The NCC number is only important to petty bureaucrat in starfleet some numbers were reused in the show I can not think of what they are off the top of my head. Realistically you would have to have millions of ships to cover and protect the Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across and 1,000 light-years thick. But understand how much volume that is.
@@RobertHaavind - I think back in the 1960s Rodenberry intended us to think that Star Fleet in all it's existence had only launched 1700 ships before Enterprise was given the reg number NCC-1701 - when I watched the show back then the idea of a million ship fleet would be considered far fetched
@@RobertHaavind Well the Federation as it exists in the late 24th Century is "only" 8,000 light years (according to Picard in First Contact, whether that's cubic or simply length we don't know) but that's still a truly massive volume of space to cover.
CVN means aircaft carrier, nuclear-powered. The CV part of the designation is what distinguishes the vessel as an aircraft carrier, and the N designates that the carrier is nuclear powered. That N designator is pretty universal across the US Navy, such as CVN, SSN, SSBN, CGN, etc. Obviously, if the designation lacks the N, then the vessel is non-nuclear powered.
Although, interestingly, the N didn't always mean nuclear-powered. The first carrier USS Enterprise, CV-6, was briefly redesignated CV(N)-6 near the end of WW2 to indicate that she was a ship capable of engaging in night-time operations.
@@Deepkeel If there's ever a fusion-powered vessel, the USN will decide what suffix would be suitable. Pretty sure -F is available, though, so they'd likely go for that since it's straightforward, leading to CVF, SSF, CGF, DDF or whatever else. If it's small enough, maybe we can get FFFG.
@@thomaszinser8714 Very true, but i didn't want to bring it up since venom was speaking about the modern navy. Ship designations even in our time have become complicated; CV-6 Enterprise i think, in addtion to being a night-time capable carrier, was also designated as an attack carrier, carrying the designation of CVA. I know that was a definite fact for her successor, CVN-65 Enterprise, as she was briefly CVAN-65. thankfully someone in the Navy thought that maybe they went too far down the rabbit hole with all of these designations and applied the KISS concept to it. As far as the Trek registries. . . .ugh, I bet every fan has a take on it. Ever since I was younger, NCC itself meant three different things - Naval Construction Contract, Naval Construction Code or Naval Contact Code (Ha! and the Federation says they're not a military). For the majority of time following Trek, I went with the Naval Contact Code as a means on contact individual ships as that made the most sense, since, as obviously stated, the numbers are all over the place and make no as far as a sequential construction group.
@@Deepkeel We'll find out when the Navy gets around to building a nuclear fusion powered carrier. Although, and this is just my take away, I would imagine it would still fall under just the CVN category, simply because it's still a nuclear powered ship, I don't see a reason to distinguish between nuclear fusion or nuclear fission powered. But then again, it's the Navy, so who knows. Just look at the history of cruiser designations, which oddly enough, spawned the carrier designation we all know today.
Behind the scenes, this numbering scheme comes from Gene Roddenberry being a pilot and not a sailor. At the time, most aircraft in the USA had registration numbers starting with NC- and then a bunch of digits. He just added another C to make it more futuristic. NX is also a real registration prefix used for experimental planes.
The Soviets would use random numbers on ships, submarines, and projects and basically hide the progression and numbers deployed. Perhaps some old habits die hard for Admiral Chekov. :P
Registry numbers work fine; • When you have access to the Federation/Starfleet database which contains the ships class, specifications, capabilities, etc. you can use the registry to quickly retrieve the ship information. • When you’re a foreign power who does not have access to the database, it gives you an identifier for that ship but doesn’t give away its secrets. As we are not privy to exactly how the Federation assigns registries, we have to do some deductions based on observable patterns; • Registries are likely assigned in batches, in the same way construction orders are generally made for several ships at a time. • Registry blocks can be assigned to specific ship classes. • Ship names with providence get to inherit a legacy registry. The problem with chronological ship numbering is it allows a foreign power to calculate the potential size of a navy, see the German tank problem. Gaps in numbers, arbitrary/symbolic assignments, and reservations for future/classified use all help mitigate this.
I have an idea. What if the numbers are purposefully jumbled up to prevent foreign services from being able to easily track how many ships Starfleet has, and of what class? The Federation knows how many ships it has, and has databases of which ships are part of which classes. Thus, for Starfleet, any given NCC- number will immediately pull up a ship's record, but a foreign power trying to guess how many ships of which class the Federation has would be unable to use the NCC- system as a guide. This would also explain the Franklin, NX-326, a registry which makes no sense given the Enterprise (a later ship designated NX-01), but if they were trying to confuse the Romulans as to the size and disposition of the United Earth fleet...well, now they have no way to tell if any given NX-class ship is of the "Enterprise class," Freedom Class, etc.. Trying to track the number of ships via registries becomes an exercise in frustration and futility. Meanwhile, Earth knows what all those ships registries mean. Instead of "This makes no sense," it may be "This is confusing by design."
That is why army regiment numbering often aren't sequential. So when the enemy see the 32 and 43 infantry regiment's they're like oh crap they mush have loads of regiments.
My guess/headcanon on the meaning of the NCC numbers is to tell what shipyard built them. Ships built in the Sol system would be the 1000 series, a Vulcan/Andorian yard would build like a NCC 3000 series ship, and maybe a new generation of shipyard would build a bigger number. Say the shipyards big and advanced enough to build Galaxy, Sovereign, or Odyssey class ships put out five digit NCC numbers.
@@caktitaqiwicaksana6018 And CA was already used for seaplane tenders "Cruiser, Aviation", so for ships carrying wheeled aircraft they just used the next letter "Cruiser, aViation"...
I personally have gone with for the 23rd century the Constitution class was the 17th major class constructed. The 24th century has the numbers in some random pattern to make the fleet appear larger to hide the true numbers and make a potential enemy second guess attacking an Oberth if she potentially has 75,000 bigger sisters to protect her.
6:10 -- "all seventeen-something" -- Well, except for the USS Constellation, NCC-1017, destroyed in the episode "Doomsday Weapon", which had that number because of the limitation in what Desilu had to work with -- an AMT USS Enterprise model, and they only had '0117' as available numbers from the decal sheet for the hull number.
@@Revkor I believe that they wanted to convey the Constellation as being a noticeably older vessel than the Enterprise, but still being Constitution class. Which sort of tosses the hull-numbering into a cocked hat, given that the class ship, the Constitution, was NCC-1700.
@XennialTV In the US Navy (and I think others), it's actually the opposite - the class is named after the first ship of the class. The whole class thing is shorthand for "similar to ship X". Ex The Enterprise-E is a Sovereign like ship. Before ships were made factory-wise it made a bit more sense as ships weren't really identical and navies ordered them like "I want 5 80 gun three deck ships that have a long range" rather than "here are some blueprints, I want 5".
The funny thing is that while he was saying all Constellation class ships were 17 something, he was zooming in on a Constellation class ship whose number was 1672.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 No... presumably it has something to do with the ship being a "starship." I've surmised that the "CC" part of "NCC" could signify that the vessel is capable of traveling at multiples of the speed of light... since "C" is the speed of light in some formulas (most notably E=MC squared). But that's just Darin's conjectural head canon.
@@DarinRWagner@venomgeekmedia9886 yes I always presumed it was more for the engine type used in the vessels as there are ships in the federation that don't have NCC numbers, such as the Fortunate which was ECS-2031or the SS Xhosa doesn't have an NCC number.
It always occured to me that writing out the letters NCC was technically redendant, since they're *all* NCC outside of a few experimentals. I wonder if it's a tradition that started after some intern took things too literally. Like, I told you to write my name on a cake, and they wrote "My Name" on the cake sort of thing.
Certain ship name's have a permanent N.C.C number followed by a letter attached to them in Star Trek for example: Enterprise 1701 then followed by A, B, C, D, E, F, so on and so forth.
I was four years in the German Navy and always believed CVN stands for Carrier Vessel Nuclear, but just looked it up and apparently the 'c' stands for Cruiser. Fascinating!
It's complicated. CV isn't an acronym, to be clear, but rather a designation, going back to the 1920s. The original idea was that the 'baseline' of some type of ship would be a single letter repeated. So, a DD is a Destroyer, a BB is a battleship, and yes, a CC would be a cruiser (specifically, a battlecruiser, with light and heavy cruisers being CL and CA respectively). CV is thus, yes, indicating that carriers were seen as part of the general cruiser family of the time (which also makes sense given the intended role of carriers was essentially purely scouting for the fleet at this point), but the C doesn't per se stand for cruiser either.
As I understand it, CV originally stood for Cruiser, Voler (Voler being the French word for aviation), hence, essentially, Aviation Cruiser. The N denotes Nuclear power.
The "C" is interchangeable between Cruiser and Carrier, it depends on the hull purpose and rest of the designator. The "V" in CVN in the US Navy stands for "heavier than air craft." The current breakdown would be that CVN breaks down to Carrier, Heavier-than-air craft, Nuclear-powered. The conventionally powered supercarriers (Forrestal and Kitty Hawk classes) at the time of their decommissioning were CV. Prior to that they had CVA and CVS designations, the A and S representing attack and submarine warfare respectively.
@@lynngreen7978 I was part of the last full crew of CV-63 before I came back to the states in 2008. And yes, historically aircraft carriers started out as conversions, mostly from cruiser hulls. Thank you Washington and London Naval Treaties. But as purpose designed aircraft carriers became a thing, the "C" to begin the designation still made sense, so it stuck.
If I was going to make up a space fleet I'd do it like this: Ship name here, then SRN ##-##-#####. The first number would indicate what order it had been constructed in its class. The second would indicate the shipyards where it had been built. Then the last would be the actual reference number to find the ship in the database and find basic information about it; it's class, it's mission, it's projected flight plan, etc. As I understand it "star date" doesn't really mean anything either. They just made it sound futuristic for the show. The audience ends up putting more thought into it than the writers did, though sometimes that's a good thing. Also Happy New Year! Listening to this was entertaining.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I seem to remember the old Franz Joseph Star Trek Technical Manual saying somewhere that NCC stood for Naval Construction Contract. I dunno.
CVN refers to three separate parts of the design scheme for the US Navy. C refers to the hull shape being a "Cruiser" or Fast (28+ Knot) ship. The V (V was selected because it looked like the bottom end of a downward pointing arrow) refers to the air group being "Heavier Than Air". The early days of the sea power debate saw the air plane as a poor option compared to lighter than air blimps. So, a surface sea tending ship had to be the "At sea base" for these aircraft. And. the easy one is a capital N refers to nuclear powered. The first use of the letter (n) in parentheses was a suffix to indicate that the ship was capable of night action / fighting. As the war continued, and night action was a requirement the (n) suffix was eventually dropped, and all the fleet carries were listed as CV (fleet) or CVE (escort). Other letters were added in the late 40's to early 60's to differentiate sub-categories; but after CVN-65 Enterprise was launched, even these were dropped and the modern system we use today was created.
Part of the 24th centuries registry woes could be attributed to small craft like Runabouts having registry numbers, causing them to balloon upwards very rapidly. The numbers jumping around with classes can be partly explained with some ships being mothballed and then recommissioned later with new numbers.
