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[Mikey]

Your antecedent is unclear. If you mean Starfleet in XI being more advanced than SF in prime-timeline 'Trek, the scope and design details of the ships show that clearly enough.

[SolkaTruesilver]

I know. But what I meant, is, why?

Why is the Federation stronger? I am not a strong partisan of the "in spite of a nail" theory. Just because future people shows up at moment X doesn't mean that you change the whole of history by doubling the technological advances...

[Mark]

In the original timeline, Earth was never bombarded by the Borg, or attacked by the Xindi. Thus when they began to explore the universe, they didn't go out into it feeling immedietely threatened. When the first encountered the Romulans, the war was fought with lasers and nukes, as stated by Spock.

Now, in FC Earth was bombarded by an unknown race of hostile aliens, which would changed Earths attitude a bit, towards more powerful defensive measures. This explains the Phase Pistol in Enterprise compared to the less powerful Laser seen in the Cage, plus the advent of Phase Cannons, Spatial Torpedos, and Photonic Torpedos. And thus leads up to the Kelvin being larger, more advanced, and with superior weapons ability to anything ever demonstrated in the original timeline.

Most of todays most powerful weapons were originally designed because we felt threatened.

[SolkaTruesilver]

It would also explain another discrepancy.

Like, why the Xindi attacked Earth while they haven't done so in the previous timeline (that we know of). Maybe the increase of militarisation of earth's Starfleet created an alternative timeline where the Sphere Builders got destroyed, which previously wasn't the case.

That led to the Xindi attack, which led to an even more militaristic Starfleet.

[Mikey]

Mark's right - the simple visitation by an alien species to a xenophobic world is enough to explain a different design philosophy and focus on "bigger, better, faster, more" - especially when that visit is by as malignant a species as the Borg.

As to the Xindi, they were duped by the so-called "Sphere Builders," but those Builders' intentions may or may not be related to the more militaristic stance of ENT-timeline Earth.

[Atekimogus]

Altough some arguments make more or less sense does anyone think that the exact point of diversion will ever be exactly named and made canonical? I agree that FC is a good candidate and convinient because it allows us to ignore Enterprise yet - altough I liked ST XI - I do not think that Abhram troubles himself with such minor points even moreso as they have no impact on future movies.

What I am saying is that altough fun to discuss, I highly doubt that we will ever get a canonical ruling on this one. Therefore I don't quite understand how passionate some are discussing ship sizes etc. . Some cannot imagine that scaling ships at will can be done properly (altough most evidence we have in Star Trek would disagree) and I am ok with that, for some others it just isn't that big of a deal......point is we will probably never know so no point in getting rude imho.

[Captain Seafort]

Altough some arguments make more or less sense does anyone think that the exact point of diversion will ever be exactly named and made canonical?

Not a chance. Abrams has simply started more or less from scratch, keeping only the basic elements of TOS, and creating his own universe rather than be restrained by the rules and precedents of what's gone before. I doubt he realises or cares that the way he's depicted Trek demonstrates a far older PoD than Nero's arrival, and that's exactly the attitude needed to refresh Trek and get it going again.

[Mark]

I know its not fair to have expected this from TOS, TNG, DS9, or VOY, but the ONLY mention of ANY member of the crew of the NX-01 was in STXI, when Scotty referred to Admiral Archer's pet beagle, that he "lost" in the transporter. Thus we now have proof that Johnathan Archer was a prominant figure in the Adramsverse.

[Captain Seafort]

I know its not fair to have expected this from TOS, TNG, DS9, or VOY, but the ONLY mention of ANY member of the crew of the NX-01 was in STXI

Not quite - he got a mention, albeit an indirect one, in Yesterday's Enterprise:

WESLEY
Three K'vort class battlecruisers.

RIKER
(to Picard)
Not bothering to cloak themselves.

PICARD
They shouldn't be so confident...
after the pasting we gave them
at Archer Four.

[Mark]

Point taken........although said mention WAS in still yet another alternate timeline.

[Captain Seafort]

There was also a mention of it after everything got fixed as well. Apparently it was the first class-M world the NX-01 found, so sayeth MA.

[Mark]

Fair enough...MA hath spoken

[Mikey]

Seafort's right - as was mentioned, there's no way to pin down an exact PoD. We can (and have) reasonably determined the place of the PoD in the order of events, but there's no point of reference to determine the exact moment.

[Graham Kennedy]

Secondly, the "near-stasis" of Trek is not a valid argument. Just because it has been depicted in the previous timeline doesn't mean it happened in this timeline too.

The explanation I read (I don't remember where tho) is that after the Kelvin's destruction, Starfleet's priorities quickly changed to a more militaristic approach to be able to face threats like this mysterious super-battleship that destroyed the Kelvin so quickly. So it'd make sense to have bigger, stronger warships than in the original Trekverse.

And where exactly did they magically acquire the infrastructure, materials science and design expertise required to construct a ship an order of magnitude beyond their demonstrated capabilities? The political decision to build a ship of a given size is irrelevant if the technical ability to construct it does not exist. Your version requires a nation capable of building a Leander deciding to construct a Yamato instead - it's nonsensical.

There's nothing in canon to indicate that the ships they build are anything like as big as the ships they are capable of building, though. For all we know there are other factors at work than sheer capability. Look at today; we are easily capable of building ships far larger than the largest we have; in fact the main limit on how big we build ships is that they have to be able to fit through the likes of the Suez and Panama canals.

You ask where they acquied the infrastructure, materials science and design expertise required. Well, take them one at a time. Infrastructure? The ships are built on the ground, at least somewhat. A big flat area, a bunch of towers and such to support the ship; no need for anything like a present day drydock, even. Once launched, something like a Spacedock could easily accommodate a Galaxy-sized ship like the alternate E-nil. The free floating spacedocks are basically a big frame of metal girders; easy to build them any size. I don't see any reason the infrastructure should not be up to the job.

Materials science? We don't know that the materials of TOS were anywhere close to the theoretical limit for large ships.

Design expertise? Don't see why it should be a particular problem to build that up over a couple of decades. If we set out to design a ship right now that was twice the dimensions of the largest one known, we could certainly do it.

No, it's surely not an insurmountable problem to build bigger ships. Nor is there any particular reason to suppose that there weren't already big ships like the Kelvin around.

[Mikey]

I'd like to hear what you think the limiting factors - the Panama and Suez Canal analogs - are, because I can't think of anything equivalent. If the PoD was as late as the Kelvin's destruction, then SF had the means to construct Kelvin/neo-E sized ships all along, and there was some other limiting factor. It wasn't resource availability, because we've seen that's never been a problem in 'Trek. A conscious design decision? I doubt it, because (up until the Sovereign-class^*) 'Trek ship design has always followed the maxim that bigger=better/faster/more advanced. A political statement? Perhaps... we know that the UFP likes to put on a non-threatening face. However, that tendency waas much more minor/non-existent in the TOS era; plus, the existence of the Kelvin itself somewhat denies that possibility.

^* Even the case of the Sovereign doesn't really disprove the bigger=better trend; the Sovereign was purposefully built as a fighting ship, without the familial accomodations, etc., of the GCS - and even considering that fact, wasn't really that much smaller.