What does the U.S.S. Stand for?

navy_seal55 · Post by **navy_seal55** » 2005-07-11 07:26pm

I mean, clearly it can't still stand for United States Ship. So what does the USS in Star Trek stand for?

and for that matter, what does NCC, or NX stand for?

Batman · Post by **Batman** » 2005-07-11 07:42pm

navy_seal55 wrote:I mean, clearly it can't still stand for United States Ship. So what does the USS in Star Trek stand for?
and for that matter, what does NCC, or NX stand for?

Unless I'm very much mistaken, there ARE no canon explanations for those acronyms. IIRC, the most popular Fandom ones are
USS-UFP StarShip
NCC- Navy/Naval Construction Contract
NX-Navy/Naval Experimental.
I happen to like those, but they're non-canon as hell.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2005-07-11 07:47pm

In the series, "USS" stood for "United Space Ship". Diane Duane in her Trek novels offered up a better interpretation as "United Systems Starship", but the former is canon as it was in the scripts.

There is no canon explanation for "NCC". The Franz-Jospeh Schnaubelt blueprints for the Enterprise stated that the initials stood for "Naval Construction Contract". Other guides suggested "Navigational Contact Code".

The real basis for it was that the registry number for the Enterprise derived from the registry for Matt Jeffries private plane —NC-171. He simply added the "0" and the second "C" for aesthetic balance.

Typhonis 1 · Post by **Typhonis 1** » 2005-07-11 07:47pm

Origionally I think it meant United Star Ship

Lord Revan · Post by **Lord Revan** » 2005-07-12 12:39pm

As far as I know they mean

USS = United (earth or federation of planets) StarShip
NCC = regular federation starship
NX = Extremental fedaration starship or NX-class starship.

though it never said in canon that's implication.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2005-07-12 12:58pm

As far as I know they mean

USS = United (earth or federation of planets) StarShip
NCC = regular federation starship
NX = Extremental fedaration starship or NX-class starship.

And in the 22nd C

SS = StarShip
ECS = Earth Cargo Ship
HMS = His/Her Majesty's (Star)Ship

But these appear to be phased out by TNG.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-07-12 06:17pm

Lord Revan wrote:As far as I know they mean

USS = United (earth or federation of planets) StarShip
NCC = regular federation starship
NX = Extremental fedaration starship or NX-class starship.

though it never said in canon that's implication.

Errr. NCC is often in front of a ship's call letters, with the USS being in front of the name, usually on the same ship. I'd imagine your knowledge of what they mean is drastically wrong.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2005-07-12 09:17pm

Well, SFC 1 and 2 call 'NCC' New Command Cruiser... which doesn't make sense since we see all sorts of other ships with NCC. NCC probably refers to 'naval construction contract' as the hull number.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2005-07-12 09:56pm

I don't think the NCC definition you're referring to was intended to be the NCC prefix on the registry, but the ship type... much like BB means Battleship or DD means Destroyer.

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2005-07-12 10:51pm

Uraniun235 wrote:I don't think the NCC definition you're referring to was intended to be the NCC prefix on the registry, but the ship type... much like BB means Battleship or DD means Destroyer.

IIRC all commissioned Federation starships are NCC, even in obvious differences of class. To pick the Dominion war as a representative example the USS Enterprise was NCC-1701D, and the USS Defiant was NCC-75633. The Defiant clearly cannot be of the same class of ship as the Ent-D.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2005-07-12 11:30pm

*blink*

*sigh* No, what I meant was this...

There are ship designations like BB, DD, CA. The game Starfleet Command adopted these and also added new ones of it's own for the myriad of ship configurations you could choose from.

So, you could take two CAs and a DD; this would be referred to by most as two Constitution cruisers and an Akula destroyer.

Pretty much every variation got it's own designation. So you had CA+, which had a couple extra phasers, or DX which was some uprated destroyer... or CC, which stood for "Command Cruiser" in the game.

One of the variants of CC was NCC, which was "New Command Cruiser". This NCC designation had nothing whatsoever to do with the NCC- prefix on ship registries - so destroyers, cruisers, dreadnoughts, etc. all got NCC- prefixes on their registry number.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2005-07-13 01:04am

NCC stood for "Naval Constitution Contract," according to the original TOS blueprints.

NRS Guardian · Post by **NRS Guardian** » 2005-07-13 01:32am

I'm pretty sure I remember Kirk in TOS hailing people and saying, "this is Captain Kirk of the United Starship Enterprise".

Lord Revan · Post by **Lord Revan** » 2005-07-13 11:16am

General Zod wrote:
Lord Revan wrote:As far as I know they mean

USS = United (earth or federation of planets) StarShip
NCC = regular federation starship
NX = Extremental fedaration starship or NX-class starship.

though it never said in canon that's implication.
Errr. NCC is often in front of a ship's call letters, with the USS being in front of the name, usually on the same ship. I'd imagine your knowledge of what they mean is drastically wrong.

well no, as all non-experemental (my typos non-withstanding) federations ship have the NCC in front of their call letters and all federations ships have the USS in front of their name.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-07-13 01:31pm

Lord Revan wrote:
General Zod wrote:
Lord Revan wrote:As far as I know they mean

USS = United (earth or federation of planets) StarShip
NCC = regular federation starship
NX = Extremental fedaration starship or NX-class starship.

though it never said in canon that's implication.
Errr. NCC is often in front of a ship's call letters, with the USS being in front of the name, usually on the same ship. I'd imagine your knowledge of what they mean is drastically wrong.
well no, as all non-experemental (my typos non-withstanding) federations ship have the NCC in front of their call letters and all federations ships have the USS in front of their name.

Eh? NCC doesn't mean it's a regular federation starship at all afaik. If anything it would make sense that it's used to label the type of starship, much the same way letters are used to distinguish types of fighter jets in a modern navy or airforce.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2005-07-13 01:36pm

Eh? NCC doesn't mean it's a regular federation starship at all afaik. If anything it would make sense that it's used to label the type of starship, much the same way letters are used to distinguish types of fighter jets in a modern navy or airforce.

But NCC is on every Federation starship in active duty. From TOS onward, the only codes seen frequently are NX (prototypes), NAR (civilian) and NCC (Federation, active duty). (EDIT : this page has the full list of all the canon registry prefixes)

There is, AFAIK, no indication in the registry of the ship type.

FedRebel · Post by **FedRebel** » 2005-07-14 12:01am

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/h ... q/674.html

There is no official reason for the registry letters

My opinion as to what they might mean

NCC: Naval Command Code
NX: Naval Experimental
NAR: Naval Authorized Research
NCV: Naval Chronometric Vessel

Ofcourse that's just me.

Kurgan · Post by **Kurgan** » 2005-07-20 10:13am

IIRC in the course of TOS they used both United Space Ship and United Star Ship (or my memory could be faulty and United STAR Ship could be from the TNG era, but I know for a fact they've used United Space Ship in TOS).

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