USS Enterprise NCC-1701-C
?list=PLB8A7BFC74F06996FThe Ambassador-class starship was a step between the venerable Excelsior-class and the Majestic Galaxy-class.
The Enterprise-C served from 2332 to 2344 when she was destroyed at Narendra III while responding to distress call from the Klingon colony there. Upon arrival, she was met and overwhelmed by four Romulan warbirds.
The efforts of the Enterprise-C and her crew helped to solidify the alliance between the Federation and the Klingon empire.
The ship is featured in the TNG episode "Yesterday's Enterprise". (S3E15) Watch it. It is seriously one of the very best episodes of TNG.
Note: Credit for vid goes to VideoSpaceFX.
= new reply since forum marked as read
do think it is appropriate, then, that you brought up aping behavior. 
bye.
Rising from the ashes of the Eugenics Wars of the mid-1990s, the era of World War III was a period of global conflict on Earth that eventually escalated into a nuclear cataclysm and genocidal war over issues including genetic manipulation and Human genome enhancement. World War III itself ultimately lasted from 2026 through 2053, and resulted in the death of some 600 million Humans. By that time, many of the planet's major cities and governments had been destroyed. (ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II"; Star Trek: First Contact; VOY: "In the Flesh"
Prior to the war, in 1968, when a time displaced Captain James T. Kirk was trying to reason on whether or not he should trust Gary Seven to stop a nuclear weapon, Seven tells him that if he doesn't let him stop the weapon, "World War III starts now!" (TOS: "Assignment: Earth" The Eugenics Wars were also at times referred to as World War III. (TOS: "Space Seed"
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/World_War_III
Scientists with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) realized a nearly 40-year-old dream in July 1999, when Deep Space 1 (DS-1), the first spacecraft to employ an ion engine as its main propulsion system, made a successful fly-by of an asteroid. Instead of a chemical reaction, the main engine of DS-1 created thrust by stripping electrons from the element xenon to create ions (electrically charged atoms) and ejecting them in a high-speed beam from the back of the vehicle. NASA built its first ion engine in 1960, but the expense of launching spacecraft into orbit made the technology too risky to use on an actual mission until DS-1. Although the ion engine aboard DS-1 produced only a tiny amount of thrust (about equal to the force of a single piece of paper resting on a table), the engine could run for very long periods using relatively little fuel, enabling it to eventually go much faster than a chemical rocket.
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http://science.howstuffworks.com/beyond-rockets-info.htm
I had just finished watching a re-run of an old ST episode where Scotty was thoroughly impressed by the "ion" drive of another ship, hadn't realized we did that.
Then again, the other folks were able to materialize on the bridge, knock everyone out, surgically remove Spock's brain and leave. So perhaps we still have a ways to go .
Thank you for that.
