Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

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Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by AlexMcpherson79 »

The CVN-65 USS Enterprise was 342m long (same length as the USS Voyager, near enough), 40m wide at the waterline (78m extreme, taking the flight deck and elevators into account), and had a height - keel to mast about 76m. So, at LEAST half the width of the USS Voyager, but just a hair taller, or smaller if you disregard the masts on the tower.

It was able to hold up to 90 aircraft. And a maximum crew compliment of 5828.

(Its part of an argument I'm making in a fanfic story I'm plotting out that the Intrepid class, when used in a, say, five year deep-space rol, would have way more than just 150 crewmembers aboard)

So the NCC-1701 Enterprise having a crew of anything below 1,000 as far as I'm concerned, is actually reasonable.
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

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AlexMcpherson79 wrote:The CVN-65 USS Enterprise was 342m long (same length as the USS Voyager, near enough), 40m wide at the waterline (78m extreme, taking the flight deck and elevators into account), and had a height - keel to mast about 76m. So, at LEAST half the width of the USS Voyager, but just a hair taller, or smaller if you disregard the masts on the tower.

It was able to hold up to 90 aircraft. And a maximum crew compliment of 5828.

(Its part of an argument I'm making in a fanfic story I'm plotting out that the Intrepid class, when used in a, say, five year deep-space rol, would have way more than just 150 crewmembers aboard)

So the NCC-1701 Enterprise having a crew of anything below 1,000 as far as I'm concerned, is actually reasonable.
among the consumables to be taken into account for the volumes needed on board, the air and the vital support, which on a real ship are not necessary, must not be forgotten.

At the time of TOS, moreover, it could have been more complicated than in TNG, in the absence of replicators.
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by AlexMcpherson79 »

Go back to the Midway class and you still get thousands of people on a ship the same length as the original constitution, with sufficient consumables for said people, and aviation facilities for its role of aicraft carrier.

The Constitution acts more like, a battleship. Or Cruiser, anyway. Phasers: equivalnt to short-range guns and point-defences, and photons as missiles. with a flight deck for a handful of shuttles/helicopters. now make those helicopters AH-64 Apaches or something... and you have at least modern trek shuttles'.

Trek ships do have replicators and such, so there's actually less space required to store consumables - but say the ship was built to work for months, rather than years, and higher crew counts are actually more and more reasonable.
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by Graham Kennedy »

This has long been a bugbear of mine, that sci fi writers love to write ships that are immensely huge and then treat them as though they're really quite small.

Truth is, the Enterprise is a huge ship.

Okay, there's a site that has the volume of different Trek ships, based on CGI models and such. From them, the Connie has a volume of 211,000 m^3. And I can personally confirm that that's in the ballpark, because I've made my own CGI model in blender and blender has an addon which lets it tell you the volume of your model.

Now modern Navy ships do not quote their volume, but they do quote their displacement, which is the same as the total mass of the ship. And I generally assume that a ship has an average density of about 350 kg/m^3.

At that density the Enterprise would mass about 73,000 metric tons. Now to be clear, I'm not saying that the Enterprise does have a mass of 73,000 metric tons. What I'm saying is that it is of comparable volume to a present day Navy ship of 73,000 tons.

How big is that? Well it's significantly bigger than the Queen Elizabeth carriers, which very comfortably house a crew of 1,600, plus fuel, ammunition, etc. And QE is a very undermanned ship compared to many. A Nimitz class is about 50% larger and houses over 5,000 crew.

So yeah... a Connie is a BIG ship. You could easily walk around it for hours, you could easily get lost. I've walked around a dinky little 11,000 ton cruiser - which itself housed a crew of about 800, despite being at least six times smaller than a Connie - and it's a long day with a lot to see.

So yeah, I can easily see a Connie having space for 430 people - and in a good deal more comfort than even the most luxurious of today's Naval ships. And with room for supplies and all that stuff, too.
bladela wrote:
AlexMcpherson79 wrote:The CVN-65 USS Enterprise was 342m long (same length as the USS Voyager, near enough), 40m wide at the waterline (78m extreme, taking the flight deck and elevators into account), and had a height - keel to mast about 76m. So, at LEAST half the width of the USS Voyager, but just a hair taller, or smaller if you disregard the masts on the tower.

It was able to hold up to 90 aircraft. And a maximum crew compliment of 5828.

