Flare Sci-Fi Forums: Daedalus Beginnings

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Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :

I know that the Daedalus class was designed but Matt Jefferies for the purpose of being maybe the Enterprise. However that design was fuether refined to the ship we know today. However in the Trek Universe, when and why do you think the Daedalus class was designed?

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Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

I happen to be working on a Starfleet Museum article about this right now! So you'll have to wait a few more weeks. In one of my articles already posted, I suggest that Daedalus was based on my Fireball class. http://www.starfleet-museum.org/fireball-daedalus.htm

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

Why was it designed? Probably for the same reason any ship is designed... :-)

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Teal'c: "I am a traitor to no-one."
Jaffa woman: "Except your god!"
Teal'c: "False god! Dead false god..."
-Stargate: SG-1, "Into the Fire"

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

Would the Daedelus have been the first 'Starship' as the Daedelus character was the first 'man' to fly?? Wasn't he... you know with those wings!?!

Andrew

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"I threw bitter tears at the ocean
But all that came back was the tide..." 'I Will Not Forget You' Sarah McLachlan

Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

Of course, his wings melted, and he fell in the ocean and died. (Or was that Icarus?) Not very encouraging. A lot of Daedalus ships were lost, so maybe the name was appropriate, if unfortunate.

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

That was Icarus, bubby.

Still, I think the Daedaluses ("Daedali?") were probably Starfleet's ONLY ships at the beginning. Oh, SURE, they were supplemented by loaners from the various member-planet militias, but I don't think there were immediately an assload of classes around. I bet Starfleet was very much like the Klingons & Romulans in terms of fewer ship deigns in the "bootstrap days."

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"Two parts slush...one part solid ice...one part hard-packed snow...a dash of assorted debris...sculpt into sphere, and serve at high velocity without warning." --Calvin

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

I in turn think that the Daedali

preceded the founding of Starfleet, and were already built by Earthfleet for use in the Romulan War. This would give some more breathing room - the ships are known to be operating far away from Earth very soon after the founding of Starfleet.

(Also, I'd like to equate them with the so-called Horizon class of FASA RPG fame, since this class supposedly included the TOS-references USS Horizon and USS Archon that now belong to Daedalus class. The timelines would work out *very* nicely. This would also leave the name "Horizon class" free for another RPG ship class, namely the one which served as the basis of the Constitution class... But this is all strictly noncanon stuff, of course.)

The Daedali probably didn't see much military action before the war ended, but one thing is for sure: the first task of Starfleet would have been to field heavily armed warships. A major war had just ended indecisively, with the enemy lurking behind a Neutral Zone. Exploration would be a secondary goal in that situation.

Since we don't see much weapons on the Daedali, there are two main possibilities:

1)They are hidden very well. Not impossible - the weapons of the TOS Enterprise were also very well hidden.
2)There aren't any weapons, making the Daedali second-rate ships. They would be unsuited for Starfleet's primary mission of patrolling the RNZ, so they'd be sent out to perform the secondary mission, exploration.

Of course, the silence of the Romulan front and the successes of the Daedali would soon make Starfleet switch its priorities.

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Don't all the Daedalus Classes have registries NCC-1XX?

This would support my theory that the very first starship with a "Federation" registry i.e. NCC was the U.S.S. Daedalus NCC-100. I don't think Starfleet started numbering at 1. NCC-1. I suppose it could've done NCC-001 knowing there would be a ton of ships in the future...

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

I agree that NCC-1 is an unlikely registry number. NCC-01 is a possibility, and would jibe with the weird "NX-01-A USS Dauntless" thing that Janeway and pals seemed to swallow hook, line and sinker in "Hope and Fear".

But the Daedali have regos in the 17X range (or 16X if a rather unconvincing Encyclopedia reference is counted). I doubt NCC-100 belonged to the Daedalus class at all, since it would seem unlikely for Starfleet to build more than seventy ships of that design in those early years.

Also, it seems unlikely that the first couple of hundred NCCs were chronologically ordered according to the age of the ship design, or the year of service entry. In the early years, Starfleet must have gone from zero ships to a working fleet in a very short period of time, and hundreds of ships must have been (re-)registered in that time. It would stand to reason that the numbers would be given in some sort of "operational priority" manner - i.e. the biggest and baddest cruiser gets NCC-01, instead of the oldest and scrappiest old scout to be adopted from Earthfleet to Starfleet.

I'd probably put USS Daedalus at NCC-170 or something, with NCC-01 being a big battleship or command ship of some sort. The Daedali could actually be rather small second-line vessels in that scenario...

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

'Course, the real singular ought to be "Daidalos", which I believe makes the the plural "Daidaloi", but I suppose that's irrelevant... :-)

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Teal'c: "I am a traitor to no-one."
Jaffa woman: "Except your god!"
Teal'c: "False god! Dead false god..."
-Stargate: SG-1, "Into the Fire"

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

In other words, the answer to the question "What's up with the Daedalus?" is: Insufficient data.

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love's function is to fabricate unknownnness
--
E. E. Cummings
****
Read chapter one of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! And party everyday.

Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

Well, what's wrong with NCC-1? If we accept "placeholder" zeros would we then have to accept NCC-0683 or 00683 for Grissom and NCC-01701 for Enterprise? The USS military when numbering ships and planes doesn't use any placeholder zeros. The first carrier was CV-1 and the first battle ship was BB-1. It's not as if the numbers on ships are shown on some sort of digital display.

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

Aye...I started at NCC-1 as well. Of course, I made that USS Daedalus, but....

