Starfleet size

[Teaos]

Starfleet numbers

Ok this is something I have been wanting to be covered for awhile now.

I suppose generally this ties into the total size of Starfleet. Which Graham covered here http://www.ditl.org/index.php?daybody=/ ... cle.php?14

But what I want to cover is the individual costs of each starship.

Just how much does it take to build field and maintain a starship?

This was brought on by Rocheys and others comments on how if they were in charge they would slap a few feet of extra armor on ships and quadruple the thickness of bulk heads and have multiple warp cores

But to do that would take a lot more resources and labor vastly reducing the amount of ships fielded.

We have no reason to assume that Starfleet doesn't have the most starships it can reasonably field. While you can say all you like how Starfleet are morons and make bad ships there is no reason to assume they wouldn't make as many bad ships as they reasonably can.

We also have to take into account the numbers.

150 Member worlds with an undetermined amount of colony world probably ranging from 1000 to several thousand.

I think it the population thread we settled on a population of anywhere from 1-5 trillion.

Federation space is 8000 light years across but un undeterminded length wide and tall. We also don't know if that is a block or spots. But even assuming lower numbers for the width and height you still get some thing like:

8000x2000x2000= 3.2 billion light years of space, And that's a conservative number.

According to Grahams research which seems pretty solid the lowest number it could be is 1000 which is far to low and makes little sense over all. More realistically it could be 7-10 thousand with and unrealistic but possible upper limit of 70,000 ships.

So while we do have some canon evidence for the size of Starfleet it is vague at best.

I personally think that a starship takes a rather large amount of resources to build and field. There is also a minimum number of ships that Starfleet to fill the essential rolls of peace keeping and boarder patrol along with extra missions like mapping and exploration. Thus they have to use what resources they have to field the amount and type of ships they need.

[Jordanis]

Resources for the Federation are more or less limited to 'energy'. Replicators can presumably give you every part of the individual starship, though it might be at cheaper energy cost to do it more crudely for less exact parts. It's really difficult to say what kind of energy it takes to build a starship, and what kind of energy a planet can produce.

It's a lot easier to talk about crews. Let's take the US Armed Forces, because they're a convenient example. Just now, all branches down to the reserves and support personnel comprise 2,080,000 people, more or less, out of the total US population of 303,000,000. .686% of the population.

Let's cut that percentage in half, because Starfleet is supposed to be super-awesome in terms of the skill of its crews. (You could argue that being in Starfleet is considered a more prestigious career than being in the US military, so Starfleet could maintain the higher percentage and quality standards, but we'll be conservative for now) So .343% of the Federation for recruiting. That works out to 3,430,000,000 for the low-end estimate of 1 trillion Federation citizens.

Let's say it takes nine Starfleeters on Starbases, R&D bases, shipyards, scientific bases, administrative offices, etc etc to each one on a starship. Okay, now we have a starship crew pool of 343 million sentients. We could crew 343,000 Galaxy-class starships!

I think it's pretty clear that Starfleet must be even more selective than that, so let's look at the US Special Forces. Wikipedia estimates the Green Berets at ~4,500, the Rangers at "three batallions" (Call it 2,500, then), the SEALs at ~2,500, no estimate for the 1st Special Operations Wing (call it 2,500 again), and the Marines' Force Reconnaissance at "four companies" (call it 800).

That adds up to 12,800 elite personnel over the US population of 303,000,000. At this point the computer calculator moves to scientific notation, and it works out to .00422%.

Let's multiply by 1 trillion again! 42,200,000. This seems more like it. Let's go once again with 10% crewing starships, we get 4.22 million sentients. Now we can only crew 4,220 GCS, how puny. But when you break it out into all those ships with much smaller companies, you probably run it out to ~10,500 starships. Plus as many giant starbases as you care to build. That's the best guess I can make, because I am really not prepared to attempt to tackle energy production and consumption.

[Teaos]

Thats pretty damn good way to look at it Jordanis ++ to you

And we do have quite a bit of evidence that Starfleet is very selective. Picard took two tries to get in. Yarr took several tries I think. Data only came second in his class and he has perfect recall most of the time.

[Jordanis]

Thats pretty damn good way to look at it Jordanis ++ to you

And we do have quite a bit of evidence that Starfleet is very selective. Picard took two tries to get in. Yarr took several tries I think. Data only came second in his class and he has perfect recall most of the time.

Data probably did something strange on something similar to a Kobayashi Maru and an evaluator thought he was too cold-blooded.

As to the analysis, I built a star-nation from scratch and pilfered & rationalized treknology, so I developed a lot of breakdowns like this to figure out how much or how big for all sorts of things.

[Harley Filben]

I think it the population thread we settled on a population of anywhere from 1-5 trillion.

