Development
According to The Star Trek Encyclopedia, the registry number "NCC-1701" was devised by Matt Jefferies, art director of the first Star Trek series, inspired by an old science fiction cover that Gene Roddenberry liked, with a starship flying through space. Jefferies, who was a pilot, based NCC on 20th century aircraft registration codes. In such 20th century usage, an "N" first letter refers to an aircraft registered in the USA. A "C" for a second letter refers to a civil aircraft. Jefferies added a second "C" because he thought it looked better.
The Franz Joseph Blueprints, the book The Making of Star Trek and a handful of Star Trek novels state that NCC is an initialism for "Naval Construction Contract".
In an interview with the BBC, Jefferies explained that NC was a US designation for commercial vehicles. The Russians used CC CC. He concluded that as common opinion was that any future major space projects would be a combined effort, he would use a combined designation NCC. The 1701 had two functions, it represented the first (01) ship of a 17th federation cruiser design, and that the digits were unlikely to be misread, unlike 6, 8, or 9.
In Gene Roddenberry's original Star Trek pitch, the starship is described as a "United Space Ship," and in two episodes of the original series (TOS), Kirk refers to the "United Space Ship Enterprise".
Read more about this topic: Starship Enterprise
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“... work is only part of a man’s life; play, family, church, individual and group contacts, educational opportunities, the intelligent exercise of citizenship, all play a part in a well-rounded life. Workers are men and women with potentialities for mental and spiritual development as well as for physical health. We are paying the price today of having too long sidestepped all that this means to the mental, moral, and spiritual health of our nation.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Good schools are schools for the development of the whole child. They seek to help children develop to their maximum their social powers and their intellectual powers, their emotional capacities, their physical powers.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.”
—Gail Sheehy (20th century)