Star Trek: The Formation Of Starfleet, Explained

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The United Federation of Planets, the fictional space government present within the Star Trek universe, was designed to show a utopia of human creativity and ingenuity, a fictional representation of humanity's future. While the franchise plays with this idealized image in the later series (especially during Picard) it is often shown to be the pinnacle of a united Government. A large part of this is Starfleet, an organization run by the Federation — but what exactly is it?

Starfleet actually predated the formation of the Federation. It was originally created specifically by the united Earth government, specifically the United Earth Space Probe Agency, or UESPA for short — essentially, it was a more practical NASA. Things get a little hazy when regarding when exactly it was founded, though its origins are thought to be somewhere between 2112 and 2136. Around this time it funded projects by Zefram Cochrane, who went on to discoverer warp capabilities and initiate first contact with the logic fanatics, the ever-so-stoic Vulcans. Once the Federation formed in 2161, Starfleet gradually shifted from being a human-run, specifically UESPA, organization, to being one supported and maintained by, and thus serving, the Federation as a whole.

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While it might be easy to classify Starfleet as the Federation's military, that definition wouldn't be quite right. Fans are divided on this definition, as Starfleet has numerous parallels with modern military organizations, but these parallels also stir a lot of conflicting emotions. They use the same military ranks, such as commander and captain, follow the same military chain of command, and even have very similar regulations and