Post Enterprise size

[McAvoy]

I was thinking about this. Is there any reason not to think subsequent ship designs after Enterprise will be much bigger than the last? Yeah there was a ppure warship that for some reason is a couple of kilometers long or more but that doesn't mean the next generation of Enterprise will be that big.

Of course thre is no reason to think there will be an Excelsior class or Galaxy class a hundred years later.

[Teaos]

Well they would obviously have drydocks and shipyards big enough to build them, so they could just continue to do so.

One of the big arguments against massive ships in the TNG era would be the need for massive infrastructure improvements to build and house them.

[McAvoy]

Considering they build ships in what looks like light structures that can easily be expanded that isn't a big issue
Yeah the orbital spacedock could be a limitation but honestly it shouldn't be.

But it seems like Starfleet was building larger ships than TOS since the beginning. The other ships were of similar size to Enterprise that we saw in the fleet.

Though the dock that housed Vengeance was solid so there is that.

[Teaos]

Not only the docks, but universal parts that are mass produced ect. Also they would have the skills to build large warp cores and nacelles which I presume would be a specialised skill set.

[Jim]

They always showed ships being made in things that were basically like... giant spiders or snake ribs... open structures. I do not understand the argument about not being able to build bigger. It is not an enclosed structure. It is a free-floating open lattice/scaffold.

[Graham Kennedy]

I don't see why there's any real limit to the size of the ships, never have. What would be the limiting factor here? Materials strength? We already build ships 1,600 feet long today and we're nowhere near the limits of even present day materials. Trek ships are built of materials OF THE FUTURE!, with structural integrity / inertial dampeners on top. Don't see any reason why they couldn't be miles long if they wanted to make them that big.

Launching from the surface? They have sublight drives that can pull thousands of gees, minimum. Against one gee they should be able to lift pretty much any object you can think of with ease.

And it's not like they have to worry about fitting through the Panama Canal or anything, right? The only thing similar is fitting through Spacedock doors, which doesn't even apply in the Abramsverse. And even if it did, the smallest iteration of Spacedock we've ever seen was easily big enough inside to fit a ship ten times the size of the Connie... it was literally a matter of fitting through the doors themselves, and how hard/expensive can it really be to make the doors bigger?

And certainly accessing the exterior ports on the Abrams iteration of Spacedock isn't an issue. Look at how they're parked, there's easily enough room at any of those docking points for ships five times the size before crowding became an issue. So no, I really don't see what infrastructure limitations there could be.

Seems to me that they just make the ships as big as they think they need them to be. If they decided to make a Starship the size of Spacedock itself tomorrow, I don't see one single thing that would make it impossible.

[McAvoy]

We do not build ships today not much bigger than 1200 feet despite we can build practically any ship of any size. It is all about infrastructure. It is the other reason why USN carriers haven't grown in size and in fact the Nimitz class is tubby in cross section.

[Graham Kennedy]

But the infrastructure limitation doesn't really apply to Starfleet, that we know of.

[McAvoy]

There might be.

Physical size isn't an issue for other powers. I doubt size is an issue for Starfleet so it has to be something else.

[Teaos]

Well from what we have seen, all the powers seem to build ships of similar size. Even the large Romulan ships arent that much bigger.

[McAvoy]

At that point we are talking about mass and not dimensions.

[Graham Kennedy]

There might be.

Sure there might be. There might be a race of information parrots that fly through subspace squaking messages from planet to planet, too.

The question is, is there any reason to think that it's true?

[Teaos]

Well one obvious reason to build small rather than big, is you get more ships which cover more space.

[McAvoy]

There might be.

Sure there might be. There might be a race of information parrots that fly through subspace squaking messages from planet to planet, too.

The question is, is there any reason to think that it's true?

False equivalency.

You can easily use real word examples to describe Star Trek industrial or political reasons.

[Graham Kennedy]

You can easily use real word examples to describe Star Trek industrial or political reasons.

Which real world examples, though? Like I said before, the main real world limitations to ship size are the limits on port facilities and choke points. We are explicitly shown that these do not apply - there are no choke points, and ports we've seen can easily handle far larger ships. So what real world limitations do you think apply?