. (I will admit that there's nothing to disprove a complete internal refit that kept the outer hull mainly the same, though.)

It's always been my opinion that Starfleet was on the verge of a huge turnover of ships in its fleet around the time of the Dominion War. (Yes, production costs in TNG and DS9 were the main cause here, but I'm talking about inside the Trek Universe! ) As the Dominion War went on, we started seeing more and more of the newer ships present in the battles, and in more prominent roles. Not to mention the fact that the Excelsior and Miranda workhorses got their asses handed to them on a consistent basis throughout the war. Therefore, it's been my opinion that Starfleet was planning on retiring a large number of the older starships and replacing them with more modern classes wholesale. What's the point of keeping starships around that can't keep up with the technology level? Obviously this would be a drawn out process and they wouldn't just get rid of all the old ships at once; but they WOULD start phasing out the old ships at a greater rate than before.

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Originally posted by Dukhat:
Getting back to the original topic of starship duration times, IMHO I believe Star Trek (and to an extent, Michael Okuda & Rick Sternbach) has really screwed this up, based on the registry numbers of the ships we've seen. I'm basing this, of course, on the hypothesis that registry numbers are chronological; if they aren't, there's be no argument from me.

Anyway, once TNG premiered, TPTB had to recycle old movie models because the budget wouldn't allow any more new ships other than the Ent-D. For the first season, the Excelsior and Grissom models were used, without their names or registries changed (the movie Enterprise model would have been used as well, if Greg Jein hadn't decided to build a different model for the Stargazer, but that's another story). It was believable that these ships could still be on active duty; however being of the Kirk-era, it was also taken for granted that these were older ships probably being phased out by the Galaxy generation.

IIRC, the first movie model ever to be used with a new name & reg was the Lantree, a reuse of the Reliant model, but with a different yet similar low 4-digit registry. Again, this was believable because by the late 24th century, this Kirk-era ship had been relegated to transport duty.

However, all of a sudden Okuda decides to fill displays and relabel movie-era models with ridiculously high registries (3XXXX for Mirandas, 4xxxx for Excelsiors, 5XXXX for Oberths), and then proceed to give a more advanced ship a registry even lower than all of these (1XXXX & 2XXXX for Ambassadors!). Then, by DS9 we see a myriad of Excelsiors & Mirandas on active duty fighting a war against a superior power (this was only because the CGI guys made the models because they had the physical model to go by).

None of this makes sense realistically. As someone earlier said, even technological upgrades can only go so far, especially when the exterior of the ship never changes! Okuda should have given every Excelsior, Miranda & Oberth a lower registry than he did, IMO.

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This is, again, mostly just thoughts based on what you would *like* to see rather than what you actually *did* see. (Yes, I am aware that I am talking to Dukkie rather than MM now. ) You proceed from the assumption that all of those Excelsiors and Mirandas were older vessels. However, if you consider that these designs might have still been in production even well into the 24th century, the registries make fine sense. Remember, just because a DESIGN is old, it doesn't mean that the INDIVIDUAL SHIPS are equally as old. The Lantree was indeed supposed to be an old vessel dating from the late 23rd century. However, other Mirandas like the Majestic and Nautilus were not. (They weren't brand new either, of course, but they were much more recent.)

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Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:
When you're considering starship (or wet-navy) operations, there are two big factors to consider for almost any mission profile: speed and power.

First off, does it make any sense to have a fleet of ships (that often could end up working in groups) where a small number of them are a whole lot slower? That would make for a serious handicap, especially in situations like the Dominion War -- because if Starfleet had been able to field only Akiras, Intrepids, and Galaxys (sic), then they could've travelled a lot faster than the Mirandas and Excelsiors who accompanied them.

Then there's the cost/resource/energy factor for speed -- the slower a ship, the longer it takes to get somewhere and perform a job. And the crew would be stuck, too. In an era where a cruising speed of Warp 7 isn't unheard of, who wants to be stuck at Warp 5? (Warp 5
Warp 6 in the old scale.)

On top of that, Starfleet can't afford to send out lightly armed ships any more. (Or at least, I hope they realize that.)

I've just thought of the perfect analogy here. The USS Constitution is still considered to be in "active" service. Now, would the Navy have any intention of sending that old, wooden sailing frigate out to support the actions in Afghanistan? Or even out on active patrol in the US coastal region, say for Coast Guard duties? I think not. And they wouldn't bother refitting the ship with a nuclear reactor and a missile battery, either. They'd just build a new ship and keep Old Ironsides docked in Boston Harbor where it belongs.

Even simpler: let's take a World War I-era battleship. The ships served their purposes just fine when they were built. They were sufficient for peacetime naval patrols in the 1930's. And they were retained for duty after Pearl Harbor, serving in the Pacific but clearly out of their league in most respects. And after the war, they were never used in any important capacity again.

The only real options left are point-defense duty and low-priority cargo transport. But I have never understood the idea of using old ships of the line as cargo transports. It makes no sense to have a ship with such an irregular hull serve as a supply ship. Yeah, you could use them for some small courier jobs, but even if you rip out most of the quarters and laboratories, I can't imagine it would be practical for carrying LOTS of stuff.

Also, IMO using an obsolete heavy cruiser for Coast Guard-type duties is both ineffective and a waste of resources. Even considering wide use of automation, a starship that originally required 500+ people to run is not a good candidate for hanging out in planetary orbit and helping to get some kid's pet space slug out of the asteroid field. It would be resource-intensive, first in converting the ship to require less crew and refit the systems for its new mission profile, and also to maintain considering its large size with respect to the service it provides.

Therefore, I see no real option for keeping these old ships around longer than necessary. Certainly some of the ships will remain in service until they can be replaced, but I would expect that the Mirandas and Excelsiors would be completely retired by 2400, with the Ambassadors and their contemporaries on the way out the door.

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Originally posted by Boris:
If Starfleet can decompose people into data and restore them, reorganize molecules into whatever you want, travel faster than light, simulate almost realistic environments using holodecks, and do a zillion other things that we cannot, what makes you think they cannot create designs that could be used for a couple of centuries?
Especially since most of the above technology remained fairly static for 200 years or more.

This is a minor example of the same problem Star Wars has -- technological stasis. The humans and the other races have discovered the best there is to discover for the foreseeable future, and are merely refining or modifying existing technologies.

I think some people are making false analogies with respect to the real world, and/or refusing to abandon fan theories created in a time where the Star Trek universe was being developed in materials devoid any budgetary or confusing-the-viewer type of restrictions. Unfortunately, the new canon Star Trek supercedes those materials, unless you're analyzing your own fan-fiction view of things, in which case it technically doesn't belong in this forum.

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I agree to a great extent with you.

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Originally posted by Dukhat:
There is zero canonical evidence to support that this was the same ship as the prototype. Odo (IIRC) only says the name of the ship, not the class or registry number. That's like saying that Tom Paris served on the Constitution class Exeter, just because he didn't say the ship's class or reg.

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By your stringent standards, perhaps not. But the fact that it's stated in the Star Trek Encyclopdedia, the Star Trek Fact Files and Star Trek: The Magazine is good enough for most of us.

And, I'll remind you, there *is* canonical evidence that the Constellation-class U.S.S. Victory NCC-9754 served in the Dominion War, in the form of two computer displays. The first, seen in TNG, lists the vessel's name, class, and registry number. The second, from DS9 "In The Pale Moonlight," lists the same vessel by name and number as a participant in the war.

If one, why not more? According to all official sources, the Constellation, Gettysburg, and Magellan we heard about on DS9 during the war were the "old" Constellations.

-MMoM

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The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.