Leaving aside the issues the 90s show had with maintaining continuity around the numbers, it makes sense to me - the contract number may be sequential or near sequential, it may not, but it's ultimately a reference to the unique number on the form used to order the ship. Prestige numbers being the exception, retaining the namesake number with a -X letter suffix (and presumably an original construction NCC number being mapped somewhere in history) Now, an order for a ship may come from the same office as a batch, and get sequential or near sequential numbers. Or they may come from different offices which were given batches of allocated order numbers in different ranges, and so they seem all over the place. So like one facility may have 400 numbers ready to go because they make a lot of ship orders, another might have a dozen, another might have a hundred. These wouldn't be *used* sequentially overall, but you'd get clusters of them being used in proximity. But it allows you to trace the original contract, if you're Starfleet, and from there find the history of the vessel (including things like command codes if authorized and other data to validate the ship before you is the one it claims). They would, to civilians, look basically like vehicular number plates (and indeed such plates are often allocated similarly to how I described above)
As nice as internal consistency with hull classification symbols would be, that's asking a lot for a tv show created during a time where realism and internal consistency weren't things. There's no consistency between classes either, names like cruiser and battlecruiser and the generic "starship" are just thrown out and I'm sure the writers had no idea what these designations mean. Its all about what sounds cool. Fans and later content like Starfleet Battles have tried to make sense of this mishmash, but I wish anyone good luck with that because its all trying to create order out of chaos. If Star Trek were created today in the Babylon 5 or Space: Above and Beyond mold it would have more of the consistency you'd like.
When my friend wrote her science fiction universe, she addressed this. D.S.E.V. Meant: Deep Space Exploration Vessel. The number after would mean which number it was built. For example: D.S.E.V. 01 meaning it was the first ship built. Deep Space Exploration Vessel 01, or 02, 03 and so on. Most ships don't have an actual name, just their designation and number built. Only ships on unattached use would be given names. Such as the D.S.E.V. James Cook, which would not be using a construction number as it's more of a personal use ship, not part of an organization. The ships aren't given a class, they're just designated for their use although they could look different. D.S.C.T. would be: Deep Space Colonial Transport. Or: A.C.V. would be Active Combat Vessel which means a ship of war that's actively engaging in military use. D.T.V. would be Diplomatic Transport Vessel which is what political figures would travel on.
The thing is, such a number also exist. I recall one of the newer books differentiating between 3 different numbers: -The NCC-number, which basically just is there to give a hull a unique number (can be reshuffled, like when a ship distinguishes itself, name and number get reused but with a letter-suffix) -The S/N-number, which is what you could call a serial number that gives all the vital data (class, type, model, running number within its class); but only used in official documents because Star Trek computers are smart enough to add these things on their own. -The Prefix-code, which is the backdoor that Kirk & Spock used to hack into the Reliant. All three numbers are different, no number from one ship reappears in the other number of that ship. I.e. the 1701 would ONLY be the NCC, but not appear in the S/N-# or the Prefix-code. Again, I don't remember where I read that, it was not an old 60s or FASA book, it had the Nova and Akira depicted in it as schematics.
Honestly messy model number and registry number systems are pretty true to reality, with most model and production numbers being a combination of production line and prototype numbering from the manufacture . Also numbering and naming systems change over the course of time, with older model and registry numbers being grandfathered in often times. I'm not saying you don't have a point, but real military's also have the same issues.
They kind of line up in Star Trek Picard because they had a lot of the people from the older shows working on things like that. Interestingly the Excelsior 2 class ships have registries in the 42XXX range which should have been used decades ago. My head cannon is that they sometime skip large blocks on numbers and then go back to them later.
It'd make sense that they reserve blocks incase they are needed to churn out stuff in a hurry. Actually that would add up with them being Excelsior 2s. "We need a lot of ships in a hurry, activate the 42x range and use the Excelsior 2 design we've got lying around"
Is a good rant and it needs to be discussed. It's not discussed enough. Thank you for speaking out about it. I mean that. Sincerely, been watching your stuff for like 4 years now you rock
In my Timeline NCC numbers are very very strict to how they're applied. For some classes like Federation, Shangri-La, or Hornet/Wasp for 23rd century, you'd have NCC-2500, NCC-2100, etc. I also have many numbers from Canon changed like the Excelsior II, Edison, and Sagan classes. The In-universe explanation is Starfleet wanted to begin mass production by the 2310s and skip blocks because others might use varying prefixes like NAR, NCIA, NI, or something else. For 24th century ships it is relatively simple, first 2 numbers are the year, and last 3 are the hull number for that year. For 25th century ships and going past the 31st century beginning in 2400 you'd have the added 6 digit which marks the 1st century using 6 digit registries. I really don't care a darn for what Star Trek has to say about registries and On-screen confirmation because then different writers, producers just screw it up. That's my way of doing it. What is that Starship lineage thing at 11:22?
with regards to the prefix "NCC", if you instead interpret it as meaning "Naval Contract Commission", this means that the number that follows is simply one automatically allocated as being "available" in the naval registry. In a similar vein, civilian ships that have been surplused/struck from the starfleet registry, for example the USS Raven (NAR- 32450) are allocated the NAR prefix, possibly meaning "Naval Auxilliary Register" or "Naval Authority Register", identifying these ships as being registered within the UFP, but not affiliated with the Federation starfleet.
I can think of a way to like "fix this" The system would look like this: NCC-1701 / [Quadrant][Shipyard][Role][Command Number][Fleet Number], giving info on where a ship was built, its role, and its fleet assignment. So quadrant it was built (or currently assigned), so Alpha Quadrant (A) Beta Quadrant (B) Gamma Quadrant (G) Delta Quadrant (D) Place of it being built, Utopia Planitia (U) Andor Shipyards (A) Tellar Shipyards (T) Byzantium Shipyards (Y), Outside Federation, or built and controlled by member worlds (S) Vulcan for example Battleships (B), Dreadnoughts (D), Light Battlecruisers (L), Escorts (E), Science Ships (S), Medical Ships (M), Special Operations (X) eg section 31. For fleet number could be changeable so the sector its meant to be in, or what part of the fleet its in, special assignment. For example, the Enterprise could be NCC-1701 / AUB-L-01-xxxxx. this tells it was built in the Alpha Quadrant at Utopia Planitia, classified as a battleship, and assigned as flag ship. For the defiant it would be, NCC-74205 / AUE-L-05-xxxxx. For the Excalibur Federation Dreadnought NCC-72001 / BTD-01-xxxxx. I bet the federation would have some strange names so they can avoid calling there ships war sounding names like Battleship, or Dreadnought. And you could also call the NCC-xxxx a hold over from United Earth where the number of the ship is the only thing that mattered due to the small size of the fleet. And it was later reformed. maybe you could say it was always the case but they never printed it on the hull, maybe the NCC number is just symbolic, another name for the ship. Thats the head cannon im going with for now, NCC means close to nothing anyone due to the size of starfleet, and they have just got another digital system that can identity ships with things like transponders or communications.
One thing that did happen with the USN in the transition to the missile age was the separation of numbering schemes for new missile ships from the numbering series of the preceding gun ships. By the 1950s hull numbers for destroyers had reached into the 900s and well over 100 for cruisers (granted these numbers were bloated by cancelled contracts the hull numbers of which would not be recycled). Likely because of this, the first missile conversions of older hulls started back at 1 with the conversion of heavy cruisers Boston and Canberra going from CA-69 and CA-70 to CAG-1 and CAG-2 as an example of this. Maybe Starfleet could benefit from a resetting of the numbering scheme along these lines in the early 25th century.
I do think its just a straight serial number, which, presumably has the details of the ship in a database. One good thing about it, is it reinforces the idea that Starfleet is in fact, massive.
According to the old Franz Joseph ST book from the early or mid 70s, NCC means Naval Contract Commission. Every class of ship, whether cruisers, destroyers, tugs, whatever, had a unique series # for that class. Enterprise was a Constitution -class heavy cruiser, all vessels of its class had a series 17xx identifier. Defiant, from the Tholian episode, was NCC-1764. According to some lore I remember reading a loooooong time ago, Enterprise, under Kirk, was the only one of twelve CA's to survive the full five year mission. In recognition, StarFleet declared her registry would NOT be retired when the ship would eventually be scrapped. But rather a new class vessel would be given the same name and registry, continuing the honors. Hence, 1701- bloody A B C and D. StarFleet also designated Enterprise as fleet flagship. As far as carriers, there are really good articles on Wikipedia about naval vessel designations, but here goes. Once armored warship hulls became the next big thing after the Civil War, navies need new ways of identifying ship classes. Designation AC meant armored cruiser. We that worked for all of about five minutes when different size cruisers were introduced for different duties. Eventually, CA meant heavy cruiser, CL meant light, BC meant battle cruiser an in between heavy cruiser and battleship. Well, when airplanes got thrown in the mix in the 1920s, new designations were needed. CV meant Cruiser, aViation. CVA meant heavy carrier, CVL was light carrier, CVE was escort carrier. Then the Americans had to screw it all up again by putting nuclear reactors in their ships. Hence, CVN. There are almost certainly a lot of pedants with tree trunks up their butts who will take issue with my explanation. Two things; first, this a very quick, basic explanation. Second, PPPPHHHHTTTTHHHH !! To everyone, if want more info, start at Wikipedia.
In typical fashion, these numbers are not given to the name of the ship but when a ship class is authorized by Starfleet. They are assigned numbers for instance the Essex class carriers start at CV-9 and end in the 20s for the first section of ships. The CVL-23 was given to the Independence-class up to 44, and then you get the second batch of Essex, then a further couple of Independences, and finally we get a couple for the Saipan class up to the Present day these numbers are given to the ships with CVN=69 being of the Gerald R. Ford class and CVN-71 I think being the Enterprise. Hence Naval Construction Contract #1701 is the Constitution Class Enterprise, #1650 is the Ares, and #2000 is the Excelisor. These numbers in Star Trek follow this model. When a number is reused using the Enterprise of NCC-1701-C it's the Ambassador Class ship they are building. Therefore it messes everything up. Not that Starfleet has 60,000 vessels if you look at Voyager's registry number. It's the number the construction yard was given for a class of ships. The UK uses a similar system with its construction yards as well. Hence why the cruiser Belfast had to modify its name because of the Type 26 frigate that will be known as the Belfast. In the 21st century, it's used as a registration code. Or you'd have Scotty going nuts in the holodeck, trying to figure out what his ship was.
So, following naval ship codes, starship registries ought to work out something like this: BB-1701-D USS Enterprise, Galaxy-class battleship CA-1701-E USS Enterprise, Sovereign-class heavy command battlecruiser CL-74656 USS Voyager, Intrepid-class light cruiser CB-63549 USS Thunderchild, Akira-class fast attack cruiser It's obviously not a direct one to one parallel, since they're not boats in the ocean, but I got it as close as I could.
