[Ace]

The captain of the United Earth NV-06 Republic, beginning a 5 year mission of exploration after the Earth-Romulan war. A refit Intrepid using advances from the NX project, the Republic can attain speeds of up to warp 5.5. Her arsenal includes a full compliment of fission torpedoes and point defence phase cannons.

Intrepid mesh- Jack ONeill
Original uniform textures and ship modifications

[jr2]

Me wonders... why they are using fission so far into the future?  Fusion bombs are more destructive, they use fissionable material surrounding a fusionable material to start a fusion reaction... the better ones then use fissionable material outside that to make it even more powerful.  Just wondering why they don't use that... although, prolly expense comes into play.

[Ace]

Well sort of stuck with Spock's whole "primitive nuclear weapons" line, not that Berman and Braga paid any attention.

Even with the complete mess that Earth was in during the late 20th and early 21st century in Trek, there would still be plenty of nuclear stockpiles ready to be converted to be used against the Romulans.

The "primitive sensors and no visual" that Spock also mentioned can also be tied in with the cloaking technologies used. If you can't see the ships why bother with such equipment on a warship? Similarly it means more precise weapons won't be useful, so using high-yield nuclear weapons (fission, fission induced fusion, and anti-matter induced fusion) makes sense.

Anyway, the Republic is a war-Intrepid refitted for peacetime. The torpedo tubes are visible below:

[NGTM-1R]

Me wonders... why they are using fission so far into the future? 

Cheap, well-understood technology with a minimal failure rate, and in the Enterprise era they could probably be manufactured in the field in a pinch. Fusion weapons are a good bit more demanding in a technical sense, require finer tolerances and so forth.

[jr2]

Hmm, makes sense.  Thx.

[Ace]

[Mustang19]

Me wonders... why they are using fission so far into the future? 

Cheap, well-understood technology with a minimal failure rate, and in the Enterprise era they could probably be manufactured in the field in a pinch. Fusion weapons are a good bit more demanding in a technical sense, require finer tolerances and so forth.

A fusion bomb is a hydrogen bomb, which has been around since the 1950s. Several times more destructive, although harder to make. Most modern nuclear weapons use H-bombs, it's not some exotic futuristic technology.

[jr2]

I"m aware of that.  Hence my wondering why they were using fission.  Although it makes sense that fission would be cheaper, even then.