(Its part of an argument I'm making in a fanfic story I'm plotting out that the Intrepid class, when used in a, say, five year deep-space rol, would have way more than just 150 crewmembers aboard)
It's possible. One explanation for the Enterprise only having about 200 people aboard in The Cage is that this represents the regular complement needed to run the ship, whilst for the 5 year mission there was also a couple of hundred science types aboard - mission specialists, essentially. I like that idea, it makes a lot of sense.

The Intrepids are triple the volume of the Connies (625,885 m^3), so if you packed them to that level you'd expect close on 1,300 crew. Even at that level they'd still be pretty comfortable ships.

Of course, the crew per unit volume fell hugely from TOS to TNG. The Galaxy class have a volume of 5,820,983 m^3 - at Connie crew densities that would let you have over 11,000 people. But they had a crew of only 1,014, even with a long term mission and a full on science department.

Scaled to a Galaxy, a, Intrepid would only have a crew of 110, lower than the canonical figure. But that holds up well, because everyone raved about the Galaxy being like a space hotel basically, and a small ship like an Intrepid would not be as comfy.

So the idea of a core Intrepid crew in the canonical 140 range, with the option to take a couple of hundred more for a long duration exploratory mission makes a lot of sense. Still much more space than a Connie, but significantly more crowded than a Galaxy class.
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by AlexMcpherson79 »

Ya know, I'm pleased you agree with my reasoning (and obviously looked at it properly at some point).

Another point for starship sizes getting bigger, in the TNG era, but not too big: Matter Replicators in the industrial use. do we know if they had the tech in the TOS era? I doubt it, not in an 'make anything' kind of way, but likewise do I think it was introduced/improved for the Excelsior? I like to think so. Maybe much of the TMP Conny refit was only possible because of matter replicators?

Another indicator of crew size is in the Escape Pods. Voyager has 42. That's the number of hatches on the model. (a different figure is quoted in the Voyager 'technical manual'). At six people each, that's 252.
Now, Deck 1 has two pods, presumably the bridge crew plus empty slots. and at 6 people each, that's only 12 seats. Captain, Xo, Helm, Tactical, Ops, that one where Seven usually stands, there's six. There's easily standing consoles on the back for five people, but lets say that the extra six are for relief officers on the deck, and for any guests there.

What is weird, is that there's ten pods on deck 15, another four on deck 14 yet only two on deck 5, where sickbay and presumably a lot of the quarters are. deck 7, which must loose a lot of interior space to the cargo bays of deck 8, has ten, while again, deck 6 which I presume is another deck taken largely by quarters, only has six. (I'd have put more on decks 5 and 6, none on deck 15)

Just more of "Voyager producers were inconsistent/did insufficient planning"/etc, even though the Model itself and that it was smaller than the Galaxy meant they should have done MORE. Indeed, physical-model wise, they did, and the CGI team worked close in order to make exterior-to-interior and vice-versa fit. something we didn't get much of in TNG.


Voyager is consistently shown at the correct scale. The Delta Flyer wasn't but thats because they realised they needed more space for it. (They should have bit the bullet and asked to reuse the runabout set with alterations to make it the Aeroshuttle and say the ship didn't have one installed - the shape was a placeholder for one - but Seven's addition meant they could alter it, so the upper exterior didn't have to be fully starfleet. Hell they could have made the delta flyer the aeroshuttle full stop. But I think, maybe the set was used for the Type 11 in insurrection? On the other hand, Insurrection also stole the Type 9 interior for the scoutship.

Anyway, ship size and compliment.

Lets say that Voyager did have space for, say, four of each type - the Type 8 and 9. They add to an emergency evacuation of the ship limit. pilot and copilot seats, mean 16 total crew, with the four type 8s adding a further 24 to the number in the passenger compartment. so 40 people, plus the 252 on escape pods : 292.

This is why the JJ movie showed so many shuttles for the HUMONGOUS kelvin - there weren't escape pods as the shuttles themselves are the escape pods. forty or so shuttles?, with around ten people each, four hundred people.

