In 2271, Hull number 2000 is put forward in answer to Starfleet Proposal 342334 for the latest model of heavy cruiser design that will form the backbone of Starfleet's multi-platform fleet going into the 24th century. Specific mission parameters are carried forward from the original Constitution-class concept and enhanced to reflect in the changes in the nature of interstellar relations, the increases in distance along and outside of the Federation frontier, the increase in mission duration as a result, and the need for cutting-edge technology for sensors, passive (shields) and active (weapons) defences, diplomatic and scientific capability, etc.

It is decided early on to mate this project with the highly promising Transwarp Project currently under parallel research programs at the Vulcan Science Academy and networked universities on Earth, Hamal and Deneb Kaitos. After almost losing the newly refitted NCC 1701 U.S.S. Enterprise down a wormhole when her engines went into antimatter imbalance, the Transwarp Project uses the data gathered by the ship’s computers during this incident to enhance their research.

Transwarp drive was to be Starfleet's attempt to allow a starship to travel far faster than had even been predicted before. New engineering advances allowed the designing of a warp core reactor with over 10 000 times the power of the Constitution-class equivalent. Soon it became apparent that NX 2000 was to be the testbed for more than just new sensor systems and new engines. By the time the spaceframe was under construction in the late 2270s, nearly every starship system to be installed in her was to be new and experimental.

NX 2000, U.S.S. Excelsior, was launched on Stardate 8095.5 (Earth Calender Year 2284) from the San Francisco Orbital Yards. Excelsior entered her period of testing, which would last for 6 years. Capable of warp speed, the ship would have to be fuelled with antimatter to go to warp and she will be limited to thrusters and impulse for easily half of the fitting-out period. At present, she has only 20% of her internal volume fully completed. Though control systems are in place, weapons, science sensors, crew quarters and such like have still to be installed.

Every possible test was carried out by the Research and Development team onboard NX 2000. Her computer was tested for speed and number of systems it could run autonomously. The Artificial Intelligence installed in the computers was of a whole new generation and Excelsior was the first starship that could fly herself. Excelsior was assigned the best that Starfleet could offer her: Captain Styles, the captain who had more test hours than any other at that time, now currently the Head of Starfleet Research and Development. Commander Richard Hawkins was the Chief Engineer and Transwarp specialist, briefly replaced by the more field-experienced Captain Montgomery Scott for a brief period in 2285, Hawkins oversaw the engines of Excelsior until the completion of the testing phase in 2287. The Transwarp project never achieved it's aim of attaining speeds of over Warp 10, however it did directly lead to a new generation of warp drive engines. In 2290 the Excelsior was given her NCC designation and command was handed over to Captain Hikaru Sulu.

When the programme was first set up in the late 2270s it was envisioned the first ships after Excelsior would be named Columbia, Paris and Roma. This changed with the decision by the Starfleet Commander, Admiral Harry Morrow, to decommission early series Constitution class starships. After a public outcry is was decided to reuse names from those famous decommissioned ships on the new class of explorers. In 2285, after NCC 1703 was decommissioned, the name Hood was resurrected for the second Excelsior class hull. The Third Excelsior hull was named for Yorktown, the ex-NCC 1717 had been decomissioned in 2285, only for events to see her refit and re-commissioned as a stopgap NCC 1701-A for Captain Kirk and his crew. It was felt Kirk would prefer a familiar ship and Montgomery Scott had denounced the new Excelsior design. In the event, Enterprise-A would last until 2293 when she was replaced by Excelsior class hull number 5.

The testing of Excelsior's new systems and transwarp drive were intended to cover no more than two years. The intended in-service date for the design was 2286, with four hulls to have been underway or completed by this point. Vessels 1-4 were designed and constructed including transwarp drive, the second vessel - Hood - was intended to be launched and in service by 2285, but issues with the transwarp drive from early on meant the hull was delayed whilst Commander Richard Hawkins and other ASBD engineers worked on a solution. After Excelsior was launched in 2284, work commenced immediately on the third hull, Yorktown. Clyde Fleet Yards work tirelessly to get Hood operational and she joined the fleet in 2287. Time was not on the side of the Transwarp Project and it was cancelled in 2287.

