Constitution Class Battle Cruiser

History : The Constitution Class starship was a marvel of modern technology in its day, although by modern standards it's considered to be prehistoric by designers. To the captains and crews of these Starships they proved themselves to be a trusted and reliable ship that somehow always held together. They were involved in some of the most pivotal roles of the 23rd century notably the beginning of peace with the Klingon Empire and defending the Federation from Romulan and Tholian incursions. From the designers point of view the Constitution class ships were nothing more than experiments. Classified Starfleet documents state that the original design brief was for a long range exploration ship with numerous defensive capabilities. These documents only released recently also state that they were also to be the prototypes for a larger fleet of ships due to enter into production in the year 2270. This, of course never occurred due to the way the Constitution class ships performed in the field. Overall the ships were proved to be suitable for their role in protecting the Alpha Quadrant and for exploration. However designers proved that the ships were also pretty lousy, hence the very reason Starfleet issued the new design briefs for the Excelsior class of Starship. Mistakes had been made and were learnt from with the Constitution class ships, much of the gathered details being fed into the Excelsior project which itself was proved to be a failure with reference to the doomed Transwarp Development project.

The reason for this very bad century in design and engineering was due to the fact that the Federation was not organized in its designing efforts, even though it had many brilliant minds. Progressively things got better towards the end of the century things being shown such as the Enterprise A design, a classic departure from Standard design policy. For example, The USS Enterprise was launched in 2245 having several major refits before Captain Kirk took over. On its launch date the Enterprise did not even make it out of the solar system before one of the impulse reactor cores detonated. The ship managed to limp back to the San Francisco Fleet Yards and repairs were effected. How the ship ever managed its first five year exploratory mission was beyond captain April, however it did have something to do with that the chief engineer was in fact one of the designers of the ship. Progressively the ship did become more reliable as time passed, effected repairs being carried out on all 20 constitution class ships, although only 12 were active at any one time.

All Constitution class ships were retired from active service in 2295. USS Enterprise-A Can be found in the Smithsonian Institute Starship Museum on Mars.

This Site was modified on Stardate: 2008-12-30

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