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The construction of the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards and therefore the included Utopia Planitia stations at the beginning of the 23rd century was the direct consequence of the faster and faster proceeding exploration of space with the ships of Starfleet. This organization surveyed and colonized dozens of planetary systems in the first 40 years since its foundation, using the out-of-date, fusion-powered ships of the Valiant class, which were still based on the first Earth warp ship, the Phoenix, and the newly-developed Daedalus, Federation and Seleya classes. With the increasing spreading of mankind and its allies in space, the demand for starships rose - starships which should be faster and more reliable than the established classes. First, this lack lead to the institutionalization and centralization of starship construction and the foundation of the Advanced Starship Design Bureaus (ASDB) in the year 2184, which should drive forward the development of new starship technologies and coordinate the building up of Starfleet at many production locations within the Federation, and subsequently to the construction of new yards inside and outside the solar system. Simultaneously with the beginning of the free colonization of Mars and the erection of Mars colony 1, in 2203 the go-ahead was given for the construction of the first extensive, planetary as well as orbital starship construction center of the still young Federation. While all formerly constructed Starfleet yards were exclusively ground or space stations, the ASDB superiors hoped the newly-developed transporter technology would facilitate an easy and quick combined production process: already few years after the completion of the facility the metal ores extracted from the Mars mines should be processed to starship components on the spot, which would be then put together to complete starships in space - without the loss of time of a conventional orbital transport. Together with further breakthroughs in starship construction techniques, which were realized with the Utopia Planitia Yards for the first time, this concept led to production rates which nobody considered to be possible at the end of the 22nd century. Before, however, the work on mankind's largest construction in space at this time proved to be a special challenge for the constructors of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers (SFCE); within all in all fourteen years, at the Utopia planes the Utopia Planitia administration and a construction center for Starfleet equipment and starship components was built, while in a geosynchronous orbit 16626 m above, first of all three dry docks were constructed, which were based on the already thirty year old San Francisco yard in orbit over Earth, as well as two special stations for the easy maintenance of the newly-developed starship classes with a saucer design, which should replace the Daedalus class ships put out of service in 2196, and two smaller starbases, the Utopia Planitia Stations for ASDB planning and observation tasks. Because of the acute lack of (modern) vessels, after the first construction phase had been completed in 2208, the production at Utopia Planitia, only completed by 41% at that time, was started under the command of the ASDB command staff member Admiral Tiron Narsu, the son of the legendary first commander of Starbase 12. One of the first projects was the large-scale production of the Icarus class produced on a small scale since 2201, a pioneering design followed by many other revolutionary developments in the next hundred years which have been planned in the Utopia Planitia Stations and constructed in the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards.
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Dimension / Webmaster. Last update: January 1st, 2001