My assumption was that they were sequential numbers for when the ship was ordered in the TOS era, by the time we’re in the TNG era, it’s been overhauled to be more useful. My rationalisation is that they’re now used to identify the batch the ship came from within its own class. The first 2 numbers are the ships class ID number, the middle shows its batch, and the last are its production number so you can identify when it was built in the construction run compared to others of its type. Take the USS Phoenix 65420, nebula would be the 65th class of ship in service, it was built in the 4 production run, and it was the 20th ship in that run. A nebula built at the start of the run would be completely different to a nebula down the line so it would help identify in class tech differences, like how a chinook made today is basically a different type of rotorcraft to the ones built 60 years ago. Does this work? Absolutely not, confirmed ships which are first of their class like Ambassador and Galaxy tear this apart with registrations like 70637. It would also lead to ships with duplicate NCC numbers, although rare. It’s just the most logical explanation I can think of if I was put in charge of overhauling the registration system.
I am an Old School Trekker and wholeheartedly embrace the classic definition of the acronym N.C.C. being Naval Construction Contract. It has always been my belief that the number DOES NOT reflect how many hulls of that class exist (as is done with U.S. Navy ships) but literally the Contract # for the construction of that vessel. Thus, any illogic in numbering is a fault of the contracting process rather than errors/anomolies with ship registry numbers being sequential.
What absolutely baffles me is that in Star Trek Discovery's final season they have the NCC registry remaining current in the 32nd century... that would be analogous to a historic navy maintaining consistency from the 1100s until now.
in terms of numbers, the way I headcannon the classifications is that it is actually the final digits which suggest rating of a vessel, all ships of a certain rate get a particular range of number (flag-ships being 01 plus letter, others having various lower numeral groups)... of the first two or three numbers, they generally denote a class, but a sub-class might have either a neighboring number or a related number - say an improved 7class will become a 17class or the 14 class might have modifications of the 142class and the 145class... within the service ships there is a slight modification with three numbers for the role of the ship as a rating. thus, the role of the California class seems to be denoted by a designation of the something-zero-something final numbers for more second-contact oriented ships, 500 somethings for the more maintenance oriented ships and 0-something for the scientific support vessels, the last designation seems to appear in some Oberths too. it also seems the last numbers of many cargo vessels is either a 000 or a 00something seems also that in the earlier stages of exploration, before a large fleet with set classification rankings was a thing they used 3digit codes which denoted production class and a two digit personal number for each ship
You fire your head cannon at the classifications? Does that give you a headache? Does it do much damage? Do you fire cannon balls or shells? My head canon is that you head cannon is cast in bronze and fires grapeshot. Can you tell me if it’s correct? Forgive me. My flock of snarks got loose.
As far as I know it's more or less NCC armada-fleet-battle group-flagship position on the hull. The actual iff ping sends out the full NCC-AFBgFp as well as production number whether or not it's merely using an older registered identification name and lastly a unique code to the vessel at the start of communications at the discretion of the coms officer and the captain.
CVN as i understand it is Fleet Carrier Nuclear in us parlance hence why prior to the unclear powerplants the numbers would be CV to use CV-06 as an example
Well, CV just meant an aircraft carrier in general. That said, in practice it did mean a fleet carrier, because smaller varietals ended up getting called CVL or CVE (light carrier or escort carrier, respectively).
"Carrier Voplane Nuclear." "CVN" however is not to be taken as an acronym or as initials, but rather a SYMBOL. That's what they taught us in the US Navy, anyway.
@@rjthom5 It did not. CV was never an abbreviation or an acronym. It was simply a designation, in the same way that DD is just a designation for Destroyer or BB is for Battleship. The way the system worked is that the 'baseline' version of a given type of ship would be designated with the same letter repeated, and the second letter would indicate variation. So, from DD, we get DE and DL. From BB we also get BM (monitors). CV indicates that a ship is in the Cruiser family (hence the C, see also CA, CL, CG, CLAA, etc), and carries heavier-than-air craft as the primary function (hence the V, see also AV [auxiliary aircraft tender]).
CVN means "Carrier Vehicle, Nuclear". for example, the WW2 era enterprise was CV-6 (oil/diesel powerplant), its replacement launched in 1961 was CVN-65, the first vessel of its type to be powered by a nuclear reactor. Its upcoming new replacement due to launch in 2028 will be CVN-80.
I do remember that the Starfleet command games actually did use the modern classifications for ships with thr first two games diving into sub variants of the main designations (i.e CA for the main constitution refits but then having CAR as an additional refit class for the connie) Honestly it was even more confusing as the Connie seem to have heavy & light variants with many random sub variants to the variants. This was somewhat fixed in number 3 where they did away with the sub variants and just stuck with the main designations (FF, DD, CL, CA, BC, BB and DN)
A big problem with Star Trek is how it bends over backwards to justify things done in the original series that were done for no real reason at all other than reflecting things people would recognize and because it seemed right at the time. Lazy writers went along with it without question and those who tried to bring common sense were destroyed by the Star Trek zealot puritans who abhor change. Ship design is one of the biggest victims of this.
One thing I've been doing is basically see what the prototype ship is identified with, keep my own ship close to the number or within the range of ship classes, and vomit a number that sounds cool. It may not make sense but I kinda like to keep certain numbers within certain eras. Like I don't expect an NCC-9 billion in the ENT era so keeping around 1000 or below makes more sense to me.
For the record, "CV" in the US navy originally referred to a variation of a cruiser hull given that most aircraft carriers were built off a "cruiser hull". Later, after WWII CV came to refer to "aircraft carrier". There is no official "super carrier" desigation as far as I know. CV(N) origionally referd to the USS Enterprise capiablity of night opperations. Now it refers to aircraft carriers that are nuclear powered.
One thing you might not have considered is different eras have different ways of doing things with regards to NCC numbers. The IS navy has its standard DDG numbers for their destroyers, with the last to be DDG 142 before the new DDGX class is built, then USS Zumwalt-class is DDG-1000
I think the numbers (at least when it comes to ST Picard, Sovereign, & Ambassador classes) are done in the same way modern day US railroads number their locomotives. It's routine for the RR's to group the same class of locomotives in a concurrent number scheme. When a locomotive goes in for a rebuild some 15 to 20 years later they are often re-numbered to a different number. Theres usually a block of numbers that are reserved for all locomotives that are rebuilt to the new standards and those numbers are usually concurrent with one another.
Not even for a rebuild, the Great Western Railway renumbered the entire 48xx class to make room for a few experimental rebuilds of 28xx’s that went nowhere
Maybe Star Fleet use fleet yards other than the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards to construct some of their ships, and different yards use different NCC numbers.
It makes perfect sense from an intelligence perspective. During WWI The Germans used sequential serial numbers for vehicle (tank) hulls, engines, gearboxes, etc. When the Allies captured/destroyed those vehicles they kept track of those serial numbers and through statistical analysis could figure out how many vehicles the Germans had, and how many they produced per month. By using a seemingly random numbering system factions who are adversary towards the Federation can't work out how many ships UFP has. :D
I've never given much thought to the NCC numbers in Star Trek. I know the Enterprises number but I could not tell you the NCC number of Voyager to save my life.
"N" is the national prefix for the Federation. The Romulans and the Klingons using "NCC" contact codes would be the sci-fi equivalent of using a false flag. "CC" designates a ship as an active commissioned starship of the Federation Starfleet. "X" is for a test ship (class leaders that use NX are usually but not always redesignated NCC when their class is commissioned).
CV means Cruiser Voler. Allegedly, the Voler was taken from French and means "Fly". The N means Nuclear Powered. So a CVN is a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. CG is a Guided Missile Armed Cruiser while CGN is a Nuclear Powered Guided Missile Cruiser. BB is a Battleship. CC is a Large Cruiser or Battlecruiser. DD is a Destroyer. DDG is a Guided Missile Destroyer. FF is a Frigate. FFG is a Guided Missile Frigate.
I honestly assumed the Federation did what railways did, namely some mess of a system done arbitrarily and only following consistency in batches (for instance NCC-1700-1711), with some other system to denote everything else.
If NCC stands for Naval Construction Contract at the bare minimum there has to be a database where these numbers can be used to access the contract and information of construction for the ship
the NCC registry as Gene Rodenbery said in an interview he made the registry what it is after seeing the registry numbers and letters of planes and suggested see this plane starting with NC what if we just add another C make it NCC
Actually it came from Matt Jefferies, the man who designed the enterprise, he was a pilot and wanted to give the ship an "N number" I.D. like American civil aircraft have but added "CC" to it.
CVN stands for Carrier (Nuclear). CV is an identifier for carriers in general, the N is a suffix to indicate a nuclear-powered ship (see also nuclear submarines being called SSN and the handful of nuke cruisers being CGN). That said, I think you're somewhat universalizing based off of modern US and USN practice, historically, a lot of ships have essentially been assigned arbitrary numbers, or given numbers purely in sequence.
Someone above explained that it actually started as “Cruiser”, not “Carrier”. Carriers were originally considered “cruisers” because cruisers in general were mostly used as a screening/scouting tool (like cavalry) and carriers were cruisers with planes acting as forward scouts. They didn’t use carriers as the main element of a battle group back then as they do now. It was just another type of cruiser for the Navy at the time. Of course that might have changed since then and it might now be “carrier”. 🤷🏻♀️
@@keirfarnum6811 You're absolutely right, and I actually point that out in other places, I was just oversimplifying because getting into the entire history of how US ship designations evolved and got to what we have nowadays is, well, a bit of a complex mess, to say the least, and CV being the designation for a ship designed specifically to carry heavier-than-air vehicles is just the simpler way to explain it all.
In my mind, that NCC designation is to refer to starfleet, I imagine in a large database of federation associated starships, they have several different organizations of ships they have to keep track of , espa, Vulcan science academy, ect. I imagine it was more practical in the early federation when member species still had well funded personal space organizations, as for the numbers meaning something, I don’t see that as necessary seeing as it would be a code you read through a database, and then you’d get all the info you need, I don’t know why you’d use the serial code for that sort of identification and we certainly never see anyone in the show referencing the serial as anything other than a registry number.
One thing of note is Navy Ships do not have an IMO Number like civilian ships so they are only designated by name and hull number / vessel type for example U.S.S. The Sullivans (DDG-67).
I made a federation type faction for some rp. Ships registry numbers follow a simple rule: Type-Class number-unit number. The flagship for example has the number SD-24-01. SD is the type, its the 24th ship class of that type and the first of its class.....
