Just what starship class IS the Enterprise, anyway?
I couldn’t find any info on Startrek.com.
BTW, I seem to remember a Voyager episode where an alien tried to abduct the crew and get them to be assimilated by the borg.
The ship had quantum slipstream drive…
the USS Dauntless, NX-01-A.
It’s not “the” Enterprise. It’s just Enterprise.
The Dauntless wasn’t an actual Federation ship. It was created by the alien to trick the Voyager crew into the Borg’s clutches. Its designation is irrelevant.
Oh, sorry, I guess I didn’t try to answer the actual question. Since Enterprise is the first of its kind, my guess is that it’s Enterprise-class. Or, it just doesn’t have a class designation.
As I understand it, ships with the designation of NX are considered “experimental” ships, just like how the Defiant from DS9 is Defiant NX-74205.
As for the classification of the ship, I think it’s something under “Exploratory Cruiser.”
Damn, don’t you people know anything? It’s an Akira. 
FYI on aircraft registry numbers N is the designation for USA and X is for experimental thus Charles Linberg’s “Spirit of St Louis” is NX-211. I suspect the NX-01 is a homage to Linberg’s plane and keeping with Trek tradition of NCC and NX which appeared on Sisko’s Defiant.
Thanks SPOOFE, great site!!!
Isn’t the ‘class’ named after the first vessel to made in that line?
So shouldn’t it be and ‘Enterprise Class’?
That’s the convention by the 24th century (and maybe even by Kirk’s time), but who knows if that convention has been developed yet? So far, Enterprise is Starfleet’s only starship, so there’s really no need to have “classes” – there’d only be one calss with one member, so why put the extra line on the form?
–Cliffy
[begin Python]
Well, then it’s not much of a fleet, then, innit?
[end Python]
Yeah, what I want to know is why they got all these Admirals already.
ahem
Strictly speaking, The Enterprise is NOT the only Starfleet ship, just the only that can break Warp 5.
Remember, some members of the crew (Like Travis Mayweather) were born on starships…
Wasn’t it shortcuts like that that got us into that whole Y2K problem?
So young, so innocent.
Starfleet has plenty of ships. It has only one starship. Any ship that can fly through space is a spaceship. But a starship is something else again. It’s a term that refers to ships that move very fast, fast enough to get from one inhabited world to another within days or even hours, not months. (Contrast this with Ensign Mayweather’s dad’s long-haul freighter.) These ships are sent out into the wide galaxy in the continuing effort to explore strange new worlds, etc., and are Earth’s first ambassadors as well as her canaries in the mineshaft. It takes a special kind of man to captain a starship, someone with both a sense of wonder and a backbone of iron. And while captaining a spaceship is no mean feat, it’s orders of magnitude less than taking a ship out into space where nothing is known except that there’s a new danger waiting every week.
The distinction, BTW, was first noted in the TOS episode The Doomsday Machine.
–Cliffy
Actually isn’t this convention used now for our own Navy? I know a lot of the conventions were derived from the US Navy so I this convention would be as well.
Why put an extra line on the form? Why not? That’s what those desk jockeys back in San Fran do!
Well, the USS Enterprise is an Enterprise-class ship, and it’s the only ship of its class. Clearly the “Name of first ship in class-class” tradition goes back to way before the Enterprise (NX-01). And, while Starfleet might not bother with a “class” of ship if they only had one ship, period, I think they definitely would want a “class” given that they have various ships, but only one Warp-5-capable starship, just as the U.S. Navy had a new class for its first (and, for some years, only) nuclear-propelled aircraft carrier.
Oh, and I keep forgetting to answer this part, what with being BLINDED BY RAGE about having answered the question first only to have everyone else still bloody answering it!
Sisko’s Defiant was a Defiant-class vessel. Additional Defiant-class vessels (including the replacement Defiant) were seen at various times in various battles with the Dominion.