What does the NCC stand for? Inquiring minds want to know.
Naval Construction Contract
Without looking it up, I think the “CC” stands for Constellation Class…
From Wikipedia
I seem to recall an old Star Trek book of mine that said it stood for “Naval Commission Code”. I’ll have to see if I can find that when I get home from work.
It doesn’t stand for anything, just like “U.S.S. in U.S.S. Enterprise” doesn’t mean anything plausible, either. There have been a few halfhearted attempts at retconning it but it’s still just a fairly random registry number that the prop department came up with.
I agree with this - it was in David Gerrold’s “The World of Star Trek” book from the 70’s. I might even still have this paperback in my attic.
Not Competently Crewed
Nterstellar Conestoga Class
I think it was also in the Star Trek Blueprints and perhaps even in the original Star Fleet Technical Manual.
No, Kirk and Pike both referred to the United Space Ship Enterprise in the original series, (TOS: “The Cage”, “The Menagerie, Part I”, “Space Seed”, “The Gamesters of Triskelion”, “Patterns of Force”, “Assignment: Earth”, “Elaan of Troyius”) so it does stand for something, canon-wise.
Alternately, it has also been referred to as the United Star Ship Enterprise, also in-episode (The Squire of Gothos, Court Martial), although this is used less frequently. However, it is still a part of the Star Trek canon.
This is my memory as well.
Naval Construction Contract was stated in the 1975 blue prints which are not considered canon however some of the movies used the blue prints for screen grabs on various view screens.
Someone asked James Doohan this at this first Star Trek convention I ever attended, and he said, as above, that he thought he recalled it was for “Naval Construction Contract.” Probably from the same blueprints/technical manual mentioned here.
As far as unofficial, semi-canon, non-onscreen references go, I’d take that as a pretty definitive source. 
Which would make them canon, at least by Memory-Alpha standards. If it appears onscreen, it is canon, even if you have to freeze frame to see it.
As Wordman’s wiki quote states Matt Jefferies came up with the registraion but the numbers were based on his airplane a 1935 Waco Bi-plane with the number NC-177410.
BZZZZT! Wrong answer. See the periods between the letters? U.S.S. stands for United States Ship. Cite
So is this Jefferies fellow who the “Jefferies tubes” are named after?
Well current airplanes have N-xxx numbers on their tails. So I assumed it was an outgrowth of that.
Starfleet isn’t an arm of the United States government. The United States doesn’t even exist anymore in the Star Trek universe. The point is that “U.S.S.” was chosen because that’s what American audiences (and writers) were familiar with as a prefix for a ship. The fact that it doesn’t make any sense was overlooked, and only later was the nonsensical “United Space Ship” chosen to fit the abbreviation. WTF does that even mean? United Space? A spaceship united? United with what?
Starfleet is a naval/exploratory arm of a state called the United Federation of Planets (and even that detail wasn’t clear in the very beginning.) A sensible ship prefix would be something like UFP or UFPS or even SS for Starfleet Ship. The fact is nobody thought that far ahead, and attempts by dweebs to come up with some tortured retroactive canonical explanation are super lame and not even worth of LARPers.
Yep.
I found my ST: TNG Technical Manual but it didn’t say anything about the NCC acronym. Oddly enough, that was about the only acronym that wasn’t spelled out in that book.
I know I’ve got a Technical Manual from the original series somewhere but couldn’t find it. It’s probably packed away in a box somewhere in the basement. Doesn’t matter anyway, I think I’ve pretty much been overruled at this point… 
Does the Tech Manual mention NCC-1701-c’s Cetacean crew? The blueprints do. 