SS Valiant The SS " Valiant " was an Earth starship that was in service in the mid - 21st century . In 2065 , the " Valiant " embarked on a mission of deep space exploration . ( , " " ) During the expedition , the " Valiant " encountered a magnetic space storm that overwhelmed her impulse engine s and swept the vessel into the energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy . The galactic barrier caused severe damage to the " Valiant " , and the death of six crewmen . One of the crewmen affected by the barrier began to develop extremely powerful psychokinetic abilities , posing a threat to the ship . In an effort to stop this individual , who was growing more dangerous , the captain of the " Valiant " gave the order to destroy his own ship . Just prior to its destruction , the " Valiant " ejected its own disaster recorder . By 2265 , the " Valiant " had been missing for two hundred years . The " Valiant " s disaster recorder was recovered by the starship , as the " Enterprise " was preparing to probe outside the galaxy . Reviewing the data recovered from the memory banks of the recorder , the crew of the " Enterprise " discovered the final fate of the " Valiant " . ( ) Appendices . Background information . The year of launch and the type of mission for SS " Valiant " were stated on a computer screen graphic in . The episode suggests , however , that the launch might have actually occurred a few years later . In the episode , the " Friendship 1 " probe , launched in 2067 , was said to have paved the way for all the manned missions sent out to contact other species . The first draft of the script stated several facts about the ship that were later removed in subsequent rewrites , including the description when first encountered as an " old class cruiser " with a gross weight of about 190 , 000 ton s . When the disaster recorder was recovered , it was marked with " USS Valiant " and " Galactic Survey Cruiser " . When Spock retrieved the data from the recorder he described the following : " " The U . S . S . Valiant , Class IV stellar cruiser , launched 132 years ago . It was on a mission in this quadrant when last heard from . " " The final draft of the episode ' s script revealed the " Valiant " s call letters as VAL 115 , but was cut from the completed episode . The script also referred to the ship , interchangeably , as both the USS " Valiant " and the " Valiant " , but most commonly with the former of those prefixes . The " Valiant " was again referred to as a galactic survey cruiser in " Star Trek Maps " ( ) , which also gives the vessel the registry NCC - S1104 . According to the same source , the ship exited the galaxy at a vertical upward angle slightly towards the galactic center and encountered the galactic barrier approximately 780 light years away from Earth . The same account of an upward trajectory was repeated in " Star Trek Star Charts " ( ; p . 10 ) . However , the point at which the ship encountered the barrier was depicted to be approximately two thousand light years away from Earth . A reference model of the " Valiant " was built by Greg Jein and photographed by author Mike Okuda for representation in both editions of his ( 1993 and 1996 ) as well as in all editions of his , becoming one of the very few conjectural designs ported over into that otherwise strictly canon work . On its hull , the ship was named " Valiant " , with no USS or SS . The model was also marked with the registry number ADC - 11031 and the number 02 on the bridge module . Of Jein ' s design , an appreciative Okuda has stated , " " I ' m not sure , but I think it may be Greg ' s homage to " , " whose registry also had an ADC prefix . Greg built the " Dark Star " ship model , and he knows I ' m a big fan of that film . " " Jein delivered his model to Okuda without warp nacelle s , but it was decided to add these after all , reusing nacelles from the " " model Jein had also constructed for Okuda ' s " Chronology " project . According to Doug Drexler , this model influenced the design of the , a ship also launched in the 2060s , created for the episode . The model had been one of four Jein had constructed for Okuda out of his own volution , and free of charge . In return , both Okuda and Drexler had tried hard during their tenure on the " Star Trek " franchise to get Jein ' s designs elevated into canon , and while they succeeded for the the , and " Bonaventure " models , the " Valiant " was not one of them ( the other one having been a pre - " Original Series " - era Romulan warbird ) .