Crew of the Enterprise-D

[SchwEnt]

Right. I was gonna say...
Are you strictly talking about the crew required to operate the ship itself, keep it functioning? Or are you also including crew needed to have the ship fulfill missions and operate as a starship?

All the security and medical and tactical and ordnance and science personnel can be dropped right off, they're not needed to operate the vessel. Correct?

But maybe the OP is referring to minimal ship complement to carry out Galaxy-class missions for Starfleet. That would be different.

[MacLeod]

I would say the crew compliment was around the 500 mark(No More than 600). Not that much more than a Constitution Class

500 Crew. Allowing 50 % To have a partner = 750. 50% with an average of 2 children = 1000

[tighr]

I would say that the crew compliment could be well under 400, given that there is 100 years of advancement in technology and automation between the TOS Enterprise and Enterprise-D. I would even go so far as to say that the civilan:crew ratio should be vastly tipped in the direction of the civilians.

As far as Jennifer Sisko, I though that she was a science division Lieutenant or something.

[Timo]

It sounds like the conclusion we're coming to is that the Enterprise and Galaxy-class in general only need about 800 Starfleet personnel to operate them.

In "Timescape", the USS Hera was lost with 800 hands. Backstage sources consider her Nebula class, thus identical in size to Galaxy, supporting the idea that no more than 800 people are needed - and many of those could be passengers, too. (Onscreen, we don't learn how big the Hera would have been, however.)

As far as Jennifer Sisko, I though that she was a science division Lieutenant or something.

We never saw her in uniform, so it's hard to tell. It's only in the novelization of "Emissary" that she is identified as a Starfleet officer.

Timo Saloniemi

[USS KG5]

DavidGutierrez wrote:

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How many people on board the Enterprise were Starfleet personnel?

I've always figured it varied drastically at any one time. The internal space of the Ent-D is truly vast, and there is no reason to believe she could not comfortably accommodate 25,000 people if necessary.

If the usual complement is more like 1000 or so (as suggested on-screen) then it could include big mission-specific detatchments, like extra security teams, scientists, politicians or diplomats, some of who would be Starfleet and some not.

Maybe 500-600 core Starfleet crew?

[DavidGutierrez]

SchwEnt wrote:

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But maybe the OP is referring to minimal ship complement to carry out Galaxy-class missions for Starfleet. That would be different.

I was talking about the minimum requirement for a fully-crewed Galaxy-class starship ready to carry out missions. Basically, all the Starfleet personnel with none of the civilians attachments or passengers.

I think the 800 figure is more reasonable than the figures below 500. While the Enterprise was indeed much more advanced than Kirk's ship, the size of the ship begs a larger crew. According to Sternbach's TNG Manual, there are two sickbays in the saucer section, for instance. Or, the engineering personnel required to maintain the ship.

Yes, on person could operate the ship a la "Remember Me," but I was speaking more about a fully-crewed ship.

[tighr]

I still think the crew compliment was not that large. Otherwise, it would not have been difficult for Riker to re-arrange the ship to four duty shifts, there would have been sufficient personnel for each post.

[Cmdr.Druss]

SchwEnt wrote:

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Right. I was gonna say...
Are you strictly talking about the crew required to operate the ship itself, keep it functioning? Or are you also including crew needed to have the ship fulfill missions and operate as a starship?

All the security and medical and tactical and ordnance and science personnel can be dropped right off, they're not needed to operate the vessel. Correct?

This was my thought, all though do you need the tactical department for offence/defence? shields and weapons?

Couple of my own thoughts:
What would the minimum/skeleton crew be for an operational vessel?

For the sake of this question, lets say thay 800 crew is the standard for an operational Galaxy-class ship - How many crew are assigned to each department?
Command, engineering, flight control, medical etc...

[sojourner]

tighr wrote:

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I still think the crew compliment was not that large. Otherwise, it would not have been difficult for Riker to re-arrange the ship to four duty shifts, there would have been sufficient personnel for each post.

Um, what? This only makes sense if you assume that a large number of that crew is just waiting around for something to do. Otherwise, the larger the shift crew needed, the more work it's going to take to try and work in an additional shift full of workers without taking on more crew.

It was actually pretty stupid for Jellico to just willy-nilly order Riker to make a change like this. Assuming the ship was staffed for 3 shifts, where was the additional manpower supposed to come from for that fourth shift?

[Timo]

Well, the working hours per day are one constant, and the crew count is another. Four shifts will involve just as many man-hours as three - it's just that some people will have to participate in two shifts when they previously did only one, or in three when they previously did two.

It's not as if we would have seen our main heroes stick to just one shift anyway. Even outside emergencies (when one might assume that people from all shifts are beaten to general quarters) we saw different combinations of heroes awake when, say, Riker or Crusher flaunted their pajamas to the camera.

