The life of a ship in Star Trek

[m4a2000]

This is something that popped into my head and seeing I forgot to register to the forum a while back I figured this would be a great first post.

So if you remember from Star Trek 3 the admiral states the Enterprise is 30 years old. From what I can find it makes it the longest lasting active ship in all of Star Trek. Just from canon we know The A was active for at least 5 years, maybe more if you believe it's a refit of the Yorktown, The D only lasted 8 from launch to crash, the NX-O1 got 10 to 11 years, Voyager got 7 years before it was made a museum piece, and the Defiant was a scant 4 and a half before it was blown to bits.

The E, B, & C don't have enough info I know of to pace out their years, but with STO it looks like The E went from 2372 to 2408 which would make it the longest lasting ship at 36 years. ... Just to note the CVN-65 was in service for 51 years for the US Navy.

I'm going to do more work, but what do you think? Am I missing a ship or are my numbers off?

[Imperator-zor]

We know that the Excelsior class has been in service to Starfleet for over 80 years.

Zor

[m4a2000]

We know that the Excelsior class has been in service to Starfleet for over 80 years.

They may be the longest lasting class in Starfleet, but I doubt any lasted a full 80 years.

Looking at the Lakota from Paradise Lost O'Brien said it had gone through some upgrades, but the age of the ship was never said. For all we know some Excelsior class ships were pushed back into service after the first Borg attack and in prelude to the Dominion War.

Let's look at the Hood, another Excelsior class. Looking at Memory Beta it went into service in the late 2290's and was last noted in canon as part of Battle Group Omega in 2379. Personally I can't see how that would be possible. Just glancing at Memory Alpha's list of registry numbers it would be insane to think it was commissioned even close to the 2290's. The number of ships between Excelsior and Hood is 40043 if registry numbers are to be believed.

Another thing is there was an other Excelsior working in 2365. It's registry puts it between the first Excelsior and the Hood for it's construction. If anything I think this points at the fact Starfleet goes through ships like a the internet through memes.

[CharlesPhipps]

I take the view that Star Trek vessels are probably hulls and they can be updated indefinitely.

[Weregeld]

One thing to keep in mind with the original enterprises is the extensive internal damage she took. She was caught with her shields down and the damage looked to go DEEP, the costs in time and resources to repair may have made it more efficient to simply scrap her. A real world example would be the USS Franklin, a WWII carrier that took a 500lb bomb hit that set of a chain reaction of explosions and fires that killed 400 and wounded another 800 crew. Heroic damage control saved it from sinking but it was so badly trashed they simply scrapped it rather than repair it.

[m4a2000]

So I took some more time to think this over, talk to friends face to face, and research. For this part I'll be using the Excelsior and the Galaxy as reference points.

A constant of most navies and Starfleet is to have the first ship in a class have the same name of the class itself. The Excelsior class with the first of the line Excelsior, registry NX-2000 and later changed to NCC-2000, was launched in 2285. For the Galaxy class all canon material puts it's name sake to being launched in 2356... That's a whole 7 years before The D launched. I'm going to note here the registry of the Galaxy was 70637.

OK, time for math: 71 years separate the two classes from being launched and in that time we can safely assume 68637 new registries were added to Starfleet records. Not even adding on for the other Enterprises that came around between the two classes Starfleet was kicking out 966 registered ships A YEAR that needed a name and number. Keep in mind this was during a time of peace in Star Trek.

This changes during the TNG era. The Intrepid with the registry of NCC-74600 is said to have launched in 2370. In 14 years Starfleet commissioned 3963 ships... About 283 a year and this would be pre Dominion War but with the losses of Wolf-359.

I think this drill homes the point, at least to myself, that Starfleet mothballs ships in 30 years or so and many ships run into their own 'giant green hand of doom' before their time is up. Next is to figure out how many ships are active at a given time.

[Madner Kami]

You are making the mistake to assume, that every number must corespond to one specific existing ship. This does not need to be the case for various reasons.
Conversely, the Federation is huge. Mindboggingly huge in fact, as it encompases not just a large chunk, but almost all of the Alpha Quadrant. From canon-sources we know that the Federation has about 150 member worlds, at least 700 colonies and thousands of affiliated worlds. Building a couple houndred ships a year is par for the course for such an entity.

[Independent George]

I can easily imagine the same basic hulls remaining static for long periods, while the internals are constantly upgraded. Most starfleet ships seem designed with easy-to-service nacelles, so even warp cores/engines can be replaced without having to disassemble the entire hull.

I wonder how many obsolete ships Starfleet sells to other systems. A lot of the smaller vessels in particular seem like they can be repurposed easily without changing the balance of power noticeably.

[Paul Walker]

Voyager got 7 years before it was made a museum piece[/quote]

The Voyager that became a museum piece was in the Delta Quadrant for 23 years. I know the books aren't *technically* canon but, as it's the best we've got for now, we can use them to say that Voyager currently has no date of decommissioning as it continued in service after its return to the Alpha Quadrant.

[CharlesPhipps]

Mind you, even if the Voyager was decommissioned directly after getting home, the ship had been shot to hell repeatedly.