Curiosity Class

Curiosity-class heavy cruiser
Information
Affiliation	United Federation of Planets
Status	Retired
Type	Heavy Cruiser
Role	Exploratory Vessel
Lineage
Preceding Class	Excelsior-class
Succeeding Class	Glenn-class
Service
Operator	Starfleet
Entered Service	2390
Production Ended	2390
Retired	2390
Population
Standard Complement	500
Propulsion
Propulsion System	Matter/Antimatter Warp Drive
Template:Specification

The Curiosity-class heavy cruiser was a canceled starship class with two members: USS Curiosity and USS Ibn Majid. This class was to be the first to be tested in service as a group of three competing designs developed under Project Curiosity. This project was intended to provide a class of exploration-oriented vessels to complement the Inquiry, then under simultaneous development, with a focus on speed and endurance. All three classes developed as part of this project initially shared roughly similar hull designs but evolved rapidly as the design teams attempted various solutions to increase their range. The Curiosity itself was designed with two pairs of nacelles that could be alternated between to sustain long warp journeys without stopping.

While initial results from the trials of the two prototype vessels were promising, the entire project was mysteriously canceled in 2390, leading to the build-up of Inquiry-class vessels throughout the 2390s. In 2399, it was discovered that Project Curiosity was canceled by Commodore Oh, as part of a Romulan conspiracy to keep Starfleet focused within its own borders. While the prototypes and design data for the Curiosity class itself had been destroyed, apart from a few design briefs and the recollections of the original ships’ crews, the two competing classes developed as part of this project were merely put into storage. These two classes, the Typhoon-class exploratory cruiser and the Glenn-class heavy cruiser, were brought into production not just as part of Starfleet’s return to the wider galaxy, but as a statement of defiance towards the Romulan conspiracy.

Technical Information

Nearly all files related to the Curiosity-class heavy cruiser were destroyed along with the scrapped prototypes, but some information remains available in the comparison notes from the other two classes. The Curiosity was intended to be capable of the same top speed as the Inquiry but with twice the high warp endurance, which was achieved by two sets of warp nacelles operating in sequence. They otherwise had a fairly standard primary-secondary hull arrangement and a crew of over 500.

The Curiosity Class In-Play

This is the only on-screen evidence we have about the Curiosity class.

• At Bravo Fleet, it has been our goal to include as many canon ships as we can in our offerings for our member’s stories. The Curiosity-class starship was only seen in a silhouette in Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard, and we felt that it was unlikely that the class would ever make it into Star Trek: Online or another official or semi-official source. There is limited concept art of the class, which was intended to be similar to the USS Emmett Till developed for the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine documentary and proposed Season 8. So, the tech team spent a lot of time comparing that shape to classes in Star Trek: Online that could reasonably fit. While nothing fit exactly, we settled on two finalists: the Glenn and the Typhoon, both of which fill some gaps in our lineup and can be connected back to the lore related to the Curiosity.
• A competing school of thought is that the Curiosity is simply one of the three variants of the Inquiry, either with the longer nacelles or the deflector dish in place of the grill. We find that to be a reasonable conclusion to draw, but the shape on Rios’s case appears to be a very different design.