Crew of the Enterprise-D

[Timo]

In the episode (actually "Interface") Geordi says about how the ship has "over three hundred people onboard".

Oops, double fault! Sorry about that...

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.

Or then a largely Vulcan crew handles things more efficiently than a human one...

Perhaps the Saratoga was a survey ship, not intended for frontline combat and as such permitted to have family members onboard

Quite possible - but we lack explicit evidence that dedicated combat vessels would shun families, or more exactly, non-contributing (civilian, underage, overage) family members. And Picard's mission didn't appear to be a "limited" one in any sense; the fact that he had "passengers" aboard seemed more a reflection of the zeitgeist than of mission profile or ship design.

Timo Saloniemi

[Bry_Sinclair]

Timo wrote:

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Or then a largely Vulcan crew handles things more efficiently than a human one...

A logical assumption

Timo wrote:

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Quite possible - but we lack explicit evidence that dedicated combat vessels would shun families, or more exactly, non-contributing (civilian, underage, overage) family members. And Picard's mission didn't appear to be a "limited" one in any sense; the fact that he had "passengers" aboard seemed more a reflection of the zeitgeist than of mission profile or ship design.

Timo Saloniemi

True. I suppose it would depend on the ship size and the current status of Starfleet (war, peace, etc). Though I'm pretty sure spouses would find something to do onboard in order to help out and fill the day with something other than just sitting around.

[Timo]

...Did we ever learn what Jennifer Sisko did for a living?

Timo Saloniemi

[tighr]

What I was getting at with the shift rotations was that Jellico may have wanted the ship to run leaner. Riker was concerned that they wouldn't have ENOUGH manpower to adequately staff all three shifts... which would lead to not having enough crew, since the Galaxy-Class ship already runs pretty lean. Jellico had not previously been a Captain of a Galaxy-Class.

[Timo]

One wonders what the crew complement of a 24th century Excelsior would be like. One such ship was lost with something like 1,200 hands in "Field of Fire", but since that was a wartime event, there might have been a large number of troops aboard. We don't know if this "Battle of Ricktor Prime" involved ground action, but we might argue it did, as it apparently is named after an individual planet...

Riker would be intimately familiar with the Excelsiors of the era, having served as XO on one just before the E-D. So, agreed that he could well see the problems in Jellico's thinking.

Timo Saloniemi

[tighr]

I work in a manufacturing plant for a large company that has multiple manufacturing plants throughout the country. Ours is the 3rd largest out of 30+, easily one of the most automated, and we have one of the smallest amounts of employees. For every piece of automation, that's 4-5 people that we don't have to have doing manual labor, instead replaced by a single operator who pushes buttons.

This could easily translate to starships. Reference the engineering scenes from TWOK, with the massive numbers of enlisted crewman. We've never seen that many people working in Engineering in any of the TNG films.

[Timo]

We could easily argue, though, that those people were there solely for training purposes - and that in normal circumstances, nobody would even enter the facility where coveralls appear to be required, and all engineering functions would be handled from a shirtsleeves environment similar to the TOS facility.

In TMP they would in turn be there because this was the first time the engines were being used.

Sure, we could argue that "progress" has taken place between TOS movies and TNG. But TOS already showed that Scotty tended to work pretty much alone, and very seldom got really down and dirty with any repair job. He was one of the few characters never to wear the wraparound coveralls, IIRC!

Timo Saloniemi

[tighr]

Timo wrote:

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TOS already showed that Scotty tended to work pretty much alone, and very seldom got really down and dirty with any repair job. He was one of the few characters never to wear the wraparound coveralls, IIRC!

True, but Scotty was also in charge down there.

[Bry_Sinclair]

For the Excelsior-Class, in the DS9 tech manual, it says that they have a crew complement of 750--exactly the same as a Nebula-Class.

I find that hard to believe. The Nebula has a far greater internal volume than the Excelsior, how the two ships could share the same number of crew baffles me. In my head the crew on the Excelsior-Class is around the 550 mark.

[tighr]

In TUC, the USS Excelsior really crammed that crew in like sardines. VOY: Flashback also seemed to confirm the sardine-like nature of the crew.

[MacLeod]

Internal volume does not mean you need more crew.

You have more space for backup systems, Larger quarters, greater matter/anti-matter storage tanks. Can have larger shuttle bays, More space for torpedeos etc..

[Gary7]

There's three primary staffing considerations: ship operations, maintenance, and auxiliary.

I don't think you really need more than about 50 people for a given shift. This is basically the bridge crew and engineering, who are operating and monitoring systems (like propulsion, navigation, environment, shield control, weapons, etc). Then you have auxiliary people who perform as-needed tasks, like cargo bay management, transporter technicians, shuttle bay activities, life sciences (including sick bay) and so on. And then there's maintenance people who replace faulty components or take care of tasks that a computer or robot doesn't handle (like component alignments), which are essential to ship operations within specification.

Outside of this, you then have all kinds of mission specialists and scientists that are assigned to the Enterprise but are not essential staff. They may do things that are performed only during the "day" shift, or specifically assigned to a given shift that is involved in a mission. You also have non-essential ship activity staff, such as teachers, entertainers, waitstaff in 10-forward, and so on. And then there's all the families and temporary visitors that are on board as well. Adding up all of those people, they significantly outnumber the core crew.

So, I'd venture to say that the "core staff" that are essential for the shifts are about 150 people (50 per shift), plus another 200 who do other ship activities that are supplementary (not essential), and maybe another 50 who are "on call" to help out when there's a surge of needs (they're generally junior people who are also in training). Total would be about 400 crew members.

[T'Girl]

Timo wrote:

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( ... overage) family members

An interesting thought Timo, instead of (or in addition too) a crew member having dependant children, they might have a dependent parent on board that they are caring for.