The part of the registry numbers that irritates me the most is the complete lack of consistency. The writers almost never bothered to see if the name had been used previously. Like why and the hell is the number on DS9 Defiant different than TOS Defiant, if the ship was the 2nd Starfleet vessel to use the name, then it should have been NCC-1764-A not NX-74205, or NCC-75633. That is not even getting into the issues with the lack of class numbering consistency, I'm looking at you USS Constellation NCC-1017. But your argument is sound, the NCC-(Insert Number here) should be the ship's CONTRACT number, not its designation. For example, I will use what shipyards use IRL, this ship's hull number is "NCC-1703" She is commissioned as the USS Hood and is given the official designation CA-04. CA stands for a US heavy cruiser, and 04 means that she is the 4th heavy cruiser ever built. (Additionally, you could change CA to CGA (guided missile heavy cruiser) or something else that would better represent the role of the given ship) At this point though, the NCC is so well engrained you could never get rid of it. Also, as a discrepancy for ships in a class having a either very high number or low number compared to the class leader I can use an example that the USN faced after the cancellation of the Ohio class SSBNs. Okay so the US Navy wanted 24 Ohio class SSBNs so they ordered all 24 of them. Later, the USN canceled the last 6 (19-24). Because the USN ordered the hulls, those hulls were given hull registration numbers, (example: SSBN-746) This could explain why you see a large jump in hull numbers from other ships in any given class. Another addition to this is that Starfleet could be retroactively going back through its "Missing Registry Numbers" and assigning them to newly ordered ships to "fill in the gaps" in the history of the ship registry. Or maybe I'm a Naval Architect student getting too excited about a TV show written by folks in Hollywood. Edit: We could also take the EXACT definition of what NCC is probably used as, aka: Hull Number, and explain away any discrepancy as, "Oh that ship was ordered or stated construction after the original batch and that's why is hull number is so much higher"
So, thinking outside the box: Makes sense that’s is a serial number, tracking internally for the Federation. They can choose to re used the number on a name of a ship or in the rare instances like the enterprise, re- assign the same code with the a prefex, the idea might be more moral/psychological been able to identify hero ships quicker. On the side of quick identification, in theory, having a universal naming system, makes things easy to memorise, as it’s rhythmic, so if you have a short snappy system with a consistent prefex, your “could” indentfy a ship quicker off a set pattern and number? Another theory but practical and would make sense. Not having prefex tailored to class types and roles means an enemy would have to do more intel on each ship, making it harder to choose targets. So the USS test ship NCC 23745 nebula class ecm ship, is not the USS test Ship NCC 24789 Oberth class science vessel. It can lead to miss identification on the enemy part. Typing this makes it harder to explain my point! Sorry!
The numbers are hard to track because starships can inherent their numbers based on lineage. NCC-1701 belonged to a constitution class, an Ambassador class , a Galaxy class, a Sovereign class, etc. So numbers carry over classes, making them difficult to track.
For the custom scifi universe I've been working on I have done Designation systems like this. S.S.V - 00000 N.C.C. - 00000 - S.M.S.V. - 00 S.S.V (Systems Starfleet Vessel) N.C.C. (Number Construction Commission Series) S.M.S.V. - 00( Systems Military Starfleet Vessel Ship class number Design) (VCN- 00 Number of vessels constructed in class )
I have an idea to explain the coding. My theory is that it actually is a code. That gives more information of the ship. NCC-(17)(01) The first 2 numbers represent the actual construction District or area, For instance, federation ships built on and around Earth would have a 01 Representing Earth is the first construction location. 17 representing Jupiter station. And as time goes on through history, more construction sites are constructed. But once a certain number cap is reached, the construction site is then decommissioned. Or a code is reset 17 becomes 24 Giving more information to the Actual timeline, the ship was built. The final numbers represent construction contract number, Or the order the ship Started construction.
I have bad news for you... in the American navy, which is a template for Star Trek since Rodenberry and several other creators had served in the navy in World War II; sequentially numbers ships by type based on approval for construction. That means numerous CVN and SSN numbers are never applied to a ship because ships approved for construction can be cancelled before construction begins. Hence ships assigned CV 35, CV 44, CV 46, CV 50-58 were all cancelled and not reused. While the NCC is sort of useless since all Starfleet ships have them, the number represents the order in which construction was approved. Therefore the problem isn't the 5 digit numbers in the TNG era, it's that the Excelsior was only numbered 2000.
what other method could there be to get a navy other than a construction contract? perhaps an alien culture where the people build ships and give them to the navy without any previous contract or list of needs or wants? or just finding other peoples ships? you mentioned "all these ships were built under contract for the navy, probably" what other option could there be?
Fun vid. I just assumed that NCC-1701 was for Naval Command Cruiser. Just as (I'm assuming) NX-2000 on the Excelsior prototype was for Naval eXperiment. 🤷🏼♂️
NCC was based on US civil aircraft regulations which at the time started with NC, NR, or NX N being the code for the United States (standing for Navy, but that's a whole other very long story), and the second letter standing for Commercial, Restricted, or eXperimental. Matt Jeffries who was a private pilot based the Starfleet registry on the US civil aircraft registry, and added another "C" just to make it cooler. Naval codes would make more sense, but that's not what he did.
Treat the NCC #'s like a license plate scheme for internal StarFleet use only. It has no bearing on ship quality/type/features/role. NCC-#'s can be reused when one vessel retires & a new ship takes it.
I always assumed the NCC numbers were nothing more than a bar-code, a UUID number of sorts. Just keeping it relatively short and purely numerical to fit on the hull and possibly be easily remembered by the crew. And being for starships, there isn't a need to have each identifier be more than 3-6 digits long, since it's not like there'll be millions of them built any time soon. The only purpose of the NCC numbers would then be record keeping. The number gets attached to any crew logs, mission materials, or equipment for the sake of the log books, but also for the sake of asset recovery. How many times do we see a destroyed ship that another ship is coming across, or even just bits of cargo or equipment that the crew is able to identify as having come from a specific ship? In a world where your sensors detect a vessel long before you could possibly get a visual, having identifying registries as anything other than a unique identifier is either pointless or redundant. As soon as a friendly ship pings another ship they are either given a data packet describing the ship with information such as name and class, or their own computer database would provide that information as soon as the registry is determined. No ensign has to be able to stand on the hull of the ship, look out at another ship, and be able to tell the class and mission profile based on the registry.
Are Star Trek starship registry prefixs nonsensical? Yes. Am I still going to at least partially try to make sense of them anyway (to the vexation of my sanity)? Also yes. A neat continuity rant video for this new year of 2025. Now just wait until you recall about the prefixes NX, NAR, and NCV. Among others.
The only thing that makes sense for me would be the NCC designation was to appeal to member nations in the UFP. Also looks more militant for production.
Makes more sense if NCC stands for Navigation Control Code. Make a non starfleet agency responsible for giving all ships codes. Government agencies like to do this kind of mess.
makes sense to me . . . back in 1949 the N (which is still used today) for American aircraft registers as most if not all US aircraft have a tail number that starts with N (or November if there are Aviators here) the 1st C would indicate a Civilian craft (before the dominion wars and after the Kitimore Accords there was no real military presence in Starfleet or the United Federation of planets both thus all ships though armed for defense only are classified as Civilian Craft. the 2nd C would be for the class of ship which Starfleet after the Kitimore accords typically used Cruisers. . . the 2 primary ships between the 2 major skirmish/wars were either Exploration Cruisers or Science Cruisers (Freighters in Starfleet are also classed as cruisers but non Starfleet freighters are identified with S.S. any Experimental ship also has a unique designation of NX there's a lot of stuff Gene Rodenberry took from modern day identifiers and repurposed for the show but this is just my opinion
Yeah it’s not a detail they cared about and Let’s be honest it’s a detail I’m not going to cry over. Except that weird shit in Star Trek Beyond where they named a station like a starship. Also can wait for the earth Romulan war redone, especially since I’ve gotten into the novel enterprise series (Damn you CBS/Paramount) that and dominion politics would be interesting. Theocratic totalitarian (I know this is debated) free speech despising intergalactic British empire with manifest destiny on kracel steroids with duel clone armies.
Ncc is less confusing than USS... But is understandable given its a tv show made in America in the 60s-now. It's less confusing in cannon than the weridly occasional use of imperial units. Which again is explained by America in the 60s-now
I like to think of them as just a serial number. As with all governments, rules, guidelines, ideas for standardization all of it changes over time and becomes a bit of a mess IRL. So why not the same thing in universe? Like you mentioned pre federation ships had culture specific designations, after formation they had to figure out a new unified naming scheme and agreed on a 4 diget non sequential numbering system. After all who needs more than 9999 ships right? Then rolls around the 10,000th ship and they're like "well shit let's just start over and give all new ships 5 didget numbers now". And in between/along side that they also allowed 4 number+1 letter designations for legacy numbers people got attached to. It's a mess for sure but feels realistic to me.
I used to hate the whole idea of 17 being type of ship and 01 being the hull number in that class. But it's grown on me. Obviously at some point in TNG it got tossed out an airlock but the scheme makes sense. Consider 1700-99 reserved for Connies, then they make the Miranda which takes off well and they crank out a bunch so as Reliant is the 64th ship of the Miranda (18) class. 19 is something we didn't see or early Constellation class ships. Excelsior gets 20. I does seem a huge time of growth in 2320-2340 happened and so starship construction boomed and the numbers got screwed up or new stupid rules got into place. That's my head cannon right now anyway.
Come to think of it, could have designs out there where they reserved say 1900-99 but only made one or two for what ever reason totally taking out 100 hull numbers in the scheme with only a couple ships in there. Could have a whole era where numbers went fast but few ships made for production.
In my own sci-fi universes the human ships use a simple in- universe code for naval ship so in one universe the first letter indicates a space ship the next two letters indicate the ships classification in said navy and if applicable the last letter indicates the status of the ship or class and the last number indicates the number of ships of that classification built the ship will only get its number once construction is complete so the warrior has the naval number ship number sdrx 010 the s stands for space the dr indicates that warrior indicates is a dreadnaught and an experimental warship and the x stands for the warrior being a class leader and a prototype for a new ship line and she was the tenth ship to use the SDR on the ships books
the level of series continuity you would like was barely considered in 1966
The NCC number is only important to petty bureaucrat in starfleet some numbers were reused in the show I can not think of what they are off the top of my head. Realistically you would have to have millions of ships to cover and protect the Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across and 1,000 light-years thick. But understand how much volume that is.
@@RobertHaavind - I think back in the 1960s Rodenberry intended us to think that Star Fleet in all it's existence had only launched 1700 ships before Enterprise was given the reg number NCC-1701 - when I watched the show back then the idea of a million ship fleet would be considered far fetched
Only consistency between episodes in the 60s was captain kirk and crew the enterprise phasers and shields. This is too far😂
True. They just thought it was a show that would run for a few years and be forgotten. They never dreamed Star Trek would become a phenomenon.
@@RobertHaavind Well the Federation as it exists in the late 24th Century is "only" 8,000 light years (according to Picard in First Contact, whether that's cubic or simply length we don't know) but that's still a truly massive volume of space to cover.
CVN means aircaft carrier, nuclear-powered. The CV part of the designation is what distinguishes the vessel as an aircraft carrier, and the N designates that the carrier is nuclear powered. That N designator is pretty universal across the US Navy, such as CVN, SSN, SSBN, CGN, etc. Obviously, if the designation lacks the N, then the vessel is non-nuclear powered.
Although, interestingly, the N didn't always mean nuclear-powered. The first carrier USS Enterprise, CV-6, was briefly redesignated CV(N)-6 near the end of WW2 to indicate that she was a ship capable of engaging in night-time operations.
So... would that mean that fusion powered vessels would be --VF?
@@Deepkeel If there's ever a fusion-powered vessel, the USN will decide what suffix would be suitable. Pretty sure -F is available, though, so they'd likely go for that since it's straightforward, leading to CVF, SSF, CGF, DDF or whatever else. If it's small enough, maybe we can get FFFG.
