What other infomration can I glean from Bernd's site? Length 105m, crew 230, retired by 2196. . . I'd say that the Enterprise will have to be a pre-Daedalus design. Judging by what they've tld us about the show, this ship could even be the first of its class - an Enterprise-class starship!
I wonder is there could possibly have been a Daedalus-class USS Enterprise, registry NCC-170 or NCC171? 8)
[strict canonically]We've a class without design and a design without name.
The Essex is a Daedalus. Class and NCC were mentioned by Data IIRC.
And then there's a model in Sisko's office: USS Horizon NCC-176 but no class given.
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But IMO the two NCCs indicate that the Horizon is of the same class as the Essex.
[ June 15, 2001: Message edited by: Spike ]
The only other, albeit implausible explanation is that Archer's non-Federation ship Enterprise continued to be in active service (in a non-Starfleet capacity) for some time after the Federation formed, and they held off naming a new ship Enterprise ro avoid confusion until such a time Archer's Enterprise was destroyed or scrapped.
But nah, I don't really like my own theory there.
The Olympic-class seen in "All Good Things" [TNG] indicates that there may be advantages to a spherical primary hull, irrespective of the understanding of warp field dynamics.
Maybe its the simple maximized volume/minimized
surface; if the Daedalus class were, say, the first to introduce shield projected from a surface grid then simple spherical and cylindrical components would be an advantage.
Now I wonder how shields will be presented in Enterprise - as bubbles, skins, or something else?
What's interesting is that the "high-tech" ablative armour (DS9's Defiant) and the regenerative armour seen in "Endgame" [VOY] seem (to me) like much lower technology defenses than projected energy shields. I wonder if the E-1 will have something similar (but 200-years more primitive), and TPTB were just trying out the effect?
The new old Enterprise will likely precede Daedalus, but by how much depends on when the new shows is set (2100s or 2150s) Personally, I hope they stay as far away from that design as possible.
If we surmise that the other member races, such as Tellarites and Vulcans and so forth, contributed to the early design and implementation of such starships they may have done so to satisfy functionality, rather than aesthetics. Yeh, Daedalus doesn't inspire, but it has a basic, simple primary hull, spherically shaped, a connector to a cylindrical secondary hull, possibly a shuttle bay at the back, with basic impulse, and two nacelles in a similar configuration to Cochrane's from a century earlier. If you look at the Constitution class, that's just as basic, with a saucer replacing a sphere.
I would hope too that the early Federation ships didn't employ a saucer, as that would logically be a later evolution of design, not becoming prevalent till at least the early 23rd century.
If Archer's ship establishes an "Enterprise class" of space vessels for the mid-22nd century, then we can assume that even if this specific vessel is destroyed at some point of the series, her sister ships will survive until past the founding of the UFP. Undoubtedly, some of the sister ships will be adopted by the newly founded Starfleet and given NCC registries. And arguably, they will retain the "Enterprise class" designation.
Now, imagine the confusion generated if a Daedalus class vessel were to be named USS Enterprise. There would be the theoretical danger of her being mistaken for an Enterprise class vessel, a grave mistake since vessels of that class would surely be much more primitive than the Daedali, and thus erroneous command decisions might be based on this false assumption of capabilities.
Granted, not many would make silly mistakes like this - but since the founding of Starfleet would be a "fresh start" for everybody involved, I'm sure there would be a general spirit of everybody trying to build the best possible organization they could, and working every possible improvement into the system. Even obscure details would be taken care of, in a way that would never be possible in a continuous-history, tradition-plagued organization. And ensuring that there is no overlap between Enterprise class and USS Enterprise would be just such an obscure detail people would want to get right, now that they could. It would be an affordable decision, unlike, say, the scrapping of all Enterprise class vessels in favor of more modern designs.
Even in the later centuries, people might wish to fondly remember the Enterprise class of bygone days and not give the name Enterprise to any first-of-her-class vessel. (I think, though, that the current avoidance of "NX-1701" stems more from the fact that prototypes generally tend to be substandard and Starfleet doesn't want any ship named Enterprise to be substandard...)
Timo Saloniemi
The design of the Daedalus Class is what I would expect of a ship from the early to mid 23rd century. I would think that a ship that was the first type for an organization would have both the aesthetic style of previous Earth ships and a new generation of starship architects. This Daedalus Class is too sophisticated a design for the early starships.
This is understandable given the source material for this design. This ship design is one initially conceived for the USS Enterprise of the first series.
[ June 18, 2001: Message edited by: targetemployee ]
[ June 18, 2001: Message edited by: targetemployee ]