What would be won by more shifts would be shorter shifts, chiefly - potentially increasing alertness and OTOH giving somewhat greater flexibility in responding to casualties.

Timo Saloniemi

[MacLeod]

DavidGutierrez wrote:

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I was talking about the minimum requirement for a fully-crewed Galaxy-class starship ready to carry out missions. Basically, all the Starfleet personnel with none of the civilians attachments or passengers.

I think the 800 figure is more reasonable than the figures below 500. While the Enterprise was indeed much more advanced than Kirk's ship, the size of the ship begs a larger crew. According to Sternbach's TNG Manual, there are two sickbays in the saucer section, for instance. Or, the engineering personnel required to maintain the ship.

Yes, on person could operate the ship a la "Remember Me," but I was speaking more about a fully-crewed ship.

One of those medical bays could have been for civilian use. A larger ship does not automatically equal more crew.

More advanced automation systems could actually reduce the need for crew to do tasks which they used to, but now the computer does them.

[sojourner]

Timo wrote:

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Well, the working hours per day are one constant, and the crew count is another. Four shifts will involve just as many man-hours as three - it's just that some people will have to participate in two shifts when they previously did only one, or in three when they previously did two...

...What would be won by more shifts would be shorter shifts, chiefly - potentially increasing alertness and OTOH giving somewhat greater flexibility in responding to casualties.

Timo Saloniemi

You realize that having people work double shifts to fill out a 4 shift rotation is essentially just running a 2 shift rotation?

Adding another shift doesn't add any man hours, in that you're correct. lets take for example a shift rotation of 3. You have 3 crew to work that rotation. now your boss asks to add a fourth shift. You have 2 options. Somebody works a double shift or you add another crew member. The former is a scheduling nightmare if you want to keep it fair to the entire crew and also means you'll have a shift that is more exhausted at the end than others. The second option requires another person that needs to be accommodated.

[Timo]

You realize that having people work double shifts to fill out a 4 shift rotation is essentially just running a 2 shift rotation?

Yup - but the point would be that the two separate working periods are shorter by half than the previous single one, which may be to the advantage of the ship in reducing short-term fatigue. And Jellico wouldn't be dealing with the long term, as his intent would be to secure the very existence of the long term through sacrifices made here and now.

We have to consider, though, that Jellico was also factually adjusting the number of crew involved in the various pursuits. He was e.g. removing engineers from the equation and placing them on "standby" security duty - in which case it might indeed be a smart idea to turn the three shifts into just two (as 1/3 of the personnel was lost), and then split each in half to combat the fatigue.

Timo Saloniemi

[Bry_Sinclair]

Timo wrote:

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In "Timescape", the USS Hera was lost with 800 hands. Backstage sources consider her Nebula class, thus identical in size to Galaxy, supporting the idea that no more than 800 people are needed - and many of those could be passengers, too. (Onscreen, we don't learn how big the Hera would have been, however.)

In the episode (actually "Interface") Geordi says about how the ship has "over three hundred people onboard". If the Hera is Nebula-Class she seems very understaffed. However one explanation could be, that since they were just on a routine courier mission they were operating with just a skeleton crew.

Timo wrote:

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We never saw her in uniform, so it's hard to tell. It's only in the novelization of "Emissary" that she is identified as a Starfleet officer.

I always assumed that Jennifer was a civilian. Her line in "Emissary" about watching out for junior officers seems an odd thing to say for someone who was in Starfleet. She is never seen in uniform and in the Mirror Universe on the Defiant, Ben treats her like she doesn't know much about engineering/science (she has to remind him that over there she is Professor Sisko).

Perhaps the Saratoga was a survey ship, not intended for frontline combat and as such permitted to have family members onboard (she was pressed into service at Wolf 359 by being in the wrong place at the wrong time). Just a thought.

[Sindatur]

sojourner wrote:

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You realize that having people work double shifts to fill out a 4 shift rotation is essentially just running a 2 shift rotation?

Adding another shift doesn't add any man hours, in that you're correct. lets take for example a shift rotation of 3. You have 3 crew to work that rotation. now your boss asks to add a fourth shift. You have 2 options. Somebody works a double shift or you add another crew member. The former is a scheduling nightmare if you want to keep it fair to the entire crew and also means you'll have a shift that is more exhausted at the end than others. The second option requires another person that needs to be accommodated.

Another option is that you use efficiencies to expand your available man-hours. Say, you have 2 people manning consoles, that could be handled by one person running both consoles, since there is wait time involved for processes to run (IE: Fire off one search, or diagnostic, and while it's running go do soemthing on the console, etc). This one change just gave you 3 extra people for that extra shirt. I could imagine there are alot of these cases, since they're not worried about having to save on expenses and you wouldn't want to run your crew at 100% efficiency all the time and filling every minute of their time with workload, or they would get burned out.