We’ve only got 347 years to wait for the Enterprise D!
That’s right folks, the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D launches on the 4th October in exactly 347 years time. Arguably the most famous starship in the galaxy, here are a few facts that you might not have known about the big ‘D’.
1. The U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D is a Galaxy-class ship. It has 42 decks and is the fifth Federation starship in the Star Trek universe to carry the name Enterprise (until Archer’s Enterprise came along). The Next Generation premiere episode “Encounter at Farpoint” was the first time in 20 years a new Enterprise has been show on television.
2. Andrew Probert, who was a concept artist at the time, received a patent on the Enterprise D design.
3. Size isn’t everything but to Gene Roddenberry it did matter. Originally the Enterprise D had smaller warp nacelles but Gene felt that the Galaxy class starship looked under-powered so asked for them to be a little longer.
4. The Enterprise D was capable of separating from its Stardrive section. Saucer separation had been around since Kirks Enterprise but never seen until The Next Generation Aired. At one point the Enterprise-D was designed to split into as many as 14 separate ships.
5. The ship was 463.73 m long. That’s more than the length of four football fields, and twice the size of Kirk’s Enterprise.
6. Originally The Next Generation’s Enterprise was not going to have a Chief Engineer because the engines were so advanced that nothing would ever go wrong with them. Needless to say an Engineer was added because “our warp systems are offline Captain” was much more useful to the writers.
7. There were three physical shooting models of the Enterprise D used on the show: a six-foot model, a two-foot model and a four-foot model (used for Deep Space Nine’s premiere episode Emissary). An auction by Christies sold one of the D’s hoping to fetch between $20,000 and $30,000. Instead it sold for almost $600,000.
8. If you ever needed to abandon ship the Autonomous survival and recovery vehicles (or escape pods) could sustain four occupants for 86 days.
9. The computer system on the Enterprise D was called LCARS which stands for Library Computer Access Retrieval System. It’s good to know that the crew could browse everyone’s favourite fan sites like warpedfactor and trekdating.com.
10. The Enterprise-D weighed the same as about 700,000 elephants.
11. Captain Jean-Luc Picard was the ships longest service commanding officer, with the exception of a brief command by Commander Riker and Captain Edward Jellico.
12. The Enterprise D has made appearances in multiple Trek spinoffs including Deep Space Nine, Enterprise and several movies. Collectively it’s appeared in more episodes that any other Star Trek ship including the original series.
13. The Enterprise D was designed to hold a crew of 1,014 but in an emergency could carry up to 15,000 souls. That’s a lot of people!
Did you learn anything new about the Enterprise-D? Which is your favourite starship from Star Trek?
Jonathan Bird has been a dedicated Science Fiction fan ever since he was born. Hiding under the duvet was how this geek spent his younger years so that his Nan didn’t send him to bed before the earwigs in Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn.
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