The DY-500 was a type of Earth starship that was utilized for early deep space exploration and colonization during the 22nd century. In use as early as 2102, this class was considerably more advanced than the older 20th century DY-100-class. (TOS: "Space Seed"; TNG: "Up The Long Ladder" okudagram)
The gross vehicle mass of these ships was 3,000 metric tons. These ships were equipped with Yoyodyne pulse fusion warp drives for propulsion, with a net delta-vee of 3.7×107 NVP. (TNG: "Up The Long Ladder" okudagram)
In 2267, Captain James T. Kirk mistook the DY-100-class SS Botany Bay for a DY-500-class vessel, but was corrected by Spock. (TOS: "Space Seed")
At least three sub-classes of this design were in service during the 2120s:
- The DY-500 subclass: The SS Mariposa was of this subclass
- The DY-500-B subclass: The HMS Lord Nelson was of this subclass
- The DY-500-C subclass: The SS Hokule'a was of this subclass
| DY-class starships |
|---|
| DY-100: SS Botany Bay |
| DY-245: SS Hatteras • DY-430: SS Urusei Yatsura |
| DY-500: SS Mariposa · HMS Lord Nelson (DY-500-B) · SS Hokule'a (DY-500-C) |
| DY-732: VK Yuri Gagarin · HMS New Zealand (DY-732 [N]) |
| DY-950: DEV Eagle Valley • DY-1200: VK Velikan |
Appendices[]
See also[]
Background information[]
The name of this ship type was mentioned in a list of ships that were launched from Earth, with destinations in or near to the Ficus sector, between the years 2123 and 2190. This list was displayed on Jean-Luc Picard's desk monitor in his ready room aboard the USS Enterprise-D. A legible version of the by Michael Okuda-created okudagram first appeared in the reference book Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuing Mission. The list became legible to viewers with the remastered "Up The Long Ladder”.
Star Trek Maps states that the Woden was a DY-500-class ship. The side of the ship's hull was labeled SS Woden DY-504.
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The 1979 reference book Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology depicts two 21st century spaceship versions of the DY-500-class ships, both of them designed by Rick Sternbach. There, they were also called the Wheeler class, and were described as an extensive upgrade to the DY-100 series. They were both similar to the canon 22nd century version, the so called "uprated" one, the most. In the book, these older sublight explorer ships were in use from 2019 to 2055, and powered by advanced fission.
Notwithstanding being referenced to in Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuing Mission (p. 85) as being a homage to the DY-100-class of the original series, the DY-500 designation had already been used and depicted in The Spaceflight Chronology, and Okuda's interpretation of ten years later was such a very close approximation of the (uprated) one depicted in that book (p. 35), that a homage to that work, as courtesy to friend and close co-worker Sternbach, can be considered the more likely explanation.
Given that the class predates the breaking of the warp 2 barrier in 2143, it was presumably slower than warp 2.
Apocrypha[]
The novel Prime Directive states that the main hulls of DY-500s were surplus submarine shells reconfigured to transport cryogenic cargo in space.
External link[]
- DY-500 class at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works