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"Two parts slush...one part solid ice...one part hard-packed snow...a dash of assorted debris...sculpt into sphere, and serve at high velocity without warning." --Calvin

Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

By the way, how sure are we of those Daedalus class regos? Are Horizon, Archon, Essex (and Carolina!) established on air as Daedalus ships with those numbers or are they only Encyclopedia assumptions?

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :

Essex is indentifed completely in dialogue as Daedalus class and NCC-173. Horizon and Archon were contemporaries and so were grouped as the same class. Their regos were made up to fit the time. Carolina is out of whack altogether.

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Groundskeeper Willy: Yeah, I bought your mutt - and I 'ate 'im! [Bart gasps.] I 'ate 'is little face, I 'ate 'is guts, and I 'ate the way 'e's always barkin'! So I gave 'im to the church.
Bart: Ohhh, I see... you HATE him, so you gave him to the church.
Groundskeeper Willy: Aye. I also 'ate the mess he left on me rug. [Bart stares.] Ya heard me!

Posted by Alpha Centauri (Member # 338) on :

I've written some Daedalus conjecture for UP3. My article says that the Daedalus originated from Earth's defense fleet, being developed during the 2140s-2150s. It was one of the first classes to operate under Starfleet, but the high regos (173 and 189, I believe that were the Essex and Archon, respectively) refutes the theory that it might be the first. According to my conjecture, about 30 Daidaloi

enrolled service, starting off with NCC-160. I assumed the first Fed ship to carry the rego NCC-100. However, I think that the first generation of Starfleet ships were carried over from member world fleets, so the ship that carried NCC-100 would not really be the 'first' Fed ship, just the first to got a number assigned.

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"And as we all know, a mesolytic quantumvector resonator is commonly
used to polarize isogravitic plasma-flux manifolds."

Starfleet Academy's Redshirt Guide to the Starfleet, 62nd edition,
2376.

Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :

Masao, the first battle ship was the Maine, the one that blew up in the Havana Harbor in 1898. Thios battleship was reclassified to second-rate battleship sometime before she was commissioned. She and her slightly different sister were prototype battleships.

I think the first ships in my own opinion was the Dautless class. What I mean is that why would the the entire crew of Voayger think that is a right registry compared to a different one? The USS Daedalus was perhaps NX-150 to give a good number of ships ranging from 30 to 50 ships. In my opinion I also support that the Deadalus class was the first multi-hulled ship for Starfleet.

The first ships of Starfleet was probably converted civilian ships into military ships. These ships were phased out as soon as properly designed ships were available.

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Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :

I believe Dauntless is the first Federation ship, NCC-01, but that she was civilian, and of another class. She was merely the first ship they picked to retrofit and reregister.

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Rachel Roberts: "Hong Kong? Nah. Oh, but we can live in China! Yeah, China has great Chinese food!"

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Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :

Matrix: According to my Encyclopedia of Naval History that I borrowed from my school's library today, the first examples of battleships were the French Ironclad La Gloire and the British Warrior. It classifies the Maine as a cruiser, weighing in at 6682 tons.

On a side note, the first battleship without sails was the Devastation, weighing in at 9300 tons. What a heavyweight. Well, pithy compared to the 21 250 metric ton HMS Dreadnought, which rendered every existing battleship obsolete in 1906...

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[This message has been edited by Fabrux (edited October 16, 2000).]

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

And I still say there's no reason at all to believe the Dauntless had anything in common with real ship naming practices whatsoever.

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love's function is to fabricate unknownnness
--
E. E. Cummings
****
Read chapter one of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! And party everyday.

Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :

I meant the first US battleships, becuase those ships never recieved the BB classifaction like the others have. Yes the Maine was orginally supposed to be a cruiser but later on redesignated to be second-rate battleship. What's the name of the book anyway?

The Daedalus like the Constitution class, was probably was the back bone of the early Starfleet fleets. As larger and more powerful ships came along these came obsolete due to their size.

The weapons on the Daedalus are perhaps hidden from view to give the impression that she and her sisters are exploratory ships and only will show their teeth when they need to.

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Predict the unpredictable, but how do you unpredict the unpredictable?

Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :

Ok, so Maine was only retroactively named a battleship (originally an armored cruiser, IIRC), but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that the US military numbering system for planes and ships doesn't use zeros before single digit numbers! So, I think that NX-01 is a load of hooey. After all, if Starfleet could expect that they would have at least 10 ships and put a zero ahead of Dauntless's "1," why didn't they expect that they would some day have at least 100 ships and put two zeros in front of the "1"?

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When you're in the Sol system, come visit the Starfleet Museum

Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :

Becuase it looks funny? Not all things are totally modeled after the Navy (I think)

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Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :

The book is called An Encyclopedia of Naval History. It only features peoples, places, events, and ships which the authors considered important enough to mention. It doesn't list every single ship produced by every single country ever. That would be one big book.

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"Incest! A game the whole family can play!"
-Jonah Rapp

Posted by Matrix (Member # 376) on :

I wished they did though, I also wish that they do one for Star Trek descrbing each class and maybe making up a history for it too.

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Posted by Ritten (Member # 417) on :

See if you want to spend the money on Jane's All the Worlds.... Ships, Aircraft, etc, they are big books, and very expensive last I looked. Of course they put their books on CD also.
The last I had was an old copy of All the Worlds Aircraft that they sold when Wurtsmith AFB closed....mid seventies I think....... If I ever hit the Lotto.....

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Posted by colin (Member # 217) on :

The model in Captain Sisko's office, the Daedalus Class star ship, is the U.S.S. Horizon NCC-176.

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