Union Class Medium Transport

The Union Class is considered the workhorse transport ship of the Exploration and Defense Fleet and also used by various civilian operators. With 27 variants developed starting shortly after the foundation of the UDSA Shipyards and thousands of ships in service, it is hard to think of life in the UDSA without it.  

History

  With design work starting shortly after the establishment of the UDSA Shipyards, the Union is the oldest still-operational EDF. The first Union Class ship, the DES Friendship SCC-108, entered service on UDSA Standard Date 8478, and the type has been in production since, for nearly 400 years. The recent variants bear little technical resemblance to the original design, carrying over only the hull layout and name.   Design work on a replacement for the Union class, tentatively named the Blizzard, featuring a new Entangled Tachyon Pulse Spacetime Tunnel Propulsion System for longer range transportation.  

Variants

  The Union Class has been produced in cargo, crew, and hybrid variants over 9 major generations, as well as some specialized one-off modifications. The variants are designated with two letters, the first designating the generation (where A is the first generation and I is the latest) and the second indicating the layout, where U stands for the cargo layout, P stands for the crew layout, and H is used for the hybrid layout.   Currently, 21432 cargo variant, 8942 crew variant, and 13423 hybrid variant Unions are in operation, making it by far the most common starship type in the galaxy. The oldest Unions still in service are of the FU variant.