Charleston class
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- Class and Type: Charleston-class Cruiser
- Commissioning Date: 2064
The first mass-produced Human spacecraft to take advantage of Zefram Cochrane's discovery of warp flight, the Charleston class Cruiser was, by modern standards, a small, cramped, technologically primitive vessel. But in its own time it was considered a marvel, a scientific breakthrough of perspective-shattering proportions. Ever curious and unstoppable, Humans piled into Charlestons and set out to explore the universe around them, sometimes discovering new life and new civilizations, at other times meeting disaster and destruction.
Physically, the Charleston had a diamond-shaped cross-section, with the ship divided into two sections, forward and aft, with the warp nacelles projecting port and starboard at the point the two sections joined. The bridge was on the forward end of the ship, mounted above the vessel's only weapon, a Sorac-class laser.
Noteworthy Vessels/service records/encounters:
- SS Charleston, prototype, created by the NovaStar corporation of the United States of America, explored the Sol system (2064);
- SS Valiant, launched by the European Hegemony, used temporary wormhole to reach space near Galactic Barrier, swept into Barrier by a magnetic storm too strong for its impulse engines to cope with, destroyed by Captain Francois Serverin de Compiegne after the energies of the Barrier caused several of his crew to develop dangerously powerful psionic abilities (2065);
- SS Columbus, launched by the United States of America, explored the Sol system (2064-65);
- SS Pioneer, launched by the United States of America, first vessel to survey the Alpha Centauri system (2066).