FSD : Constitution-class

The Constitution-class began service in the early 23rd-Century, and continued to be the backbone of Starfleet up to the 2270's. They had 21 decks, 14 science labs, and initially built for a crew of 203 officers. It was refitted to carry a crew compliment of 430 officers and original designation of Starship-class was changed to Constitution-class in the 2260's. They used duotronic Daystrom Data Concepts M-4 computers and Shuvinaaljis Warp Technologies Model FWF-1 nacelles with a maximum speed of warp 8. The ship also was able to disconnect the nacelles, and saucer was also able to seperate, but could not reconnect.

The Constitution had several different mission objectives including exploring unknown space, first contact with new alien races, supplying Federation colonies, delivering medical supplies, transporting diplomats, and defending Federation space. The crew consisted of mission specialists of botanists, historians, psychologists, and tactical experts.

By the 2270's Starfleet began to refit the class, practially rebuilding it to include the modern advances in Federation technology since the Constitution was first designed. These enhancements included a computer systems upgrade, new bridge module, navigational deflector array and warp nacelles with internal bussard collector. However these refits could not save the aging class and had been retired in the 2290's. There is currently one Constutition in the Starfleet museum, with the USS Republic being used a Starfleet Academy training ship.

The registry number of the Constitution, NCC-1700, is from one of Scotty's technical manual screens in "Space Seed" (TOS). Since the class ship has a 1700 number, it wold seem only reasonable that the other ships of the class would have higher, possibly even sequential numbers. Unfortunatly, the USS Constellation bore much lower number, NCC-1017, (because it was a simple rearrangement of the decal sheet from the AMT Enterprise model kit) and the Republic was designated as NCC-1371. These data points suggest the Constitution-class ships had registry numbers that not only varied widely in range, but also could not be sequential. Modelmaker Greg Jein (through an amazingly complex and admittedly barely logical means) managed to match up the various Constitution ships with the starship status chart in Commodore Stone's office in Starbase 11, seen in "Court Martial" (TOS). Most of these registry numbers are from Greg's conjectural list, although several are from various Starfleet charts and readouts in Star Trek VI. A few of the Constitution-class ships listed below are not from any episode or movie, but are from the original Star Trek production office's starship list in Stephen Whitfield's book, The Making of Star Trek, which also lists the USS Valiant NCC-1223.

Related Links: Designing the Enterprise. The Enterprise Refit of 2271 (EAS).