@@thomaszinser8714 Very true, but i didn't want to bring it up since venom was speaking about the modern navy. Ship designations even in our time have become complicated; CV-6 Enterprise i think, in addtion to being a night-time capable carrier, was also designated as an attack carrier, carrying the designation of CVA. I know that was a definite fact for her successor, CVN-65 Enterprise, as she was briefly CVAN-65. thankfully someone in the Navy thought that maybe they went too far down the rabbit hole with all of these designations and applied the KISS concept to it.
As far as the Trek registries. . . .ugh, I bet every fan has a take on it. Ever since I was younger, NCC itself meant three different things - Naval Construction Contract, Naval Construction Code or Naval Contact Code (Ha! and the Federation says they're not a military). For the majority of time following Trek, I went with the Naval Contact Code as a means on contact individual ships as that made the most sense, since, as obviously stated, the numbers are all over the place and make no as far as a sequential construction group.
@@Deepkeel We'll find out when the Navy gets around to building a nuclear fusion powered carrier. Although, and this is just my take away, I would imagine it would still fall under just the CVN category, simply because it's still a nuclear powered ship, I don't see a reason to distinguish between nuclear fusion or nuclear fission powered. But then again, it's the Navy, so who knows. Just look at the history of cruiser designations, which oddly enough, spawned the carrier designation we all know today.
Behind the scenes, this numbering scheme comes from Gene Roddenberry being a pilot and not a sailor. At the time, most aircraft in the USA had registration numbers starting with NC- and then a bunch of digits. He just added another C to make it more futuristic. NX is also a real registration prefix used for experimental planes.
@@darthquigley yes NX strongly corresponds to Fx which was for prototypes
The Soviets would use random numbers on ships, submarines, and projects and basically hide the progression and numbers deployed. Perhaps some old habits die hard for Admiral Chekov. :P
Registry numbers work fine;
• When you have access to the Federation/Starfleet database which contains the ships class, specifications, capabilities, etc. you can use the registry to quickly retrieve the ship information.
• When you’re a foreign power who does not have access to the database, it gives you an identifier for that ship but doesn’t give away its secrets.
As we are not privy to exactly how the Federation assigns registries, we have to do some deductions based on observable patterns;
• Registries are likely assigned in batches, in the same way construction orders are generally made for several ships at a time.
• Registry blocks can be assigned to specific ship classes.
• Ship names with providence get to inherit a legacy registry.
The problem with chronological ship numbering is it allows a foreign power to calculate the potential size of a navy, see the German tank problem. Gaps in numbers, arbitrary/symbolic assignments, and reservations for future/classified use all help mitigate this.
I have an idea. What if the numbers are purposefully jumbled up to prevent foreign services from being able to easily track how many ships Starfleet has, and of what class? The Federation knows how many ships it has, and has databases of which ships are part of which classes. Thus, for Starfleet, any given NCC- number will immediately pull up a ship's record, but a foreign power trying to guess how many ships of which class the Federation has would be unable to use the NCC- system as a guide. This would also explain the Franklin, NX-326, a registry which makes no sense given the Enterprise (a later ship designated NX-01), but if they were trying to confuse the Romulans as to the size and disposition of the United Earth fleet...well, now they have no way to tell if any given NX-class ship is of the "Enterprise class," Freedom Class, etc.. Trying to track the number of ships via registries becomes an exercise in frustration and futility. Meanwhile, Earth knows what all those ships registries mean. Instead of "This makes no sense," it may be "This is confusing by design."
That is why army regiment numbering often aren't sequential. So when the enemy see the 32 and 43 infantry regiment's they're like oh crap they mush have loads of regiments.
I like that idea.
You may be interested in reading about the "German tank problem" ;)
This is a good idea. I hope venom sees it and incorporates it.
My guess/headcanon on the meaning of the NCC numbers is to tell what shipyard built them. Ships built in the Sol system would be the 1000 series, a Vulcan/Andorian yard would build like a NCC 3000 series ship, and maybe a new generation of shipyard would build a bigger number. Say the shipyards big and advanced enough to build Galaxy, Sovereign, or Odyssey class ships put out five digit NCC numbers.
CVN stands for CV= Carrier, N= Nuclear. 78 stands for the 78th carrier built for the US Navy.
Hope that helps.
I had no clue that’s what the number means. Thanks!
The abbreviation "CV" came from Cruiser aViation apparently.
@@caktitaqiwicaksana6018 And CA was already used for seaplane tenders "Cruiser, Aviation", so for ships carrying wheeled aircraft they just used the next letter "Cruiser, aViation"...
I personally have gone with for the 23rd century the Constitution class was the 17th major class constructed. The 24th century has the numbers in some random pattern to make the fleet appear larger to hide the true numbers and make a potential enemy second guess attacking an Oberth if she potentially has 75,000 bigger sisters to protect her.
6:10 -- "all seventeen-something" -- Well, except for the USS Constellation, NCC-1017, destroyed in the episode "Doomsday Weapon", which had that number because of the limitation in what Desilu had to work with -- an AMT USS Enterprise model, and they only had '0117' as available numbers from the decal sheet for the hull number.
which if they just did 1710 issue soilved
@@Revkor I believe that they wanted to convey the Constellation as being a noticeably older vessel than the Enterprise, but still being Constitution class. Which sort of tosses the hull-numbering into a cocked hat, given that the class ship, the Constitution, was NCC-1700.
@@seanmalloy7249 Has it ever been proven or stated that the first ship of a class is named after the class?
@XennialTV In the US Navy (and I think others), it's actually the opposite - the class is named after the first ship of the class. The whole class thing is shorthand for "similar to ship X". Ex The Enterprise-E is a Sovereign like ship.
Before ships were made factory-wise it made a bit more sense as ships weren't really identical and navies ordered them like "I want 5 80 gun three deck ships that have a long range" rather than "here are some blueprints, I want 5".
The funny thing is that while he was saying all Constellation class ships were 17 something, he was zooming in on a Constellation class ship whose number was 1672.
I agree with the registry numbers no making sense... BUT "naval construction contract" was never in-continuity. It was used in a Star Trek game, iirc.
@@DarinRWagner so do we have any idea what that means?
@@venomgeekmedia9886 No... presumably it has something to do with the ship being a "starship." I've surmised that the "CC" part of "NCC" could signify that the vessel is capable of traveling at multiples of the speed of light... since "C" is the speed of light in some formulas (most notably E=MC squared). But that's just Darin's conjectural head canon.
@@DarinRWagner@venomgeekmedia9886 yes I always presumed it was more for the engine type used in the vessels as there are ships in the federation that don't have NCC numbers, such as the Fortunate which was ECS-2031or the SS Xhosa doesn't have an NCC number.
It always occured to me that writing out the letters NCC was technically redendant, since they're *all* NCC outside of a few experimentals.
I wonder if it's a tradition that started after some intern took things too literally. Like, I told you to write my name on a cake, and they wrote "My Name" on the cake sort of thing.
Certain ship name's have a permanent N.C.C number followed by a letter attached to them in Star Trek for example: Enterprise 1701 then followed by A, B, C, D, E, F, so on and so forth.
I was four years in the German Navy and always believed CVN stands for Carrier Vessel Nuclear, but just looked it up and apparently the 'c' stands for Cruiser. Fascinating!
It's complicated. CV isn't an acronym, to be clear, but rather a designation, going back to the 1920s. The original idea was that the 'baseline' of some type of ship would be a single letter repeated. So, a DD is a Destroyer, a BB is a battleship, and yes, a CC would be a cruiser (specifically, a battlecruiser, with light and heavy cruisers being CL and CA respectively). CV is thus, yes, indicating that carriers were seen as part of the general cruiser family of the time (which also makes sense given the intended role of carriers was essentially purely scouting for the fleet at this point), but the C doesn't per se stand for cruiser either.
As I understand it, CV originally stood for Cruiser, Voler (Voler being the French word for aviation), hence, essentially, Aviation Cruiser. The N denotes Nuclear power.
The "C" is interchangeable between Cruiser and Carrier, it depends on the hull purpose and rest of the designator. The "V" in CVN in the US Navy stands for "heavier than air craft." The current breakdown would be that CVN breaks down to Carrier, Heavier-than-air craft, Nuclear-powered. The conventionally powered supercarriers (Forrestal and Kitty Hawk classes) at the time of their decommissioning were CV. Prior to that they had CVA and CVS designations, the A and S representing attack and submarine warfare respectively.
My dad was on Kittyhawk, and taught me that it was Carrier as well. Another commenter noted the first Carriers were modified Cruisers
@@lynngreen7978 I was part of the last full crew of CV-63 before I came back to the states in 2008. And yes, historically aircraft carriers started out as conversions, mostly from cruiser hulls. Thank you Washington and London Naval Treaties. But as purpose designed aircraft carriers became a thing, the "C" to begin the designation still made sense, so it stuck.
If I was going to make up a space fleet I'd do it like this: Ship name here, then SRN ##-##-#####. The first number would indicate what order it had been constructed in its class. The second would indicate the shipyards where it had been built. Then the last would be the actual reference number to find the ship in the database and find basic information about it; it's class, it's mission, it's projected flight plan, etc. As I understand it "star date" doesn't really mean anything either. They just made it sound futuristic for the show. The audience ends up putting more thought into it than the writers did, though sometimes that's a good thing.
Also Happy New Year! Listening to this was entertaining.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I seem to remember the old Franz Joseph Star Trek Technical Manual saying somewhere that NCC stood for Naval Construction Contract. I dunno.
You aren't misremembering. I was going to say the same thing.
I was thinking this too!
Well, he says that in 1:53
@@GlenDevan1970 Holy Smokes, I missed that, thanks for the info! 👍
CVN refers to three separate parts of the design scheme for the US Navy. C refers to the hull shape being a "Cruiser" or Fast (28+ Knot) ship. The V (V was selected because it looked like the bottom end of a downward pointing arrow) refers to the air group being "Heavier Than Air". The early days of the sea power debate saw the air plane as a poor option compared to lighter than air blimps. So, a surface sea tending ship had to be the "At sea base" for these aircraft. And. the easy one is a capital N refers to nuclear powered. The first use of the letter (n) in parentheses was a suffix to indicate that the ship was capable of night action / fighting.
As the war continued, and night action was a requirement the (n) suffix was eventually dropped, and all the fleet carries were listed as CV (fleet) or CVE (escort). Other letters were added in the late 40's to early 60's to differentiate sub-categories; but after CVN-65 Enterprise was launched, even these were dropped and the modern system we use today was created.
Part of the 24th centuries registry woes could be attributed to small craft like Runabouts having registry numbers, causing them to balloon upwards very rapidly. The numbers jumping around with classes can be partly explained with some ships being mothballed and then recommissioned later with new numbers.
