>(I know the chronology doesn't really work there—if the original
>Constitution-class ships are that old, and Enterprise is
>one of them, a lot of things about Enterprise's appearance
>later in Manhunt and in this story don't make sense—but I'm
>not going to try and unravel that while I'm battling a sinus
>infection. I think we're going to have to chalk it up to the Exile
>existing in Weird Comic Book Time. :)
>
>Anyway, the point is, being a UGN and/or Starfleet heavy cruiser was a
>dangerous business before the brass at Starfleet got the idea
>to deploy them on multi-year long-range missions, so it doesn't strike
>me as that unlikely that only one of the first dozen survived.
>We have to assume that not all of the twelve survived long enough to
>be sent on a five-year exploration deployment in the first
>place, is all.

My gut is that the Enterprise is the first one to survive a 5-year mission because earlier in their career the ships weren't sent out on ones that long. Probably because when they first arrived on scene they were needed to deal with the difficulties of the early 24th century, and then when they were sent on missions they weren't sent on ones that long either because they didn't know if they could manage that long or they didn't want to risk having ships of that caliber too far away to get back quickly if needed.

By the time things had settled down to a dull roar and Starfleet was confident it could plan on having Connies out of reach for that long, it was well into the latter half of the 24th century. And even then, 5 years proved to be a long time for one of them to be away from support, etc. Who knows how many of the 5-year mission ships were original Block I, or were later Blocks, but Enterprise was clearly the first of any block to return (mostly) intact...

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>