U.S.S. Aries NCC 71806-C
The Fourth ship to bear her name, and commissioned in 2384 under the command of Vice Admiral Michael Wilson, Constructed as the progenitor of the Aries-class exploratory carrier, the Aries was commissioned with the intent to return to the Delta quadrant for exploration and more.
In the years since the Dominion war, Starfleet has had an opportunity to refocus again on the Exploration of new frontiers. To this end, in 2379 the Soverign-class USS Aries under the command of Vice Admiral Michael Wilson was assigned to the newly created Project New Horizon, an initiative to take twhat was learned form the USS Voyager on their return from the Delta Quadrant and establish a new frontier of Federation exploration, as well as reaching out to allies that the Voyager had made in the hope of opening formal diplomatic relatioships between them and the Federation. A splinter project from Project Full Circle, which had begun the previous year this project intended to address the technical difficulties that were being faced with the slipstream coordination between smaller ships travelling in formation, as well as Admiral Janeway's reluctance to allow Voyager to return to the Delta Quadrant.
This was solved with an ambitious but promising design, where instead of a fleet of small ships each requiring their own slipstream drive, a large carrier was constructed, capable of carrying support ships, small craft, and integrated colony pods and materials and designed to operate independently of Federation or Starfleet infrastructure for extended tours of duty. This carrier housed a dedicated dual-reactor power system specifically for Slipstream generation and a positronic/bioneural hybrid computer system which, while incapable of housing a sentient intelligence, was able to use almost intuitive predictive models to correct for slipstream instabilities and allow for stable travel across vast differences. Due to power requirements, the slipstream can only be used for extremely long range travel, while local movement within the quadrant woudl be achieved with traditional warp drive.
With the Aries-B requiring extensive repair and refit, and expected to take more than a year in drydock to return to duty, Starfleet approved a petition to commission the new ship and class as the Aries
The ship was preceeded in name by two Galaxy-class explorers and a Soverign-class cruiser. The first Aries was lost just after the Battle of Wolf 359, when Commodore (then Captain) Sydney Maxwell took the ship out of spacedock under automation control and sacrificed her to buy time for the Enterprise to intercept the Borg and extract Locutus, thus enabling them to prevent the assimilation of Earth. The second was irrepirably damaged in the First Battle of Chin'toka and decommissioned in favor of one of the new Soverign class ships under construction at the San Francisco Fleet Yards. This ship served 9 years before being severely damaged during slipstream trials for New Horizon and being retired for refit and rechristening, allowing the name to pass to the progenitor of the new class.
This was solved with an ambitious but promising design, where instead of a fleet of small ships each requiring their own slipstream drive, a large carrier was constructed, capable of carrying support ships, small craft, and integrated colony pods and materials and designed to operate independently of Federation or Starfleet infrastructure for extended tours of duty. This carrier housed a dedicated dual-reactor power system specifically for Slipstream generation and a positronic/bioneural hybrid computer system which, while incapable of housing a sentient intelligence, was able to use almost intuitive predictive models to correct for slipstream instabilities and allow for stable travel across vast differences. Due to power requirements, the slipstream can only be used for extremely long range travel, while local movement within the quadrant woudl be achieved with traditional warp drive.
With the Aries-B requiring extensive repair and refit, and expected to take more than a year in drydock to return to duty, Starfleet approved a petition to commission the new ship and class as the Aries
The ship was preceeded in name by two Galaxy-class explorers and a Soverign-class cruiser. The first Aries was lost just after the Battle of Wolf 359, when Commodore (then Captain) Sydney Maxwell took the ship out of spacedock under automation control and sacrificed her to buy time for the Enterprise to intercept the Borg and extract Locutus, thus enabling them to prevent the assimilation of Earth. The second was irrepirably damaged in the First Battle of Chin'toka and decommissioned in favor of one of the new Soverign class ships under construction at the San Francisco Fleet Yards. This ship served 9 years before being severely damaged during slipstream trials for New Horizon and being retired for refit and rechristening, allowing the name to pass to the progenitor of the new class.