Extensive re-designing and re-working of the engineering hull had already commenced on Hood and Excelsior followed. Renown and Repulse were modified in the yards; all successive hulls would now have the modified non-transwarp drive. Hull #5 was redesigned from construction commencing in 2288 and emerged as the Enterprise-B in 2293. The programme had been delayed four years by the Transwarp drive assessment and subsequent rejection. However, all was not lost and significant gains were made with the new warp drive system. Once a decision was made on transwarp, the low-rate initial production (LRIP) was expanded to full production of the design with some of the names and registry numbers chosen in the 2270s being used on the new hulls.

Excelsior class starships take approximately five years to construct from keel to fully operational starships. There is approximately an eighteen month - two year gap between delivery dates. As the older ships come in for Service Life Extension Program (SLEP), they are upgraded to the standards of the latest ships, virtually eliminating differences. There are only a few Federation facilities constructing vessels of this type including: San Francisco orbital fleet yards, Clyde fleet yards in Glasgow on Earth, Dalian fleet yards in China on Earth, Ishikawajima Harima in Yokohama on Earth, Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia on Earth, Cha'ka Fleet yards on Andor and Utopia Planitia fleet yards. Delivery dates for the vessels are as follows:

Registry Number	Starship Name	Notes
2000	Excelsior	Prototype. The Excelsior was reported lost with all hands in 2308, near the Tzenkethi border.
2541	Hood	As seen in ILM images from TNG: Encounter at Farpoint. Second Excelsior class vessel constructed at Clyde Fleet Yards. Named as Hood in honour of previous vessel NCC-1703 which was lost in 2285. Was to have been named Exeter.
2544	Repulse	Named for the WW2 battlecruiser and Polaris submarine.
2545	Renown	Named for the WW2 battlecruiser and Polaris submarine.
1701-B	Enterprise	Prototype 17th Generation starship [designated Generation 16+]. Fifth vessel of the Excelsior class constructed from 2288 - 93 (Haynes USS Enterprise Owners Manual). Third of class assembled at San Francisco Fleet Yard.
2573	Roosevelt	Named for Theodore Roosevelt (26th) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (32nd), Presidents of the USA.
13958	Okinawa	First vessel of Production batch 2.
14007	Albion	First 17th Generation starship. Named for the commando carrier and assault ship.
14124	Vanguard	Named for the 31-gun, 56-gun, 90-gun, 70-gun, 74-gun and 78-gun sailing warships, battleships of St Vincent class and last battleship of 1944 and the first member of the Vanguard Trident Submarine.
14221	Farragut	Registry taken from Memory Beta.
14232	Berlin
14427	Lexington	Named for the aircraft carriers CV-2 and CV-16.
14455	Vikramaditya	Named for the Indian aircraft carrier.
14598	Fearless	Named for the Falklands War assault ship.
14660	Queen Elizabeth	named for Elizabeth I who built up the navy of England and the battleship and aircraft carrier.
14771	Discovery	Named for R.R.S. Discovery and Shuttle Discovery
14783	Krasin	Named for the Russian Icebreaker..
14816	La Fayette	Named for the French stealth frigate, US aircraft carrier and submarine.
14881	Graf Zeppelin	Named for the airship designer and German aircraft carrier.
14902	John F Kennedy	Named for the 35th President of the USA, the unique class supercarrier and the Gerald Ford class supercarrier.
14934	Tecumseh	Named for the American Civil war monitor.
14957	Victorious	named for the British aircraft carrier and Trident submarine.
18253	Potemkin	Named for Constitution class NCC 1657.
18297	America	Named for Constitution class NCC 1847, the aircraft carrier and amphibious assault ship.
18309	Hyuga	named for the Japanese helicopter destroyer.
18334	Richelieu	Named for the French WW2 battleship and seventeenth-century statesman Cardinal de Richelieu.
18392	Aurora	Named for Shackleton's supply ship and the Polar survey ship Aurora Borealis.
18401	Mumbai
18444	Tiger	Named for the battlecruiser HMS Tiger, alleged to be even more beautiful than Hood.
18562	Eagle	Named for Constitution class NCC 1685 and british aircraft carriers (1918) and 1946.
18618	Invincible	Named for the Falklands War veteran aircraft carrier HMS Invincible.
18709	Oriskany	Named for Essex class CV 34.
18733	Canberra	Named for the capital city of Australia and P & O liner from the Falklands war.
18991	Iron Duke	Named for Admiral Sir John Jellicoe's flagship at Jutland and Type 23 'Duke' class frigate.
18997	Mandela	Named for the former President of South Africa.

