The Olympic-class is a medical supply/hospital ship with a spherical main hull.
The Pasteur was shown in the parallel reality in TNG: "All Good Things", however, it is confirmed that the class (first designated as Hope-class) exists. Since the registry of the Pasteur is not higher than "present" registries, it can be supposed that the individual ship is real, too. The above image is taken from the Star Trek Fact Files and is much closer to the studio model than the one from the Encyclopedia II.
The idea that the Olympic-class may be derived from the Daedalus-class is only bad speculation in my opinion. In engineering, very different design considerations may easily lead to the same shape if it's a simple shape. Personally, I think that the two ships have absolutely nothing in common except for the spherical main hull. I could well imagine that a variant or sister design of the Olympic comes with a traditional saucer which would ultimately invalidate the idea of a Deadalus-Olympic lineage. |
