The Darwin-class, USS Darwin, NX-84005, currently undergoing final testing, is twelve decks thick. The Darwin has a crew complement of 110, and has a proven sustainable emergency velocity of warp factor 9.80. (Cruising speed: Warp 8.0)  The ship features improved computer systems in which most of the traditional optical and iso-linear processors were replaced with bio-neural circuitry.  This ship is designed as a replacement for the problem-prone Intrepid design.  Despite some similarities to the Aurora and Trafalgar classes, this vessel fills a nice niche between the pair, as a general purpose exploration vessel.  While the Aurora is better for scientific inquiry and military power, the Trafalgar is more versatile as an escort and destroyer, the Darwin has the advantage of being both easier to build and maintain, and easier construct and to deploy. This ship represents a move back to STarFleet's original mission.. to boldly go....

"Without history, we would have to repeat ourselves" -- Commodore Kavox Cox

On Stardate 96010.1, STarFleet command, disappointed with the high number of problems in the handful of Intrepid class vessels¹, and cognizant of the need to both improve and simplify the design for mass production, inaugurated the Darwin Class project.  The mission was simple.. make the Intrepid basic design faster, more versatile, smaller, and simpler to produce.

The critical breakthrough was the modular units, which could be easily constructed, or even replicated as needed.  The only portions of the vessel which are not fully modular are the engine core, and the spaceframe.

The ship itself is, internally, a collection of approximately 300 separate units, all are easily constructed and replaced.  Some of these modules, like the Bridge Module, are used only once per ship.  Others, like the Officer/VIP Quarters, Interior and Exterior Crew Quarters, and the holodecks, are used many times over, and can be placed together in an assembly-line fashion, allowing these ships to be produced at an optimum rate of one per four months, an amazing 21% improvement over the Intrepid design, at each construction yard.  Additionally, because of the small size, two ships can be simultaneously built inside one large vessel mooring.  Because of this design, the internal layout of the Darwin Class can be somewhat customized as well.  Conversion of the Darwin class vessels to purely Medical, Research, or Cargo vessels, once the weaponry and warp drive are obsolete, should require only minor changes.  The expected useful lifetime of this incarnation of the Darwin Class is estimated at 30 years, with an additional 40 years afterwards performing as more of a support (Medical, Research, etc.) ship.  Refits are projected to be at low cost, compared to previous, non-modular designs, which could signifigantly extend the useful lifetime of the Darwin class.

The first prototype of this design, the USS Darwin, was constructed at the Larimda Me Prototype Yards, of the Starbase 117 complex, in the Beta Priori Starsystem.  It will be immediately placed into active service, for testing, while the construction of the next fourty-one vessels is pending the results of the class vessels performance.   While its battle skills are fairly questionable, it still is more than a match for most problems that would be encountered, and its mere existance will allow the more powerful designs to be freed from the more mundane exploration and survey missions.  If the contract is awarded to LuMPY, two large-vessel construction bays will be devoted, allowing one Darwin to be produced per month once full production is brought on-line.

Update:  Several semi-completed prototypes, from the secondary original order of five ships, were deployed on stardate 98011.2, on a mission to pursue the USS Pursuit, an experimental Danube-Class runabout with a Transwarp drive mounted atop, ironically on a mission to capture and arrest the designer of the Darwin Class.  While the Darwins are fast, however, Transwarp is significantly faster, and the mission was not sucessful.  The four vessels were returned to LuMPY after the mission, and were completed, now having entered service.

"Who else would design a ship without a purpose?" -- Commodore Cox

GENERAL EXPLORATION CRAFT - The Darwin makes an ideal scout, because of its high speed, powerful general purpose scanners, and small size.  While more in-depth research ought to be carried out by an Aurora, Columbus, or Olympic, the Darwin, with its sheer numbers, and lets face it, expendability, will usually be the first UFP vessel assigned to any research or exploration area.

FIRST RESPONCE VESSEL - The Darwin's speed and distibution make it likely to be one of the first ships to respond to disasters within and outside of the UFP.  For this reason, the design includes slightly more medical and engineering personnel than would normally be assigned to a ship of this size, and several holographic systems as well that allow the ship to 'donate' more of its personnel to external duties than otherwise possible.

MILITARY SCOUT - In times of warfare, the Darwin makes up for its lack of armament with its speed.  It makes an fairly good reconnaissance vessel, able to handle quick flybys, and report on enemy status and strength with a high degree of accuracy.  It can also be used as a troop transport, and a field hospital ship, because of its high speed.  There are, of course, other ships that can handle certain aspects better than a Darwin, however.