Author's Notes:

Firstly, may I thank Scottish Andy for his history of the Excelsior class and NCC number commissioning date generator program which has helped to put dates to these starships. These have been spaced out in a few places to give a fluid lineage and additional ships have been added in the 18000 range for when the Constitution class are retired. Note: this is not an exhaustive list, plus names and registries can change without warning due to canon details emerging or story requirements.

Figures for the size and construction times for the Excelsior class have been devised from the equivalent data for the U.S. Navy Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carriers [vessels of approximate size to the Excelsior class]. The gap in NCC numbers with Albion shows the change from 16^th to 17^th generation starship technologies. From the figures quoted, the eventual full size of the Excelsior class will be around 50 hulls, the last being in the NCC 43xxx range such as U.S.S. Valley Forge [a vessel still in service at the time of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]. Obviously should any canon sources contradict these fleet numbers, this page will be updated.

With the Haynes U.S.S. Enterprise Owners' Workshop Manual by Ben Robinson, Marcus Riley and technical consultation from Mike Okuda, just such a change occured. Page 80 clearly note that the Enterprise-B was constructed from 2288 - 2293 and was the fifth Excelsior class starship built. Transwarp is established as abandoned in 2287 and the project was 4 years delayed when Excelsior entered service in 2290, giving 2286 as the due in-service date. This also canonises that it takes five years to build an Excelsior. As Columbia and Paris were only seen as simulated ships in Starfleet Academy, I propose these were the intended first names before the old Constitution class names were revived. These Academy names would come after Enterprise-B to preserve the fact that she was fifth built after Yorktown (mentioned in Flashback), Hood (Shown to be NCC 2541 in Encounter at Farpoint with Transwarp configuration) and Repulse (shown in The Child as last appearance of Transwarp-configured Excelsior filming model).

Gene Roddenberry sent a memo on 14 November 1988 (see left) in which he emphatically said there is no transwarp drive. Althoug his appears to be denouncing the existence of the larger Excelsior and her advanced warp drive system, this memo was actually sent to FASA about ships larger and faster than TNG's Enterprise-D. Excelsior is safe, her fancy computer-controlled warp drive not so much. Although advances made from the Transwarp research programme helped to create advances in warp drive that increased the speed and efficiency of Starfleet starships across the board.

With the re-tooling of construction yards for the new NX 10521 Ambassador class project, so the Excelsior class construction chapter comes to an end in the early 2320s. This reflects the re-tooling of Newport News yards in moving from the Nimitz class CVN-68 class to the new Gerald R. Ford class CVN-78 class. In simple terms: it doesn't make sense to be building Excelsior class when new generation Ambassador class are to be built. Service Life Extension Programs (SLEP) and upgrades will keep the yards busy with Excelsior class for decades to come. Actually in light of Star Trek: Online this will be over a century.

Thanks to Curt Danhauser for his Excelsior enthusiasm and Bridge station guidance.