In Nemesis Riker said that destroying Earth would "destroy humanity" and "cripple the Federation". That would mean that Earth still holds the vast majority of human population. Since Earth holds most of humanity and humanity seems to comprise a large percentage of Federation can it's population really be that high? This would suggest a number closer to 10-100 billion assuming Earth's population is ~10 billion.

Federation space is 8000 light years across but un undeterminded length wide and tall. We also don't know if that is a block or spots. But even assuming lower numbers for the width and height you still get some thing like:

8000x2000x2000= 3.2 billion light years of space, And that's a conservative number.

That is in no way a conservative number. USA spreads across 8000km from Maine to Hawaii and 6500km from southern Texas to northern Alaska. That doesn't mean that assuming USA territory is 8000kmx6500km or 52 million km2 is in any way a conservative estimate.
A conservative estimate would be assuming that Federation consists ONLY of 150 systems and 1000 colonies with non-Federation space in between.

[Teaos]

Or it could be that Riker being a human being from Earth was over stating Earths importance. You cant take that statement at face value.

[Harley Filben]

PICARD
He would only have built a weapon of such scope for one reason. He is going after Earth.
TROI
How can you be certain?
PICARD
I know how he thinks
RIKER
Destroy humanity, you cripple the Federation.
PICARD
The Romulans invade.

This was a discussion about the tactical and strategic situation between Romulans and Federation and about Shinzon's intentions. I don't see why Riker would make erroneous statements when Picard would be making decisions based on input from his senior crew.

[Teaos]

Destroying Earth in a suprise attack would cripple the Federation as that is where the head of starfleet the president the council and most of the admirals are.

But it wouldnt come close to destoying humanity in the sense of knocking off a large percent of its numbers. It would how ever drastically weaken their galactic power.

[Mikey]

I have to agree with Teaos. It really sounds as if Riker meant "destroy" metaphorically, as in "subjugate the will of..."

[Harley Filben]

Riker clearly makes a distinction between "crippled" and "destroyed". Which means he wasn't trying to be metaphorical but stating the consequences of Earth's destruction.
If someone dropped a 5Mt nuke on New York you couldn't say that it would "destroy" Americans. It would, however, destroy New Yorkers and cripple the United States.
Granted Humanity could have a much smaller percentage of the overall Federation population and still be the main player similar to US which has 4.6% of world's population and by far the largest military. But that doesn't change the fact that size of the fleet will be basically limited by human economy and population.

[Mikey]

I could say that 9/11/01 "destroyed" me, because of my proximity and the number of friends I had who were involved. It's merely a turn of phrase. Of course any species' home planet will be the major population center for that species; but I think it's beyond the scope of common sense to take Riker literally and assume that every single human in the galaxy who isn't on a starship is currently residing on Earth.

[Harley Filben]

Of course I never claimed that Earth holds 99.999999999% of the population. In fact we know that there is 50 million people living on Moon for example. But we are talking about a large percentage if the humanity can be considered destroyed.

[Jordanis]

You know, one trillion divided by 150 member worlds is only 6.66 billion. That seems like a pretty reasonable number to account for differences in reproduction rate. 8 billion or whatever on Earth balances out 5.33 billion on some less-prolific planet. This doesn't even take into account the colonies, though they always seem to be rather lower-population than you might think for places settled 200 years.

[Mikey]

You know, one trillion divided by 150 member worlds is only 6.66 billion. That seems like a pretty reasonable number to account for differences in reproduction rate. 8 billion or whatever on Earth balances out 5.33 billion on some less-prolific planet. This doesn't even take into account the colonies, though they always seem to be rather lower-population than you might think for places settled 200 years.

So, even if we go with Harvey's ~10 billion figure for Earth's population, we are still talking in the 1 trillion neighborhood for the UFP. Given that, I'd be willing to go with Jordanis' formula, although I actually think it might be a little light - you only figured spec ops for modern RL forces, and I think including the enlisted consituency of Starfleet would grow that number.

[Enkidu]

One of my personal most hated episodes of TNG:

http://www.ditl.org/index.htm?daymain=/heddaystrom.php

Wesley is trying to get into the academy. There is one place for the entire sector for that year, which presumably must contain a few inhabited worlds, and he is in competition with three(?) other ubermensch, each one who would seem to have the ability to revolutionize science and engineering. 'Cept for the big haired girl of course. She has a massive IQ, but she's just a girl.
The thought that all the Ensigns who get fried on away teams have gone through this, and are that gifted, seems bizarre. With standards this high, and stupidly rigid, I'm surprised Starfleet can muster enough crew a shuttle.
Then there is the mention in several episodes of cadets needing sponsorship from a SF officer to apply to the academy. This closed shop seems very undemocratic to me.