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My personal view on the Oberth-Class is that it is exactly as old as the Grissom's reg makes it look and the reason why it looks so radically different from most other Starfleet ships of the time is because it was mostly designed and built by Vulcans.

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Originally posted by Daniel Butler:
There's another thing that bothers me. That annular warp drive of theirs. If I understand the way warp supposedly works and how the field is supposedly generated, how the hell do you do it with a ring like that?

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I imagine it'd work something like this.

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Originally posted by Dukhat:

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My personal view on the Oberth-Class is that it is exactly as old as the Grissom's reg makes it look and the reason why it looks so radically different from most other Starfleet ships of the time is because it was mostly designed and built by Vulcans.

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But that still doesn't explain why they were still in production in the 2360's (actually, your speculation makes it worse, because now the class is contemporary to Captain Ramart's Antares, which adds a few more decades to its lifespan), and why the Tsiolkovsky, commissioned in 2363, would have a 5XXXX registry instead of 7XXXX.

I was always under the impression (and remain so) that the Grissom and other ships of her class were brand-new as of ST:III, regardless of her registry number. I believe that whatever production VFX person was in charge of modelmaking at the time, simply used a three digit number for the Grissom because she was a small ship, whereas the brand-new kick-ass gigantic Excelsior got a kick-ass "NCC-2000" registry for exactly the opposite reason (never mind that FJ's manual already had ships with registries even higher, but I doubt the VFX people knew that, or cared).

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I'm sure that your real world explanation is correct, the reg is just a product of the thinking at the time.

However, to me the "Vulcan explanation" works best in a retro active way. Sometimes you simply have to ignore the original intentions of the VFX people.
As Shik pointed out, this isn't a front line cruiser, it's a scout, a surveyor, a science vessel, probably mass produced for Starfleet and civilians agencies alike. It's the sort of design that WORKS, does the job and is easy to build, maintain, even swap out and upgrade internal components, so it could easily have a life well into the 24th Century. Put it another way, this thing is a tool, a flying tricorder if you will. Once you have one that works and can be kept up with the latest advances WITHOUT ripping the hull apart every few decades then why would you want to change it?
If the look of the thing bothers you, just have a look at some of the Vulcan ships from ENT and you can see that even in the 22nd century, they are structurally much more streamlined an elegant than the boxes, tubes and sticks approach Earth was using a full century later.
I'd also put it to you that it would stand to reason, given how advanced Vulcan technology was compared to Earth tech it's logical that they'd be the one's churning out the Science vessels.
I'm not saying it's a pure bred Vulcan ship as it clearly uses dual a nacelle drive and the colour isn't the usual red/pink/brown hue, but the influence is clear.
Or if it makes it easier...


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Dark Knight Adventures & Batman Beyond:Stripped - DeviantArt Gallery
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...what we demand is a total absence of solid facts!

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Originally posted by Ritten:
If a set of rectangles can create a bubble why wouldn't a ring be able too? Just adjust the tuning of the coils.

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