STARBASE DESIGNATED VESSEL - Although a Darwin is not truly a warship in any sense of the word, it is still more battle capable than any civilian or minor world vessel.  While Starbases normally have sufficient equipment to defend themselves, they often have difficulty in apprehending rogue vessels, or otherwise forcing craft to comply with lawful directives.  With a few minor modifications, a Darwin could make an excellent complement to Runabout fleets in this regard, for high traffic starbase-controlled regions.  It would also considerably extend the effective range of such a starbase's authority.

URGENT CARGO CARRIER - In ancient times, the most urgent of cargo was sent by the fastest available transport, whether that was horse, ship, or jet.  Field Commanders have long known that the most important part of warfare is maintaining secure supply lines.  While the Darwin is not very effective in slaying ones enemies, and makes a fairly poor convoy escort, it would be very effective when used as a cargoship on its own.  The old adage 'you can't kill what you can't catch' applies strongly in this context.  When it absolutely, positively, has to be there yesterday, the Darwin will probably quickly become the ship of choice, at least until Transwarp-capable vessels of sufficient size are able to be constructed.
 

"Just remember not to ride the clutch, Ensign" -- Commodore Cox

The Darwin is easily the fastest normal-warp powered ship in the fleet.  Its improved "swing wing" design, based on the Intrepid class Variable Angle Warp Nacelles, allows the vessel to propel itself to a maximum emergency velocity of Warp 9.9, with no damage caused to the continuum.  As older ships, such as the Aurora (Refit-Galaxy) Project⁴, implement the Intrepid design Warp Drive, Starfleet has been constantly rebuilding its speed of reaction, and this ship is the hallmark of that need for speed.  In preliminary testing, the Darwin-design Warp Core and nacelles were attached to an old mothballed Trinitron-Mk II Cruiser, a much larger vessel then the system was designed to handle.  The engines performed better than expected, propelling the ship to Warp 9.55, with no problems.  The test had to be stopped at this point, however, due to excessive buckling in the bolts where the Darwin Secondary Hull was attached to the Trinitron.  So far, the USS Darwin itself has already achieved speeds as high as Warp 9.80, and in the near future, will be pushed to its absolute limit, to see what the ship can REALLY do.  Commodore Cox started a pool, and claimed Warp 9.98 for himself, if that's any indication.  At 100% efficiency, theoretical modeling indicates an emergency speed of Warp 9.95 for 30 minutes, and 9.80 for 4 hours.  This speed is available because of the unique combination of small mass, and powerfully overdesigned engines.  If the Engineers really pushed it, these values could probably be exceeded as well.

As witnessed by Project Futura, Transwarp may well be within our grasp at last.  Although the Darwin does not employ this system, an upgrade to a Darwin Mk II, with a Transwarp Drive installed, should be possible, at a fraction of the cost of upgrading other vessels, because of the modular design.

"The best defence is a fast exit.  But if all else fails, be sneaky instead." -- Commodore Kavox Cox

The Darwin Class design is a drastic improvement over the Intrepid designs in this area.  The Aurora project had shown that it was possible to reduce the shield refresh rate to zero.  Unfortunately, due to the mass production requirements of this design, the added difficulty of a zero refresh rate was too high, and Engineers were forced to settle for a refresh rate of 0.80 Jiffies (0.1 seconds).  The Navigational deflectors have the same 0.80 Jiffies refresh rate, and the shields are set so that the refresh of both systems never occurs simultaneously.  The ship also includes a multiphasic shield array system, which allows the vessel to operate within a stellar photosphere for long periods of time, should this become necessary.

Additionally, although the ship has only a tritanium spaceframe, the construction is extremely tight, and the angles designed into the spaceframe are designed to withstand a considerable amount of punishment.  In wagering on the potential for collision survival at high speeds, one very foolish engineer claimed Warp 2.. however, fortunately for the project, no test pilot was suicidal enough to go for that particular experiment. ²

"Never give someone a loaded gun unless you know who they're going to shoot." -- Commodore Cox

The Darwin design incorporates signifigantly less muscle than the Intrepid design in its weaponry, however, it more than makes up for this deficiency with its added speed, and cheaper cost of operation.  However, this ship is not exactly a pushover in an open fight, either.  With its three photon launchers (starboard front, port front, and high aft), 95% of the sphere around the vessel is covered.  (The alternative system, to double-cover 100% of the sphere, would have added three weeks to the construction time of the ship, and made it 10% more expensive to construct.  However, a refit to 100% coverage, by adding a dorsal forward and a ventral aft array, can be done quickly, if needed, at the cost of a holodeck, the officers mess, and a decrease in maximum velocity. This was not incorperated into the basic design, because the Darwin is an exploration craft, not a warship.  In the light of Jem Hadar, Borg, and other incursions to Federation Security, however, this contingency plan has been prepared well in advance.)