Leaving aside the issues the 90s show had with maintaining continuity around the numbers, it makes sense to me - the contract number may be sequential or near sequential, it may not, but it's ultimately a reference to the unique number on the form used to order the ship. Prestige numbers being the exception, retaining the namesake number with a -X letter suffix (and presumably an original construction NCC number being mapped somewhere in history)
Now, an order for a ship may come from the same office as a batch, and get sequential or near sequential numbers. Or they may come from different offices which were given batches of allocated order numbers in different ranges, and so they seem all over the place. So like one facility may have 400 numbers ready to go because they make a lot of ship orders, another might have a dozen, another might have a hundred. These wouldn't be *used* sequentially overall, but you'd get clusters of them being used in proximity. But it allows you to trace the original contract, if you're Starfleet, and from there find the history of the vessel (including things like command codes if authorized and other data to validate the ship before you is the one it claims).
They would, to civilians, look basically like vehicular number plates (and indeed such plates are often allocated similarly to how I described above)
As nice as internal consistency with hull classification symbols would be, that's asking a lot for a tv show created during a time where realism and internal consistency weren't things. There's no consistency between classes either, names like cruiser and battlecruiser and the generic "starship" are just thrown out and I'm sure the writers had no idea what these designations mean. Its all about what sounds cool. Fans and later content like Starfleet Battles have tried to make sense of this mishmash, but I wish anyone good luck with that because its all trying to create order out of chaos. If Star Trek were created today in the Babylon 5 or Space: Above and Beyond mold it would have more of the consistency you'd like.
When my friend wrote her science fiction universe, she addressed this. D.S.E.V. Meant: Deep Space Exploration Vessel. The number after would mean which number it was built. For example: D.S.E.V. 01 meaning it was the first ship built. Deep Space Exploration Vessel 01, or 02, 03 and so on. Most ships don't have an actual name, just their designation and number built. Only ships on unattached use would be given names. Such as the D.S.E.V. James Cook, which would not be using a construction number as it's more of a personal use ship, not part of an organization. The ships aren't given a class, they're just designated for their use although they could look different. D.S.C.T. would be: Deep Space Colonial Transport. Or: A.C.V. would be Active Combat Vessel which means a ship of war that's actively engaging in military use. D.T.V. would be Diplomatic Transport Vessel which is what political figures would travel on.
The thing is, such a number also exist. I recall one of the newer books differentiating between 3 different numbers:
-The NCC-number, which basically just is there to give a hull a unique number (can be reshuffled, like when a ship distinguishes itself, name and number get reused but with a letter-suffix)
-The S/N-number, which is what you could call a serial number that gives all the vital data (class, type, model, running number within its class); but only used in official documents because Star Trek computers are smart enough to add these things on their own.
-The Prefix-code, which is the backdoor that Kirk & Spock used to hack into the Reliant.
All three numbers are different, no number from one ship reappears in the other number of that ship. I.e. the 1701 would ONLY be the NCC, but not appear in the S/N-# or the Prefix-code.
Again, I don't remember where I read that, it was not an old 60s or FASA book, it had the Nova and Akira depicted in it as schematics.
Honestly messy model number and registry number systems are pretty true to reality, with most model and production numbers being a combination of production line and prototype numbering from the manufacture . Also numbering and naming systems change over the course of time, with older model and registry numbers being grandfathered in often times. I'm not saying you don't have a point, but real military's also have the same issues.
M1 comes to mind during the inter war era.
They kind of line up in Star Trek Picard because they had a lot of the people from the older shows working on things like that. Interestingly the Excelsior 2 class ships have registries in the 42XXX range which should have been used decades ago. My head cannon is that they sometime skip large blocks on numbers and then go back to them later.
It'd make sense that they reserve blocks incase they are needed to churn out stuff in a hurry. Actually that would add up with them being Excelsior 2s. "We need a lot of ships in a hurry, activate the 42x range and use the Excelsior 2 design we've got lying around"
Is a good rant and it needs to be discussed. It's not discussed enough. Thank you for speaking out about it. I mean that. Sincerely, been watching your stuff for like 4 years now you rock
In my Timeline NCC numbers are very very strict to how they're applied. For some classes like Federation, Shangri-La, or Hornet/Wasp for 23rd century, you'd have NCC-2500, NCC-2100, etc. I also have many numbers from Canon changed like the Excelsior II, Edison, and Sagan classes. The In-universe explanation is Starfleet wanted to begin mass production by the 2310s and skip blocks because others might use varying prefixes like NAR, NCIA, NI, or something else. For 24th century ships it is relatively simple, first 2 numbers are the year, and last 3 are the hull number for that year. For 25th century ships and going past the 31st century beginning in 2400 you'd have the added 6 digit which marks the 1st century using 6 digit registries. I really don't care a darn for what Star Trek has to say about registries and On-screen confirmation because then different writers, producers just screw it up. That's my way of doing it.
What is that Starship lineage thing at 11:22?
with regards to the prefix "NCC", if you instead interpret it as meaning "Naval Contract Commission", this means that the number that follows is simply one automatically allocated as being "available" in the naval registry. In a similar vein, civilian ships that have been surplused/struck from the starfleet registry, for example the USS Raven (NAR- 32450) are allocated the NAR prefix, possibly meaning "Naval Auxilliary Register" or "Naval Authority Register", identifying these ships as being registered within the UFP, but not affiliated with the Federation starfleet.
I always ignore NCC numbers when I do my Terran Empire ship textures. I only use the Name and made it as big as the Starfleet numbers.
Serial numbers can also indicate which yard it was built in
I can think of a way to like "fix this"
The system would look like this: NCC-1701 / [Quadrant][Shipyard][Role][Command Number][Fleet Number],
giving info on where a ship was built, its role, and its fleet assignment.
So quadrant it was built (or currently assigned), so Alpha Quadrant (A) Beta Quadrant (B) Gamma Quadrant (G) Delta Quadrant (D)
Place of it being built, Utopia Planitia (U) Andor Shipyards (A) Tellar Shipyards (T) Byzantium Shipyards (Y), Outside Federation, or built and controlled by member worlds (S) Vulcan for example
Battleships (B), Dreadnoughts (D), Light Battlecruisers (L), Escorts (E), Science Ships (S), Medical Ships (M), Special Operations (X) eg section 31.
For fleet number could be changeable so the sector its meant to be in, or what part of the fleet its in, special assignment.
For example, the Enterprise could be NCC-1701 / AUB-L-01-xxxxx. this tells it was built in the Alpha Quadrant at Utopia Planitia, classified as a battleship, and assigned as flag ship.
For the defiant it would be, NCC-74205 / AUE-L-05-xxxxx. For the Excalibur Federation Dreadnought NCC-72001 / BTD-01-xxxxx.
I bet the federation would have some strange names so they can avoid calling there ships war sounding names like Battleship, or Dreadnought.
And you could also call the NCC-xxxx a hold over from United Earth where the number of the ship is the only thing that mattered due to the small size of the fleet. And it was later reformed. maybe you could say it was always the case but they never printed it on the hull, maybe the NCC number is just symbolic, another name for the ship.
Thats the head cannon im going with for now, NCC means close to nothing anyone due to the size of starfleet, and they have just got another digital system that can identity ships with things like transponders or communications.
The factory dockyards could also have a numbered designation. So, ah, nevermind.
One thing that did happen with the USN in the transition to the missile age was the separation of numbering schemes for new missile ships from the numbering series of the preceding gun ships. By the 1950s hull numbers for destroyers had reached into the 900s and well over 100 for cruisers (granted these numbers were bloated by cancelled contracts the hull numbers of which would not be recycled). Likely because of this, the first missile conversions of older hulls started back at 1 with the conversion of heavy cruisers Boston and Canberra going from CA-69 and CA-70 to CAG-1 and CAG-2 as an example of this. Maybe Starfleet could benefit from a resetting of the numbering scheme along these lines in the early 25th century.
I do think its just a straight serial number, which, presumably has the details of the ship in a database. One good thing about it, is it reinforces the idea that Starfleet is in fact, massive.
According to the old Franz Joseph ST book from the early or mid 70s, NCC means Naval Contract Commission. Every class of ship, whether cruisers, destroyers, tugs, whatever, had a unique series # for that class. Enterprise was a Constitution -class heavy cruiser, all vessels of its class had a series 17xx identifier. Defiant, from the Tholian episode, was NCC-1764. According to some lore I remember reading a loooooong time ago, Enterprise, under Kirk, was the only one of twelve CA's to survive the full five year mission. In recognition, StarFleet declared her registry would NOT be retired when the ship would eventually be scrapped. But rather a new class vessel would be given the same name and registry, continuing the honors. Hence, 1701- bloody A B C and D. StarFleet also designated Enterprise as fleet flagship.
As far as carriers, there are really good articles on Wikipedia about naval vessel designations, but here goes. Once armored warship hulls became the next big thing after the Civil War, navies need new ways of identifying ship classes. Designation AC meant armored cruiser. We that worked for all of about five minutes when different size cruisers were introduced for different duties. Eventually, CA meant heavy cruiser, CL meant light, BC meant battle cruiser an in between heavy cruiser and battleship. Well, when airplanes got thrown in the mix in the 1920s, new designations were needed. CV meant Cruiser, aViation. CVA meant heavy carrier, CVL was light carrier, CVE was escort carrier. Then the Americans had to screw it all up again by putting nuclear reactors in their ships. Hence, CVN. There are almost certainly a lot of pedants with tree trunks up their butts who will take issue with my explanation. Two things; first, this a very quick, basic explanation. Second, PPPPHHHHTTTTHHHH !! To everyone, if want more info, start at Wikipedia.
In typical fashion, these numbers are not given to the name of the ship but when a ship class is authorized by Starfleet. They are assigned numbers for instance the Essex class carriers start at CV-9 and end in the 20s for the first section of ships. The CVL-23 was given to the Independence-class up to 44, and then you get the second batch of Essex, then a further couple of Independences, and finally we get a couple for the Saipan class up to the Present day these numbers are given to the ships with CVN=69 being of the Gerald R. Ford class and CVN-71 I think being the Enterprise. Hence Naval Construction Contract #1701 is the Constitution Class Enterprise, #1650 is the Ares, and #2000 is the Excelisor. These numbers in Star Trek follow this model. When a number is reused using the Enterprise of NCC-1701-C it's the Ambassador Class ship they are building. Therefore it messes everything up. Not that Starfleet has 60,000 vessels if you look at Voyager's registry number. It's the number the construction yard was given for a class of ships. The UK uses a similar system with its construction yards as well. Hence why the cruiser Belfast had to modify its name because of the Type 26 frigate that will be known as the Belfast. In the 21st century, it's used as a registration code. Or you'd have Scotty going nuts in the holodeck, trying to figure out what his ship was.
So, following naval ship codes, starship registries ought to work out something like this:
BB-1701-D USS Enterprise, Galaxy-class battleship
CA-1701-E USS Enterprise, Sovereign-class heavy command battlecruiser
CL-74656 USS Voyager, Intrepid-class light cruiser
CB-63549 USS Thunderchild, Akira-class fast attack cruiser
It's obviously not a direct one to one parallel, since they're not boats in the ocean, but I got it as close as I could.
