Hello all!
Ric here with a video on the capabilities and mission profile of the Luna-class Starship.
The origin design was created by Sean Tourangeau for a competition to create the USS Titan
to appear in the books following Captain Riker and his crew.
The winning design was featured on the cover of the 4th book of the series, the “Sword
of Damocles” and became the Luna class moving forwards.
The Luna was only canonised however with its appearance in Lower Decks then as part of
the fleet that intercepted a Borg incursion in 2401, but is a great addition to the lore
proper and another of my favourite vessels.
The Luna class was designed to hold true to the earliest values of Starfleet, those of
exploration and scientific discovery.
Its earliest designs were penned in 2369 by the Efrosian scientist, Doctor Xin Ra-Havreii
when word of the discovery of the Bajoran Wormhole swept through the Federation.
In the early days, before the Dominion War, Starfleet was eager to capitalise on this
new access to a far flung corner of the Milky Way.
The Luna class was designed to be a vessel capable of mapping those uncharted waters,
but it would not enter service for another decade due to the circumstances around the
Gamma Quadrant and the aforementioned war.
The first of the line, the USS Luna NX-80101 was developed over the next 3 years and in
2372 the prototype was deployed for testing from Utopia Planetia.
However, there was an accident in engineering which resulted in several deaths and it served
as evidence that the design needed some more refinement.
However, off of the Borg and the Dominion threats, Starfleet shifted its design ethos
from scientific vessels such as the Oberth and refits of older designs like the Excelsior.
Instead they began to focus on the development of defensive ships and bolstering their lines.
This shelved the development of the Luna Class for the time being and with the prototype
Luna still in no fit state to enter active service, this class of ship would not be picked
up again until several years after the war’s conclusion.
In 2375, the Dominion war ended and Starfleet vowed to return to a more peaceful stance,
including resuming missions centred on exploration and replacing its lots vessels with newer
ones to fulfil its mandate.
One of these projects was the Luna class once again and development and prototyping resumed.
Faults were ironed out and the first wave of 12 new Luna vessels was ready to be launched
in 2379, fresh off the line.
The naming convention was to have them all named after the moons of the Sol System and
as mentioned, it was originally designed from the ground up to be a long-term deep-space
exploration vessels of the Gamma Quadrant and all the systems that would require.
It had state-of-the-art sensor systems and a Double refracting warp core matrix with
twin intermix chambers.
This gave it a cruising speed of warp 8, a factor higher than the Galaxy-Class and a
maximum warp of 9.975 putting it alongside the Sovereign.
It was not unheard off for Luna class vessels to be deployed on mission up to 30,000 lightyears
away from the core Federation.
It was 450 metres long, and could operate without theoretical resupply for 2 years and
refits for 4.
Its full life expectancy was counted in decades, providing technology allowed for upgrades
(to keep the class up to spec).
Additionally it had a mission pod, like the Akira or Nebula class that could be swapped
out for different roles, the primary three seemed to be an extra few science labs, a
tactical pod replete with more weapons platforms, or an advanced long range sensor system.
The last one seems the most apt for the Luna’s usual mission profile.
This is not to say that the ship was not unarmoured, Starfleet had learned a harsh lesson from
its recent wars, and although it can strip back the armaments on its vessels, especially
those termed science ships, the Luna class still packed a punch.
It had up to nine type ten and later type thirteen phaser emitters and both quantum
and photon capabilities, with two fore and one aft launcher.
On top of this, its experimental warp core design gave it a load of power to play with,
and very sturdy shielding.
Additionally, it had the recessed bridge design like the Akira, and a lower profile with the
darker colour hull.
It’s not confirmed in canon, but it does look like it was clad in ablative armour too,
based purely on its looks.
It had a crew capacity of 350 and broke with the majority of Starfleet vessels with a new
design experiment.
For generations, Starfleet seemingly operated vessels with predominantly human crews, although
this was not the actual case, even though there were a proportionality large number
of humans in Starfleet.
We only see this for the obvious IRL ease of production, but also because the vessels
on which Star Trek takes place are simply those with more human crews.
Ships like the Constitution Intrepid in 2268 and the T’Kumbra in 2375 were all-Vulcan
crews.
While this may seem a strange notion for Starfleet, there are several practical reasons behind
such crew dispersal, the chief ones being shared cultural expectations and life support
preferences.
An all Andorian Crew for example, could have life support permanently set a few degrees
lower than a comfortable human temperature, or an all Benzite crew could have their own
atmospheric composition instead of wearing breathers.
The Luna class was built to be able to accommodate all sorts of different life-support requirements
in one vessel.
The corridors featured and adaptive gravity that could locally adjust for individuals
as the passed by based on their homeworld.
More impressively, several section of the vessel were host to reinforced tunnels that
ran parallel to the corridors and were filled with water for aquatic species to navigate
a greater area of the vessels.
This allowed species such as the Xindi Aquatics to serve aboard it, alongside the sentient
Cetaceans that originally had been confined to a small area near the fore of a vessel.
In fact the crews were so diverse, that it was a point of pride for the USS Titan, that
only 15% of its roster are human.
Overall, the Luna class was indeed a science ship, it had all the facilities it needed
to reach those unexplored deep space areas and perform long-term missions out there before
returning to known space.
However, even Starfleet’s science ships are now seemingly armed to the teeth, or at
least capable of taking a pounding, with the capability to be outfitted with even heavier
armaments.
The Dominion War changed the face of the Federation, and if the Luna class was the fulfilment of
their promise to get back to exploration and science, then perhaps Starfleet was changed
far more than it thinks.
It is not a Sovereign class, but it was considered a capital ship, one bolstered by newer technologies
and occasionally sent out on defensive duties.
The USS Titan took on both these deep space exploration missions and local defensive duties,
as did the other Luna class ships, but I guess when you are heading into the unknown, it
pays to be prepared for anything.
Thank you for watching this breakdown on the Luna class.
What do you think?
As I said in the introduction, alongside the Akira and Excelsior, the Luna is one of my
favourite designs of Starship, even if it does seem to have a bit of an identity crisis
at times.
Thanks again for watching, I’ve been Ric and goodbye!