As for phasers, the Darwin includes a fairly standard set of array 'strips', providing double coverage for the 360 degree sphere.  Additionally, a pair of retractable Defiant-type phaser banks may be installed just under the Buzzard Collectors, on each nacelle wing, allowing for added punch in a head-on battle.  However, the field of use is limited by the primary hull's placement, and the power of these banks is 28% below Defiant specs, due to power routing constraints.  Because of the cost, this equipment is not always installed.

Lastly, the one of the cargo bays on deck eleven (designated Bay 4) can be modified to accomodate a Trafalgar class mission module.  However, the device requires diversion of Warp Power from the nearby M/ARC, which cuts away from maximum speed, even when a module is inactive.

"For when you absolutely positively have to be at two places at once." -- Commodore Cox

The Aft Shuttlebay carries an improved compliment over the Intrepid design.  Four standard shuttlecraft are contained here.  Normally, the craft are compressed into specially designed slots in the inner hull itself, allowing for a large area internally for repairs, refitting, and extra vessel storage.  As many as seven shuttlecraft could be stored in here, however, it would be very difficult to land the last one, unless the pilot had a thing for landing sideways!

Cargobay 4, if not used to store a Trafalgar style mission module, can accomodate one Valhalla class Runabout instead.  (The bay's length is insufficient for a Colorado to fit, and a Danube or a Pursuit would be an extremely tight fit.).

Finally, a customized type of Captain's Yacht has been installed, including Defiant-style Warp Nacelles.  The Yacht is mounted in the normal position, at the bottom of the Primary Hull.  The Yacht is capable of speeds up to Warp 3.5, can hold a crew of up to 6 officers, although only two are necessary for normal operations, and contains two standard phaser banks, and an automated photon torpedo tube, capable of getting off two shots.  The cost, however, is a battle weakness to the rest of the ship when the Yacht is seperated, due to a distortion in the shape of the hull.

Finally, in the event of a destruction of the vessel, not only are there standard escape pods, but the Sick Bay and Bridge-Deck  modules are both capable of ejection from the primary hull, and have retractable thrusters, which make them capable of maneouvering (albeit slowly).  Since, like most designs, the Primary Hull is not truly seperatable from the rest of the ship (at least, not under normal operations), abandonment of the ship remains a difficult problem in Engineering to overcome.

"Computer, Delete Emergency Medical Hologram, immediately!" -- Commodore Cox

The Darwin Computer design is only one step away from being wholly Bio-neural.  All systems have a backup standard system, however, 71% of the primary computer system is now bio-neural.  We had projected 100%, and this may be achieved in later modifications of this design, however, at this time it is not possible because of the difficulties in bioneural production at this time.  However, since every major system is fully modular, when bio-neural systems are difficult to obtain, less critical systems can easily use the older system types, which are still on file, and installed as backups in all cases to the primary biological system.

The Darwin's computer core's capacity has increased 31% over the Intrepid design, and just 19% under the Aurora ⁴  class design, in a much smaller vessel.  As such, it makes an ideal scout and exploration ship, while the larger Aurora, with its more extensive crew and facilities, can enter later to make more detailed surveys of locations of interest.  The real problem of the Darwin design is the small crew necessitates less specialization in the science and engineering departments.

To alleviate part of the problem, an advanced holocrew system has been installed.  The system now has greater flexability, and a slightly better disposition (we hope!).  Each of the three main computer cores can control holograms, and the holograms can now operate in most critical locations on the ship.  The different variations are the the AEMH (Advanced Emergency Medical Hologram), plus the EHN (Emergency Holographic Nurse), and the HBO (Holographic Bridge Officer [for OPS and CONN]).  No more than six total programs (two per core) may run at any one time.  The HBO program is very experimental, and lacks many of the abilities of a sentient officer, however is competant to man most computer consoles.

