USS MARIE CURIE
A Chapter of STARFLEET International
A Brief History of the USS Marie Curie
Commissioned in late 2016 and placed under the command of Captain Brady, the Curie (as her crew is fond of calling her) is now a fully recognized chapter of STARFLEET International as of November 30th, 2017. She is stationed out of Washington and originally launched from Roseburg, Oregon, USA, but we conduct all our business via the internet.
Our current plan is to run not only a fan club devoted to Star Trek and a social circle, but a scholarship fund and a charitable donation arm as well. We currently hold events on Kast and Discord, with more on the way as our various departments plan it!
As each chapter of STARFLEET International is considered a vessel or space station within the Star Trek universe, so is the Curie - she's an Intrepid, a science ship built for long-term explorations - a ship considered both "fast and smart" by various members of the show's cast of characters. If you'd like to learn more about the Intrepid class, please keep reading! They're a favorite of many fans, especially those who enjoyed the Voyager series, as the series namesake was an Intrepid.
Intrepid Class, United Federation of Planets
Information from Memory Alpha and Memory Beta, rewritten by the Engineering Department.
First rolled off the assembly lines of the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards some time in the early 2370s, the Intrepid was a class of science vessel primarily created for long-term exploration missions. Intrepids were about half the size of the Galaxy class (the ship type of the USS Enterprise D) and housed about 140-150 crew members on its 15 decks while operating on missions.
At the time of its creation, the Intrepid was one of the most advanced ships created by Starfleet for scientific purposes - it housed several previously unheard of upgrades, including a warp core with a tricyclic input manifold (which would help to allow speeds close to warp 10), the most advanced navigational sensor battery on record, and variable geometry pylons (allowing for the movements of warp nacelles to lessen the impact of the vessel on subspace and habitable planets).
The Intrepid class was also the first to incorporate bio-neural gel packs instead of standard isolinear computers - plugged into the already very beefy computer systems, these effectively changed an ordinary science ship into a semi-organic brain with lightning fast computational speed and a library at its disposal. The gel packs changed the way the computer processed, allowing it to use its "best guess" based on available information rather than run through every computation, speeding up processing time and allowing it to work in a much faster paced, more chaotic environment than a standard isolinear model.
It was also a fast class of starship - until the advent of the Prometheus class of vessels, the Intrepid held the record for fastest top speed among Starfleet ships with a maximum maintained cruise speed of Warp 9.975 without outside help.
No wonder the Intrepid class was described as "fast and smart"!
Because of its size and some specialized engineering, the Intrepid was also capable of a maneuver many other starships were not - safe planetary landing and liftoff of the entire vessel. Thanks to strategically placed antigrav generators and impulse thrusters, the weight of the ship did not cause it damage during this maneuver.
All in all, it's one heck of a science vessel, and we're proud to be crewing one!
Ship Combadge
Designed by our very own Engineering team member Stephen, the now officially adopted combadge of the Curie crew depicts a stylized atomic model under and around the familiar silver and gold delta insignia. While we don't require people who are part of the crew to wear any specific badge, this is the one we consider "ours" above any others!
Ship Namesake: Marie Sklodowska Curie
Marie Skłodowska Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934), born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, was a Polish born and French naturalized chemist who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the first person and only woman to win the Nobel twice (once in physics, which she shared with her husband and another physicist, and once for chemistry), for her work on radioactivity.
Her achievements include developing the theory of radioactivity (a term she coined herself), developing techniques used in the isolation of radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of both polonium (named for her home country of Poland) and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies into treatments for neoplasms with radioactive isotopes. She also founded the Curie Institutes in both Paris and Warsaw, which to this day remain major medical research centers.
When faced with the adversity of growing up a woman in an oppressed Poland, she overcame by studying at the underground Floating University, and she never stopped. She was a true pioneer whose perseverance is worthy of our emulation.
Marie died at age 66 in 1934 of aplastic anemia caused by her prolonged exposure to radiation throughout the course of her life and experiments.
You can learn more about Marie Curie and her life at this site.
