USS Enterprise (XCV 330)

The USS Enterprise (XCV 330) was an Earth spacecraft that was in service prior to 2143.

A painting of this ship and the mission patch appeared on the wall of the 602 Club on Earth in 2143. ()

A similar painting was on display on a wall in Admiral Maxwell Forrest's office on Earth in 2154. ()

This Enterprise was honored with an illustration on the 's recreation deck after its refit in the early 2270s. () 

In the alternate reality, a small model of this ship was displayed on Admiral ' desk in 2259, together with other historical aircraft, spaceships and starships. ()

Appendices

Background information

Origin of the design

Michael Okuda's  had this to say about the ship, "This design is based on one of Matt Jefferies' earliest concepts for the , back in . Jefferies discarded the design back then because he felt that a filming model would not have been strong enough to support itself. Years later, he resurrected the sketch for a television series project developed by Gene Roddenberry after the run of the original Star Trek. Unfortunately, the series was never produced. Later, at Roddenberry's request, the ship made a cameo appearance as a painting on the recreation deck of the refit Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In that painting, the ship bore the registry number XCV-330."

Jefferies had sold off his original design sketches on 12 December 2001 in the Profiles in History The Star Trek Auction, in order to raise funds for the "Motion Picture and Television Fund" charity. 

The following is from a Lincoln Enterprises catalog, describing some elevations of the ship that could be purchased through the company: "Gene Roddenberry's imagination brings you "Starship". The vessel of the future as only he could picture it. This could be the forerunner of a new TV series, a Starship operated by an enormous computer which is a lifeform itself. Each Human on board is a genius, a highly trained science specialist, part of a team of Galactic trouble shooters. A brand-new concept in future space travel. We also have three different views of the Metatransit system, side elevations of the systems analysis unit, and the Metaflier section of the Starship. Imagine yourself on a mission in space aboard this luxury cruiser. You'll be spellbound!"

Star Trek appearances
A legible version of the photograph of the Enterprise from the set of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was reproduced in The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The photograph shows both the name "USS Enterprise" and the registry number XCV 330 clearly. The book describes the ship as "the very first starship U.S.S. Enterprise". Based on appearance of the painting and mission patch and the events in "First Flight", the Enterprise was launched sometime before 2143 and if it was equipped with warp drive, it was presumably limited to warp factor 2, as the episode documents the first Earth ships to surpass warp 2.

In  (), Doug Drexler stated that the Enterprise was one of the inspirations for his design of the Vulcan  starship. The ring-shaped configuration was solidified for other Vulcan starships in the series. Following the release of , internet rumors speculated that the portrait of the XCV 330 seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture might be replaced by  in the Star Trek: The Motion Picture (The Director's Edition), but this did not come to pass.

The Artisan prop and model shop of Quantum Mechanix, QMx FX Cinema Arts, was asked to illustrate the history of space flight with models for Star Trek Into Darkness. They constructed fourteen models in total. According to the site, the Enterprise was Earth's first sublight, interplanetary, and interstellar space vehicle. 

The Enterprise had not been given a specific launch date in canon. However, the gallery of models in Star Trek Into Darkness appeared to be in chronological order of launch. The Enterprise was placed after the Ares V and before the Phoenix, suggesting that it was a pre-warp ship and had a launch date somewhere between the 2020s and 2063.

Prefix and history
Star Trek Encyclopedia (3rd ed., p. 137) called this ship "S.S. Enterprise". Only in 2017 was it divulged that it had been Production Illustrator Rick Sternbach who conceived the registry "XCV-330" when he created the backlit transparencies, based on Matt Jefferies' concept art, seen in The Motion Picture. (Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection, issue SP11, p. 8) 

The Enterprise is presumed to have a conjectural type of warp drive called the annular warp drive by the Star Trek Encyclopedia (4th ed., vol. 1, pp. 30 & 243). Instead of conventional nacelles, a ship equipped with this drive would have a large hoop-shaped field generator. The ship's designer Matt Jefferies, on one of the drawings of this ship, labeled the large ring as a "dynertia" propulsion system.

The patch for the Enterprise, created by Okuda, along with other symbols, is displayed in the Star Trek Encyclopedia (4th ed., vol. 2, p. 350).

Apocrypha
Chart B of the Star Trek Maps featured a side-view drawing of the Enterprise. On that drawing, the ring-pylon was marked "7". The long "neck" of the ship was marked "ENTERPRISE". The drawing was captioned: "Starliners. Earth's first attempts at manned interstellar probes were launched during the 2050s at various target stars within fifteen light years of Sol. Only one, the UESP Enterprise, reached its destination – the sunlike binary pair of Alpha Centauri – before they were overtaken by the new faster-than-light spacecraft. The 120-meter-long Starliners had a crew complement of 35." The UESP-prefix presumably stood for "United Earth Space Probe", which would make Enterprise a ship of the United Earth Space Probe Agency.

The Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology (illustrated by Rick Sternbach) included the following descriptions: USS Enterprise - Declaration Class 2123-2165. Length: 300 m, Weight: 52.7 mil. kg, Ship's complement: 950. Propulsion: Adv. Second Generation Warp Drive. A total of 957 of these warp 3.2 starliners were built for the Cultural Exchange Project of the United Federation of Planets. The Enterprise was the first ship to be equipped with a subspace radio and was the most popular passenger carrier of its time.

According to On Board the USS Enterprise (p. 7) and the Spaceflight Chronology, the Enterprise was an interstellar liner launched in 2123. The Spaceflight Chronology featured a side-view drawing and a detailed painting of the Enterprise. This however might not even be the same ship. Only the overall shape was similar. It should also be noted that in the timeline of the Spaceflight Chronology, for example, the Federation was incorporated in 2087 and the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) was launched in 2188. So in the canon timeline, this version of the Enterprise would have to be placed somewhere in the very late 22nd to the early 23rd century, well after the time of Star Trek: Enterprise.

While once considered "official", the Chronology however, has been demoted to apocrypha status in the wake of the March 2002 re-evaluation by the franchise of its in-universe reference works – as has Star Trek Maps incidentally. () By inference, this meant that any information contained therein (and/or propagated elsewhere), insofar it has not been featured onscreen, is not considered canon either.

According to the novel Star Trek: Ex Machina, this Enterprise was only an unused prototype based on Vulcan ships of the same period.

The Star Trek: Ships of the Line (2011) calendar listed in its center spread a comparison of the Enterprise (NX-01) and the Enterprise (XCV-330) and carried the following description: The XCV ENTERPRISE was a radical reinvention of warp technology based on Vulcan design principles. It proved to be 17% more efficient than Vulcan ships, but had trouble turning at high warp speed, thus making it impractical for exploration where sudden course changes would have to be made. It was considered a technological dead-end in Earth Starship Design. An updated version of the common paintings of this design is the January image in the calendar. The artwork was composed by artist Mark Rademaker.

Rademaker's CGI model became even more prominently featured, when it received in 2017 its own outing in the Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection from Eaglemoss Collections, the partwork publication headed by Ben Robinson, accompanied by a display model for which Rademaker's model has served as the template from which the model parts were cast from.

Further reading
Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection, issue SP11, December 2017

External links
 
  - detailed, partly speculative, article on the origins and specifications of the XCV 330, with details on the original Jefferies design
 
 

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