Each variation uses flexible tertiary fuzzy logic advances, virtual processing, exchange component design, and virtual memory, to be infinitely more useful then the archaic EMH program.  However, the system is still highly experimental.  It is hoped that, if the design is sucessful, the new design can be retrofitted onto other future designs.. however such a move is still far from reality.  Realistically, the holocrew is for emergency and experimental purposes only, because it is admittadly an extremely complex problem, and still has serious limitations.  There are undoubtedly bugs in the system, especially with the HBO.

The Holographic systems are only available in areas where a holoemmitter is present.  The list includes only Sickbay, the Holodeck, and the Bridge.

The Darwin design is a fairly ugly one, in some respects.  Few ships have a Secondary Hull that is actually built atop the Primary, but the need for simplicity of component design and replacement made this a desireable configuration.  Consequently, however, this is also one of the few designs ever proposed that do not have a Bridge on Deck 1 (although, mainly for sentemental reasons, a small Auxillary Control room was placed at the top of Deck 1).  In fact, the designations Primary and Secondary are signifigantly blurred by the unusual design.. we have decided to use the oldest definition we could find, that being that "The Bridge is atop the Primary Hull."  Since Deck 6, the Bridge's location, is atop one of the two hulls, that one has been designated Primary, and the other became Secondary by process of elimination.
 

The Darwin Bridge design is one of the simpler possible ones, designed to allow quick designation of duties.  Each of the 5 main control modules, designated alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and epsilon (clockwise), come pre-assigned as Engineering, Operations, Helm/Navigation, Tactical/Security, and Mission Operations respectively, however each can be converted to any other of the standard design modules, or custom control modules, with only a small reprogramming delay. Both the CO and XO have offices off the bridge, and the main Conference Room is also stationed here, which can double for a Bridge-extension, allowing up to six science officers to directly access computers, scanners, and other scientific equipment without tying up Bridge resources.

There is also a general purpose equipment room with Jeffrey Tubes access in the aft section.  Because Darwins assigned to deep space exploration, this room can be remodeled fairly easily into another control room, similar to the Conference Room's double-duty capacity.  However, the available space is more limited here, due to the Jeffreys Tubes, and computer relays, that use this room as a distribution node for the cores.

Because of the crew distribution, the Darwin Class vessels will ordinarilly have neither a dedicated Tactical Officer, nor a dedicated Counselor.

• Starship Vital Statistics
• Maximum Sustainable Velocity:  Warp 9.8 (4 hours)
• Projected Top Emergency Speed: Warp 9.95 (30 minutes)
• Cruising Velocity: Warp 8
• Nacelle Configuration: Swing-Wing
• Crew Compliment:  21 Officers, 89 Crewmen -- total 110
• • Science Crew: 38
  • Medical Crew: 8
  • Engineering Crew: 21
  • Command and Operations: 23
  • Security and Tactical: 20
• Phaser Banks: 6
• Photon Tubes: 3
• Shuttlecraft: 4 standard personnel shuttles, one Valhalla*-class Runabout, one Captain's Yacht
• Computer system: 71% Bioneural
• Able to land on planetary bodies of less than 1.6 g's at surface

• Shipnames in bold indicate vessels now in service.  Italics indicates those under construction.

All vessels of this class will be named either after a promenant scientist of the past, from either Earth or another Federation world, or a visionary science fiction author.

Footnotes:
0.  This used to be called the Olympic class, however, due to a minor disagreement, the class has been renamed Darwin.
1.  Of course, the real problem with the Intrepid is that it is, like Star Trek, the Intrepid, the Defiant, and several of the technobabble terms, trademark and/or copyrighted by Paramount Pictures, a Viacom Corperation, and all uses of their terminology cited on star-fleet.com is merely under the fair use doctrine that protects parody and analysis.
2. I REALLY would think about this statement real hard before volenteering to test that theory.. something just seems.. a little off.. about it. Collisions at speeds in excess of 1/10 of the speed of light tend to be pretty messy, no matter what!
3. Some of the techical advances are based on other ships, especially the Aurora, but some were also taken from the Nimitz and the Trafalgar designs as well.  This was not done to plagerize, but to take into account the real life type scenario, that once a design is "proven" to some degree, ideas from that design would tend to be implemented in later designs, even ones that were not very similar.   The designs are, rather, intended to complement, rather than compete.  I would like to acknoledge several designs from which ideas were, in this manner, liberally borrowed;  Trafalgar, Aurora, Nimitz, Trinitron (Mk III), Yub Nub, and Olympic.