My assumption was that they were sequential numbers for when the ship was ordered in the TOS era, by the time we’re in the TNG era, it’s been overhauled to be more useful. My rationalisation is that they’re now used to identify the batch the ship came from within its own class. The first 2 numbers are the ships class ID number, the middle shows its batch, and the last are its production number so you can identify when it was built in the construction run compared to others of its type. Take the USS Phoenix 65420, nebula would be the 65th class of ship in service, it was built in the 4 production run, and it was the 20th ship in that run. A nebula built at the start of the run would be completely different to a nebula down the line so it would help identify in class tech differences, like how a chinook made today is basically a different type of rotorcraft to the ones built 60 years ago.
Does this work? Absolutely not, confirmed ships which are first of their class like Ambassador and Galaxy tear this apart with registrations like 70637. It would also lead to ships with duplicate NCC numbers, although rare. It’s just the most logical explanation I can think of if I was put in charge of overhauling the registration system.
I am an Old School Trekker and wholeheartedly embrace the classic definition of the acronym N.C.C. being Naval Construction Contract.
It has always been my belief that the number DOES NOT reflect how many hulls of that class exist (as is done with U.S. Navy ships) but literally the Contract # for the construction of that vessel.
Thus, any illogic in numbering is a fault of the contracting process rather than errors/anomolies with ship registry numbers being sequential.
What absolutely baffles me is that in Star Trek Discovery's final season they have the NCC registry remaining current in the 32nd century... that would be analogous to a historic navy maintaining consistency from the 1100s until now.
in terms of numbers, the way I headcannon the classifications is that it is actually the final digits which suggest rating of a vessel, all ships of a certain rate get a particular range of number (flag-ships being 01 plus letter, others having various lower numeral groups)... of the first two or three numbers, they generally denote a class, but a sub-class might have either a neighboring number or a related number - say an improved 7class will become a 17class or the 14 class might have modifications of the 142class and the 145class...
within the service ships there is a slight modification with three numbers for the role of the ship as a rating.
thus, the role of the California class seems to be denoted by a designation of the something-zero-something final numbers for more second-contact oriented ships, 500 somethings for the more maintenance oriented ships and 0-something for the scientific support vessels, the last designation seems to appear in some Oberths too. it also seems the last numbers of many cargo vessels is either a 000 or a 00something
seems also that in the earlier stages of exploration, before a large fleet with set classification rankings was a thing they used 3digit codes which denoted production class and a two digit personal number for each ship
You fire your head cannon at the classifications? Does that give you a headache? Does it do much damage? Do you fire cannon balls or shells?
My head canon is that you head cannon is cast in bronze and fires grapeshot. Can you tell me if it’s correct?
Forgive me. My flock of snarks got loose.
As far as I know it's more or less NCC armada-fleet-battle group-flagship position on the hull. The actual iff ping sends out the full NCC-AFBgFp as well as production number whether or not it's merely using an older registered identification name and lastly a unique code to the vessel at the start of communications at the discretion of the coms officer and the captain.
CVN as i understand it is Fleet Carrier Nuclear in us parlance hence why prior to the unclear powerplants the numbers would be CV to use CV-06 as an example
Well, CV just meant an aircraft carrier in general. That said, in practice it did mean a fleet carrier, because smaller varietals ended up getting called CVL or CVE (light carrier or escort carrier, respectively).
"Carrier Voplane Nuclear." "CVN" however is not to be taken as an acronym or as initials, but rather a SYMBOL. That's what they taught us in the US Navy, anyway.
CV stood for Carrier of Vehicles if I recall correctly. They slapped the N on for nuclear powered carriers, but did not start over the numbers
@@rjthom5 It did not. CV was never an abbreviation or an acronym. It was simply a designation, in the same way that DD is just a designation for Destroyer or BB is for Battleship. The way the system worked is that the 'baseline' version of a given type of ship would be designated with the same letter repeated, and the second letter would indicate variation. So, from DD, we get DE and DL. From BB we also get BM (monitors). CV indicates that a ship is in the Cruiser family (hence the C, see also CA, CL, CG, CLAA, etc), and carries heavier-than-air craft as the primary function (hence the V, see also AV [auxiliary aircraft tender]).
@@thomaszinser8714 Ah, good to know. Thanks for the correction
CVN means "Carrier Vehicle, Nuclear". for example, the WW2 era enterprise was CV-6 (oil/diesel powerplant), its replacement launched in 1961 was CVN-65, the first vessel of its type to be powered by a nuclear reactor. Its upcoming new replacement due to launch in 2028 will be CVN-80.
CV = Cruiser Volare (cruiser that carries heavier than air aircraft)
I do remember that the Starfleet command games actually did use the modern classifications for ships with thr first two games diving into sub variants of the main designations (i.e CA for the main constitution refits but then having CAR as an additional refit class for the connie) Honestly it was even more confusing as the Connie seem to have heavy & light variants with many random sub variants to the variants.
This was somewhat fixed in number 3 where they did away with the sub variants and just stuck with the main designations (FF, DD, CL, CA, BC, BB and DN)
A big problem with Star Trek is how it bends over backwards to justify things done in the original series that were done for no real reason at all other than reflecting things people would recognize and because it seemed right at the time. Lazy writers went along with it without question and those who tried to bring common sense were destroyed by the Star Trek zealot puritans who abhor change.
Ship design is one of the biggest victims of this.
These numbers are like free lunch for enemy intelligence, just removing any ambiguity about ship location and numbers for no good reason.
One thing I've been doing is basically see what the prototype ship is identified with, keep my own ship close to the number or within the range of ship classes, and vomit a number that sounds cool. It may not make sense but I kinda like to keep certain numbers within certain eras. Like I don't expect an NCC-9 billion in the ENT era so keeping around 1000 or below makes more sense to me.
For the record, "CV" in the US navy originally referred to a variation of a cruiser hull given that most aircraft carriers were built off a "cruiser hull". Later, after WWII CV came to refer to "aircraft carrier". There is no official "super carrier" desigation as far as I know. CV(N) origionally referd to the USS Enterprise capiablity of night opperations. Now it refers to aircraft carriers that are nuclear powered.
One thing you might not have considered is different eras have different ways of doing things with regards to NCC numbers. The IS navy has its standard DDG numbers for their destroyers, with the last to be DDG 142 before the new DDGX class is built, then USS Zumwalt-class is DDG-1000
I think the numbers (at least when it comes to ST Picard, Sovereign, & Ambassador classes) are done in the same way modern day US railroads number their locomotives. It's routine for the RR's to group the same class of locomotives in a concurrent number scheme. When a locomotive goes in for a rebuild some 15 to 20 years later they are often re-numbered to a different number. Theres usually a block of numbers that are reserved for all locomotives that are rebuilt to the new standards and those numbers are usually concurrent with one another.
Not even for a rebuild, the Great Western Railway renumbered the entire 48xx class to make room for a few experimental rebuilds of 28xx’s that went nowhere
New Year... Old rant?! I've see. And heard this rant many times... For me, the numbers are only in my head
I play a Star Trek rpg where each ship class has a registry range. So you can keep track of what class a ship is by the NCC Number
Maybe Star Fleet use fleet yards other than the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards to construct some of their ships, and different yards use different NCC numbers.
It makes perfect sense from an intelligence perspective.
During WWI The Germans used sequential serial numbers for vehicle (tank) hulls, engines, gearboxes, etc.
When the Allies captured/destroyed those vehicles they kept track of those serial numbers and through statistical analysis could figure out how many vehicles the Germans had, and how many they produced per month.
By using a seemingly random numbering system factions who are adversary towards the Federation can't work out how many ships UFP has. :D
I'm not sure I saw the episode shown at at 8:35!
I've never given much thought to the NCC numbers in Star Trek. I know the Enterprises number but I could not tell you the NCC number of Voyager to save my life.
I would honestly suggest that that, for the 5 digit numbers, the first 2 numbers are the year of construction. The last three are sequence number.
"N" is the national prefix for the Federation. The Romulans and the Klingons using "NCC" contact codes would be the sci-fi equivalent of using a false flag. "CC" designates a ship as an active commissioned starship of the Federation Starfleet. "X" is for a test ship (class leaders that use NX are usually but not always redesignated NCC when their class is commissioned).
CV means Cruiser Voler. Allegedly, the Voler was taken from French and means "Fly". The N means Nuclear Powered. So a CVN is a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. CG is a Guided Missile Armed Cruiser while CGN is a Nuclear Powered Guided Missile Cruiser. BB is a Battleship. CC is a Large Cruiser or Battlecruiser. DD is a Destroyer. DDG is a Guided Missile Destroyer. FF is a Frigate. FFG is a Guided Missile Frigate.
I honestly assumed the Federation did what railways did, namely some mess of a system done arbitrarily and only following consistency in batches (for instance NCC-1700-1711), with some other system to denote everything else.
If NCC stands for Naval Construction Contract at the bare minimum there has to be a database where these numbers can be used to access the contract and information of construction for the ship
the NCC registry as Gene Rodenbery said in an interview he made the registry what it is after seeing the registry numbers and letters of planes and suggested see this plane starting with NC what if we just add another C make it NCC
Indeed.
Actually it came from Matt Jefferies, the man who designed the enterprise, he was a pilot and wanted to give the ship an "N number" I.D. like American civil aircraft have but added "CC" to it.
CVN stands for Carrier (Nuclear). CV is an identifier for carriers in general, the N is a suffix to indicate a nuclear-powered ship (see also nuclear submarines being called SSN and the handful of nuke cruisers being CGN). That said, I think you're somewhat universalizing based off of modern US and USN practice, historically, a lot of ships have essentially been assigned arbitrary numbers, or given numbers purely in sequence.
Someone above explained that it actually started as “Cruiser”, not “Carrier”. Carriers were originally considered “cruisers” because cruisers in general were mostly used as a screening/scouting tool (like cavalry) and carriers were cruisers with planes acting as forward scouts. They didn’t use carriers as the main element of a battle group back then as they do now. It was just another type of cruiser for the Navy at the time.
Of course that might have changed since then and it might now be “carrier”. 🤷🏻♀️
@@keirfarnum6811 You're absolutely right, and I actually point that out in other places, I was just oversimplifying because getting into the entire history of how US ship designations evolved and got to what we have nowadays is, well, a bit of a complex mess, to say the least, and CV being the designation for a ship designed specifically to carry heavier-than-air vehicles is just the simpler way to explain it all.
In my mind, that NCC designation is to refer to starfleet, I imagine in a large database of federation associated starships, they have several different organizations of ships they have to keep track of , espa, Vulcan science academy, ect. I imagine it was more practical in the early federation when member species still had well funded personal space organizations, as for the numbers meaning something, I don’t see that as necessary seeing as it would be a code you read through a database, and then you’d get all the info you need, I don’t know why you’d use the serial code for that sort of identification and we certainly never see anyone in the show referencing the serial as anything other than a registry number.
One thing of note is Navy Ships do not have an IMO Number like civilian ships so they are only designated by name and hull number / vessel type for example U.S.S. The Sullivans (DDG-67).
i just like giving my ships in STO fun registry numbers to look at.
I made a federation type faction for some rp.
Ships registry numbers follow a simple rule: Type-Class number-unit number.
The flagship for example has the number SD-24-01.
SD is the type, its the 24th ship class of that type and the first of its class.....