Now, if we were to really cram 500 people on the Intrepid Class for a five year+ mission of deep space exploration, maybe the 42 escape pods were redesigned for, at a push, eight people? 336. plus six shuttles of the type 8? 48+336=384. No, I think the auxiliary craft count is still too low. Two Type 8's could park in the first bay side-by-side in the short area where the delta flyer is shown parked. the big area seen, mainly, when the DF was under construction? easily another six in there... with space for a pair of type 9s. so 8 t8s, 2 t9s. Total, 68. plus 8-person pods: 404. hmm. still... what if 10 people per pod? 488. Then, with the aeroshuttle maybe... a crew of four (like the danube), and passenger count of eight? 500.
On a ship 343 or 344 metres long (places quote both), 15 decks, and only 181 quarters. I may be relying on the 'Strategic Design' fan-produced deck plans by Tim Paigut and david schmidt for the number of quarters.


If we really wanted to go mad, for the TOS Enterprise we could calculate how large the crew compliment could be at full capacity, with junior officers hotbunking, and enlisted both hotbunking and sharing with like, three others? aka 8 per room... and based on his numbers of 544 RV's equating to 544 Quarters... Now, in my breakdown for the Intrepid class, of the 181 quarters, 1 is the captains, 20 are senior officers, 70 are junior officers, and 88 are enlisted, with four vip quarters. so near enough half of the crew quarters are enlisted, the other half split 2:7 for Senior:Junior officers. so... 2:7:8. Total 17. Lets say some of the enlisted are just guest quarters, as 544 is a multiple of 17. so... 544 Quarters, divide into 17, x 2: 64. this becomes
64:224:256. So, 64 senior officers aboard at single occupancy. 448 junior officers who share, whether two beds or just hot bunking in double shifts.... and HOLY CRAP 2,048 enlisted, as four beds and hotbunking, so eight crewmen per quarters.

The TOS Enterprise could have a crew of 2,560.

okay... drop the hotbunking, though Junior officers are double occupancy.

64; 448; 1024. Total 1,536.
Okay... so say the Juniors do have privacy, one per room, and the enlisted quarters only have two per room.
800. Dead on.

The Excelsior fits at 750 crew if they number of quarters are the same, with plenty of guest room!

And the crew of DS9's USS Defiant thought it was bad on their ship.
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by DarkMoineau »

Starfleet ships clearly are comfortable cruise ships when it comes to space on board.

That's nice, would you like to share a bed for 3 to 7 years long missions?
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by bladela »

DarkMoineau wrote:Starfleet ships clearly are comfortable cruise ships when it comes to space on board.

That's nice, would you like to share a bed for 3 to 7 years long missions?

near a giant amoeba of course :P
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by DarkMoineau »

Ok ^^
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by AlexMcpherson79 »

DarkMoineau wrote:Starfleet ships clearly are comfortable cruise ships when it comes to space on board.

That's nice, would you like to share a bed for 3 to 7 years long missions?
Ok so no Hotbunking... except in emergencies, but those numbers were to show like, emergency evacation capacities type of thing. (You know, that would have made for a good episode or two - teaser shows the Enterprise-D and several other vessels near a starbase thats clearly badly damaged...)
"How soon until evacuation of Starbase Seventy-Three, number one?"

"Another two hours, sir, and we've already filled several of the shelter-converted cargo bays. At this rate, we'll need to start placing them in crew quarters."

"Do so, number one."

Data spoke up. "Sir, I have calculated that if we place eighteen people to each crew quarters-"

Aghast, Riker stared and muttered, "Eighteen..."

-
Five minutes from end of episode.

"Worf, what the hell is going on in your quarters?"

Worf, his yellow uniform stained with red, just blankly blinked and with no emotion, asked, "Please Restate the Question."

At his console, Data calmly held onto Spot the Sixth (Or eighth already, given how quickly Spot the Fourth and Fifth died from the overcrowding). Picard was stood beside the android, non-verbally critiquing the artwork on the pedestal next to said console.

Behind Worf's station, several crewmen who operate the wall stations weren't even in uniform.
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by DarkMoineau »

It would have been fun and we know it can happen.
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by bladela »

could not the limit crew be limited by the maximum capacities of life support?

This problem would limit a sea ship much less.
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by DarkMoineau »

bladela wrote:could not the limit crew be limited by the maximum capacities of life support?

This problem would limit a sea ship much less.
Indeed but a space ship would still be able to hold more peoples in evacutation than in normal situation.
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by bladela »

surely, my idea is that the crews of today's ships are not comparable to those of a starship, oxygen is not a limited good.

A better comparison is possible with submarines.
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Re: Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

Post by Mikey »

Subs have snorkels to replenish air.

OTOH, if ‘Trek ships can create foodstuffs from raw organic goo, surely they can extract O2 from CO2?
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