a-Boom! No, that wasn’t the sound of “Star Trek. First Contact” hitting theaters nationwide. That was the sound made by the last version of the U.S.S. Enterprise blowing up. And we’ve been hearing that quite a bit lately, haven’t we? And now Star Trek fans have another version of the Enterprise to acquaint themselves with: the Enterprise-E. Making her majestic debut in the recent film “Star Trek: First Contact,” the U.S.S. Enterprise-E is one powerful ship. More powerful than any of the Enterprise’s five earlier versions, one wonders if Captain Robert April, who heimed the technologically inferior first Enterprise 120 years earlier, would even recognize this modern technological wonder. Of the Federation’s fleet, the Enterprise-E is a much sleeker and meaner Enterprise than her earlier versions (Enterprise CVN-65, Enterprise, Enterprise- A, Enterprise-B, etc.). While retaining its mission of long-range space exploration, the Enterprise-E has a much smaller crew than her predecessor Enterprise-D, due to the absence of the section holding the crew’s families. Whether the overall experiment of having families aboard starships for long-terrn rnissions was a failure or just not something the E’s designers wanted for this ship is still unknown. Enterprise-E also appears to be much more capable of answering threats with firepower than her sisters. Armed with phasers and the new “quantum” torpedoes of unrevealed strength, she can now fire those torpedoes in rapid-fire succession, as opposed to her predecessors who could only launch them one at a time. In terms of guidance and computer systems, the Enterprise-E shows many sirnilarities to that of the U.S.S. Voyager, seen on the TV show “Star Trek- Voyager.” The new Enterprise has an organic bio-neural network computer, sirnilar to the shipboard computer of Voyager, which utilizes organic “gel-packs” as part of its computer system. lt’s unknown at this time whether or not the Enterprise is still outfitted with isolinear optical chips-small chips inserted into its computers in large rows- which served as the prirnary software and storage medium on the Enterprise-D. 
When you changed which slot the chips were in, the ship worked different or, when removed, the ship didn’t work at all-a perilous system that has hopefully been done away with. As far as other differences between the Enterprise-E and her earlier versions go, we’ll all have to wait and see what marvels she reveals to us over the course of the next few movies. Unless, of course, it’s blown up in “Star Trek 9,” paving the way for the Enterprise-F.