I always knew it as “Naval Construction Code” and the USS being “United Space Ship”
The part of the registry numbers that irritates me the most is the complete lack of consistency. The writers almost never bothered to see if the name had been used previously. Like why and the hell is the number on DS9 Defiant different than TOS Defiant, if the ship was the 2nd Starfleet vessel to use the name, then it should have been NCC-1764-A not NX-74205, or NCC-75633. That is not even getting into the issues with the lack of class numbering consistency, I'm looking at you USS Constellation NCC-1017.
But your argument is sound, the NCC-(Insert Number here) should be the ship's CONTRACT number, not its designation. For example, I will use what shipyards use IRL, this ship's hull number is "NCC-1703" She is commissioned as the USS Hood and is given the official designation CA-04. CA stands for a US heavy cruiser, and 04 means that she is the 4th heavy cruiser ever built.
(Additionally, you could change CA to CGA (guided missile heavy cruiser) or something else that would better represent the role of the given ship)
At this point though, the NCC is so well engrained you could never get rid of it. Also, as a discrepancy for ships in a class having a either very high number or low number compared to the class leader I can use an example that the USN faced after the cancellation of the Ohio class SSBNs.
Okay so the US Navy wanted 24 Ohio class SSBNs so they ordered all 24 of them. Later, the USN canceled the last 6 (19-24). Because the USN ordered the hulls, those hulls were given hull registration numbers, (example: SSBN-746) This could explain why you see a large jump in hull numbers from other ships in any given class.
Another addition to this is that Starfleet could be retroactively going back through its "Missing Registry Numbers" and assigning them to newly ordered ships to "fill in the gaps" in the history of the ship registry. Or maybe I'm a Naval Architect student getting too excited about a TV show written by folks in Hollywood.
Edit: We could also take the EXACT definition of what NCC is probably used as, aka: Hull Number, and explain away any discrepancy as, "Oh that ship was ordered or stated construction after the original batch and that's why is hull number is so much higher"
I'm glad in real life we don't have these problems.
*puts on his M1, shoulders his M1, and gets in his M1 to cruise down the M1*
I just looked it up on Google carrier Nuclear V is the designation of Us navy in marinecore squadrons heavier-than-air aircraft..
So, thinking outside the box:
Makes sense that’s is a serial number, tracking internally for the Federation. They can choose to re used the number on a name of a ship or in the rare instances like the enterprise, re- assign the same code with the a prefex, the idea might be more moral/psychological been able to identify hero ships quicker.
On the side of quick identification, in theory, having a universal naming system, makes things easy to memorise, as it’s rhythmic, so if you have a short snappy system with a consistent prefex, your “could” indentfy a ship quicker off a set pattern and number?
Another theory but practical and would make sense. Not having prefex tailored to class types and roles means an enemy would have to do more intel on each ship, making it harder to choose targets. So the USS test ship NCC 23745 nebula class ecm ship, is not the USS test Ship NCC 24789 Oberth class science vessel. It can lead to miss identification on the enemy part. Typing this makes it harder to explain my point! Sorry!
They were taken from the US airplane registration system which stats with N
The numbers are hard to track because starships can inherent their numbers based on lineage. NCC-1701 belonged to a constitution class, an Ambassador class , a Galaxy class, a Sovereign class, etc. So numbers carry over classes, making them difficult to track.
For the custom scifi universe I've been working on I have done Designation systems like this.
S.S.V - 00000 N.C.C. - 00000 - S.M.S.V. - 00
S.S.V (Systems Starfleet Vessel)
N.C.C. (Number Construction Commission Series)
S.M.S.V. - 00( Systems Military Starfleet Vessel Ship class number Design)
(VCN- 00 Number of vessels constructed in class )
I have an idea to explain the coding. My theory is that it actually is a code. That gives more information of the ship.
NCC-(17)(01)
The first 2 numbers represent the actual construction District or area, For instance, federation ships built on and around Earth would have a 01 Representing Earth is the first construction location.
17 representing Jupiter station. And as time goes on through history, more construction sites are constructed. But once a certain number cap is reached, the construction site is then decommissioned. Or a code is reset 17 becomes 24 Giving more information to the Actual timeline, the ship was built.
The final numbers represent construction contract number, Or the order the ship Started construction.
I have bad news for you... in the American navy, which is a template for Star Trek since Rodenberry and several other creators had served in the navy in World War II; sequentially numbers ships by type based on approval for construction. That means numerous CVN and SSN numbers are never applied to a ship because ships approved for construction can be cancelled before construction begins. Hence ships assigned CV 35, CV 44, CV 46, CV 50-58 were all cancelled and not reused.
While the NCC is sort of useless since all Starfleet ships have them, the number represents the order in which construction was approved. Therefore the problem isn't the 5 digit numbers in the TNG era, it's that the Excelsior was only numbered 2000.
Love ya, Venom Geek! Great rant! ❤
what other method could there be to get a navy other than a construction contract? perhaps an alien culture where the people build ships and give them to the navy without any previous contract or list of needs or wants? or just finding other peoples ships? you mentioned "all these ships were built under contract for the navy, probably" what other option could there be?
CVN= Aircraft Carrier, Nuke
Fun vid. I just assumed that NCC-1701 was for Naval Command Cruiser. Just as (I'm assuming) NX-2000 on the Excelsior prototype was for Naval eXperiment. 🤷🏼♂️
NCC was based on US civil aircraft regulations which at the time started with NC, NR, or NX N being the code for the United States (standing for Navy, but that's a whole other very long story), and the second letter standing for Commercial, Restricted, or eXperimental. Matt Jeffries who was a private pilot based the Starfleet registry on the US civil aircraft registry, and added another "C" just to make it cooler. Naval codes would make more sense, but that's not what he did.
Treat the NCC #'s like a license plate scheme for internal StarFleet use only. It has no bearing on ship quality/type/features/role. NCC-#'s can be reused when one vessel retires & a new ship takes it.
Your point about NCC numbers actually makes things better. The naval commission number is pretty much a barcode. Who pays attention to them?
I always assumed the NCC numbers were nothing more than a bar-code, a UUID number of sorts. Just keeping it relatively short and purely numerical to fit on the hull and possibly be easily remembered by the crew. And being for starships, there isn't a need to have each identifier be more than 3-6 digits long, since it's not like there'll be millions of them built any time soon.
The only purpose of the NCC numbers would then be record keeping. The number gets attached to any crew logs, mission materials, or equipment for the sake of the log books, but also for the sake of asset recovery. How many times do we see a destroyed ship that another ship is coming across, or even just bits of cargo or equipment that the crew is able to identify as having come from a specific ship?
In a world where your sensors detect a vessel long before you could possibly get a visual, having identifying registries as anything other than a unique identifier is either pointless or redundant. As soon as a friendly ship pings another ship they are either given a data packet describing the ship with information such as name and class, or their own computer database would provide that information as soon as the registry is determined. No ensign has to be able to stand on the hull of the ship, look out at another ship, and be able to tell the class and mission profile based on the registry.
Are Star Trek starship registry prefixs nonsensical? Yes.
Am I still going to at least partially try to make sense of them anyway (to the vexation of my sanity)? Also yes.
A neat continuity rant video for this new year of 2025.
Now just wait until you recall about the prefixes NX, NAR, and NCV. Among others.
The only thing that makes sense for me would be the NCC designation was to appeal to member nations in the UFP. Also looks more militant for production.
Makes more sense if NCC stands for Navigation Control Code. Make a non starfleet agency responsible for giving all ships codes. Government agencies like to do this kind of mess.
I assumed it was for the engine type and in my head canon stood for Naval Cochrane Class
Good topic keep up good work.
makes sense to me . . . back in 1949 the N (which is still used today) for American aircraft registers as most if not all US aircraft have a tail number that starts with N (or November if there are Aviators here) the 1st C would indicate a Civilian craft (before the dominion wars and after the Kitimore Accords there was no real military presence in Starfleet or the United Federation of planets both thus all ships though armed for defense only are classified as Civilian Craft. the 2nd C would be for the class of ship which Starfleet after the Kitimore accords typically used Cruisers. . . the 2 primary ships between the 2 major skirmish/wars were either Exploration Cruisers or Science Cruisers (Freighters in Starfleet are also classed as cruisers but non Starfleet freighters are identified with S.S. any Experimental ship also has a unique designation of NX there's a lot of stuff Gene Rodenberry took from modern day identifiers and repurposed for the show but this is just my opinion
Happy anew Year
Yeah it’s not a detail they cared about and Let’s be honest it’s a detail I’m not going to cry over. Except that weird shit in Star Trek Beyond where they named a station like a starship. Also can wait for the earth Romulan war redone, especially since I’ve gotten into the novel enterprise series (Damn you CBS/Paramount) that and dominion politics would be interesting. Theocratic totalitarian (I know this is debated) free speech despising intergalactic British empire with manifest destiny on kracel steroids with duel clone armies.
Ncc is less confusing than USS... But is understandable given its a tv show made in America in the 60s-now.
It's less confusing in cannon than the weridly occasional use of imperial units. Which again is explained by America in the 60s-now
Civilian ships seem to have their own convoluted system the NAR number.
I like to think of them as just a serial number. As with all governments, rules, guidelines, ideas for standardization all of it changes over time and becomes a bit of a mess IRL. So why not the same thing in universe? Like you mentioned pre federation ships had culture specific designations, after formation they had to figure out a new unified naming scheme and agreed on a 4 diget non sequential numbering system. After all who needs more than 9999 ships right? Then rolls around the 10,000th ship and they're like "well shit let's just start over and give all new ships 5 didget numbers now". And in between/along side that they also allowed 4 number+1 letter designations for legacy numbers people got attached to. It's a mess for sure but feels realistic to me.
I used to hate the whole idea of 17 being type of ship and 01 being the hull number in that class. But it's grown on me. Obviously at some point in TNG it got tossed out an airlock but the scheme makes sense. Consider 1700-99 reserved for Connies, then they make the Miranda which takes off well and they crank out a bunch so as Reliant is the 64th ship of the Miranda (18) class. 19 is something we didn't see or early Constellation class ships. Excelsior gets 20.
I does seem a huge time of growth in 2320-2340 happened and so starship construction boomed and the numbers got screwed up or new stupid rules got into place. That's my head cannon right now anyway.
Come to think of it, could have designs out there where they reserved say 1900-99 but only made one or two for what ever reason totally taking out 100 hull numbers in the scheme with only a couple ships in there. Could have a whole era where numbers went fast but few ships made for production.
In my own sci-fi universes the human ships use a simple in- universe code for naval ship so in one universe the first letter indicates a space ship the next two letters indicate the ships classification in said navy and if applicable the last letter indicates the status of the ship or class and the last number indicates the number of ships of that classification built the ship will only get its number once construction is complete so the warrior has the naval number ship number sdrx 010 the s stands for space the dr indicates that warrior indicates is a dreadnaught and an experimental warship and the x stands for the warrior being a class leader and a prototype for a new ship line and she was the tenth ship to use the SDR on the ships books
C = Carrier V = fixed wing aircraft N = nuclear powered.
CVN 78 means Carrier, V is a designation for fixed wing aircraft (non helicopter), and N means it is nuclear powered.
Former US Navy sailer.