The Making of Star Trek explains that USS means "United Space Ship" and that "Enterprise is a member of the Starship Class". Licensed texts, on-screen graphics, and dialogue later describe the ship as a Constitution-class vessel.
USS was an identifying prefix used before the names of sea-faring ships on Earth and space-faring ships of United Earth and United Federation of Planets. The abbreviation has alternately stood for "United States Ship", "United Space Ship", and "United Star Ship".
During the mid-'60s when Star Trek was being created, the U.S. Navy had recently unveiled its first-ever nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, Enterprise, which attracted lots of public and media attention. Roddenberry was also proud of its predecessors' legacy and wanted to use the name.
The producers of Star Trek took the SS part to mean “Spaceship” and then amended it with a U to stand for the United Federation of Planets, so USS means “United Spaceship.” It appears another motivation for using the acronym may have been to appease patriotic network executives.
The prefix “USS,” meaning “United States Ship,” is used in official documents to identify a commissioned ship of the Navy. It applies to a ship while she is in commission. Before commissioning, or after decommissioning, she is referred to by name, with no prefix.
These technically are called “hull classification symbols” but when combined with sequential numbers they are popularly known as “hull numbers.” For some types of ships, a letter was simply repeated, as in “BB” for battleship, “DD” for destroyer, and “SS” for submarine.
Non-commissioned US Navy support vessels receive the special designation “USNS” (United States Navy Ship). Another long standing military prefix is “HMS,” which is short for “Her (or His) Majesty's Ship.” This is the British equivalent to USS and refers to all vessels of the Royal Navy.
Raffi was a new character created for Star Trek: Picard, but the show needed to establish her professional and personal history with Jean-Luc that took place off-screen. One of the ways Picard season 1 accomplished this was by having Raffi refer to Jean-Luc as "JL", a nickname that only she seemed to use.
NCC is the Starfleet abbreviation for "Naval Construction Contract", comparable to what the U.S. Navy would call a hull number. Jefferies rejected 3, 6, 8, and 9 as "too easily confused" on screen; he eventually reasoned the Enterprise was the first vessel of Starfleet's 17th starship design, hence 1701.
NX” stood for “Naval Experiment” (or “Experimental”) and was used for any ships that were not in standard production; this could be ships meant to be test beds for new technology, prototype ships, etc. Both were typically used for ships attached to Starfleet itself, rather than just the Federation.
The most notable were Captain James T. Kirk's USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) from the original 1960s television series, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard's USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
How big would the Starship Enterprise be in real life?
Built-in space, the U.S.S Enterprise was a feat of fictional engineering. It's estimated that the spacecraft would weigh around more than four million tonnes in weight and house a crew of 430.
Jefferies tubes are named in honor of the late Matt Jefferies, who designed the original Enterprise and conceived an access tunnel in which Scotty had to perform delicate repairs several times.
ISS, short for Imperial Star Ship, was the prefix designation given to space-faring ships in the Terran Empire registry and in the Terran Resistance Forces in the mirror universe. ( ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II")
With the NX-01 Enterprise the “NX” stands for the class Name. Earth-Starfleet used double-letters to name the ship-classes. NX-Class, NV-Class and so on … In the United Federation of Planets Starfleet “NX” stood for experimental Starships - i.e. Prototypes.
Voyager, however, was an Intrepid class, giving it a different purpose. It was designed to be much smaller, cutting out many of the comforts found on the Enterprise-D.
Q called Picard "the most bloodthirsty, merciless, ruthless Human to ever set out to conquer the galaxy" and asked if Picard wished to see what else had been lost thanks to Picard's fear.
') The creators do go some way to explain this is the show. Q appears at first as the young that man Picard and audiences know, thanks to some fancy de-aging CGI. He would then snap his fingers to appear much older to match his old friend Picard, turning himself into de Lancie as he looks today.
Beverly Crusher. In this timeline, she is commanding the Olympic-class medical ship Pasteur. In the film Star Trek Generations, while in the Nexus, Picard is married to a woman named Elise Picard portrayed by Kim Braden.
TITANIC was also referred to as an SS ship which stands for 'steamship', indicating that the propulsion was steam powered, but 'SS' had less prestige than 'RMS', so it was used less.
Today, the SS United States remains the largest passenger ship ever built in America. The RMS Titanic was the largest moving object ever built back in 1912, but its reign was short-lived.
Seiner Majestät Schiff (pronounced [ˈzaɪ̯nɐ majɛsˈtɛːt ʃɪf]; German: His Majesty's Ship, abbreviated to S.M.S. or SMS) was the ship prefix used by the Prussian Maritime Enterprise (Seehandlung), the Prussian Navy, the Imperial German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) and the Austro-Hungarian Navy (Kaiserliche und königliche ...
