Why did they wait?

[Coalition]

I'm still waiting for Coalition to prove they can't do what we've seen them do for the last 30 years...

War Enterprise ("Yesterday's Enterprise") had ~4000 troops onboard as routine. A similar number could be used for peace Enterprise, for the civilians (including the kids). Scaling down to Voyager that would be roughly 620 people. So I was wrong. Voyager types could hold almost a thousand people, with only a 50% increase in life support demands.

As to fitting in extra people, has the extra been a large fraction of the regular crew? I.e. adding ten people to Voyager would only increase the life support usage by ~5-7%. Doubling or tripling the personnel on board will cause extra strain. How many people were evacuated by Worf's brother, when he was using the holodeck to simulate caves? How did that compare to the 5000 people the ship handles normally?

For handling extra people, the easy stunt is prepping the ship beforehand, evacuating the people, then after they drop everyone off the whole life support system gets overhauled. Captain Picard and Cmdr LaForge know this, so there is no need to tell the audience (over and over) "we'll be prepping beforehand, and refitting after".

[Mikey]

I've yet to see anything that indicates that the life support system needs to be overhauled - or even tweaked - to accommodate the extra people. No sound, visual, or other effect, nor any intimation of dialogue, indicates anything other than the life support systems were just fine without modification. The logical conclusion is that the life support systems were able to handle the increased demands as a matter of course. The fact that the normal complement of the ship was far under the capacity of the system is evidence of nothing.

[Graham Kennedy]

We do have a couple of indications of Voyager's carrying capacity. In "Prophecy" they beam two hundred and four Klingons on board, apparently without great strain. In "Friendship One" they state that evacuating fifty five hundred aliens would take "at least seventeen trips", so the maximum they can carry is 323. I doubt space is the issue given the size of the ship, so their life support limit would seem to be 470 or so.

[Captain Seafort]

The problem is that that passenger complement is only a couple of times the crew complement, while the GCS can carry far more in proportion to her crew size. Given that both episodes were in season seven I don't think we can discount the possibility (or even probability) that Voyager's life support was no longer up to spec. Enough to maintain her existing crew, but with a lot less free capacity than she would have had had she been properly maintained.

[Graham Kennedy]

This may simply be an advantage of the Galaxy class, though. In real life it's rarely the case that every aspect of capability scales directly to size. Typically bigger hulls allow additional capabilities that smaller ones don't have at all, or allow disproportionate increases in capability. I have no trouble believing that the big Galaxy hull is designed with extra space for refugees or troops over and above the straight increase in volume compared to an Intrepid.

[Mikey]

This may simply be an advantage of the Galaxy class, though. In real life it's rarely the case that every aspect of capability scales directly to size. Typically bigger hulls allow additional capabilities that smaller ones don't have at all, or allow disproportionate increases in capability. I have no trouble believing that the big Galaxy hull is designed with extra space for refugees or troops over and above the straight increase in volume compared to an Intrepid.

Indeed, the troop capacity of the wartime GCS is pretty concrete in support of this. There's obviously an awful lot of real estate suitable for berths that was unused in the peacetime GCS, even considering the extraneous extras that were definitely or probably included - arboretum, coffee house, spa, or whatever.

[Graham Kennedy]

Not to mention, even for the standard GCS we know canonically there was at least a large part of one deck that was sealed off and completely unused, ready for future expansion. So there's plenty of space to expand the crew over and above 1000 right there. Backstage sources suggest that as much as 30% of the hull was empty space for future upgrades. We never saw or heard of anything like that on an Intrepid.

[SomosFuga]

I'm still waiting for Coalition to prove they can't do what we've seen them do for the last 30 years...

War Enterprise ("Yesterday's Enterprise") had ~4000 troops onboard as routine. A similar number could be used for peace Enterprise, for the civilians (including the kids). Scaling down to Voyager that would be roughly 620 people. So I was wrong. Voyager types could hold almost a thousand people, with only a 50% increase in life support demands.

I thought 1014 was all people usually on board, including families and that, not only SF personnel.

[Graham Kennedy]

It is.

The actual crew complement is probably in the region of 500 - 800, I'd guess.

[alexmann]

I'd heard that the crew compliment was about 625.

[Griffin]

And where did you get that information? Source?

[McAvoy]

You have to look at today's ships whether it be a passenger liner or a aircraft carrier. In a hull about roughly the same size as a Intrepid they can hold ten to fifty times than the Intrepid. As a troop transport, liners in WW2 could hold up to 15,000 when configured correctly.

Logically, space isn't an issue for a Intrepid or a Galaxy class so it has to be something else. Perhaps power demands like food replication, waste extraction, or air.

Since the Intrepid and the Galaxy class is more like a Liner than a aircraft carrier, I'd probably go with those figures. If we went by warship standards, the Galaxy class could easily hold up to 50,000+ or more if everyone was given a 6x3x3ft. or less private space. High ranking officers would get their own room but be much smaller than what we see in TNG or VOY.

Even using the Defiant's arrangements would save space.

[shran]

You could further increase that number by hotbunking. What would we get for that?

[Graham Kennedy]

You have to look at today's ships whether it be a passenger liner or a aircraft carrier. In a hull about roughly the same size as a Intrepid they can hold ten to fifty times than the Intrepid. As a troop transport, liners in WW2 could hold up to 15,000 when configured correctly.

One might argue that there are vital internal systems which take up a far greater percentage of the volume - for instance the nacelles are huge in comparison to the engines on any present day ship.

But really, beyond that it just isn't the case. Warp cores, fuel storage, etc - these things are tiny in comparison to the ship as a whole. Meanwhile the crew wander around in suites that could comfortably hold ten people and still not be crowded by modern ship standards. Spacewise, the GCS could easily carry ten or twenty thousand people simply by stacking some bunk beds in those gigantic rooms everybody lives in.

Logically, space isn't an issue for a Intrepid or a Galaxy class so it has to be something else. Perhaps power demands like food replication, waste extraction, or air.

I wonder about this. Air really shouldn't be a problem... as long as You can scrub CO2 it's pretty easy to maintain an atmosphere, and CO2 scrubbers are neither difficult nor especially power consuming. Water recycling might be more of a problem, but again, it's not that hard to recycle water. Heat... well Trek pretends that the ship would get cold if they didn't heat it, but since they already do heat the entire ship anyway this isn't an issue. Similarly gravity, shouldn't be an issue.

Food is a potential issue. Nuclear submarines are the closest thing we have to how a spaceship might operate and the limiting factor for their endurance is food. But how much power can replicators use, really? Surely they can't be all that energy intensive. Besides, fill a few cargo bays with ration packs or plain old freezers and you'd have plenty of food. If replicators are so power hungry that they can't compete with that they have no business being invented in the first place.

Waste disposal I simply dismiss out of hand. Okay, you might not be able to recycle it all - so dump it into space. On an interstellar scale the level of contamination left by the whole of Starfleet operating for a millennia would be infinitesimal.

Even using the Defiant's arrangements would save space.

Oh hell yes. Defiant actually has quite luxurious living arrangements - a comfortable sized room, maybe six by ten or so, with two bunks. A private space with a door and you even get a food replicator. Most in today's Navy would be delighted to have such room, but if all you did to a GCS was swap out the accommodations for rooms like that throughout you'd fit tens of thousands aboard easily.

[SomosFuga]

Even in NX-01 they were quite comfortable.
So SF shouldn't have problems carring lots of troops around in those huge ships. Now what canon ship should they use for that purpuse?