What's the point of building bigger and bigger ships?

[soornge]

bigger is always better just because its the future we are still human: why do you think we have 52oz drinks , hige skyscrapers amd suv : obviously judging by the st universe american values win out duh

 

[soornge]

plus the tie fighter was already taken

 

[Spot261]

But then the Sovereign-class came along, which was bigger again, but with no families aboard. That I found confusing.

As noted above, the Sovereign is notably smaller than the Galaxy, which is pretty obvious when you view them next to each other.

 

[Gary 11's]

I think I remember reading somewhere (probably memory alpha) that the Enterprise D has a few unused decks. Perhaps the galaxy class was too big to find good use for all that space

 

[ironnerd]

Well, it's terribly easy to write about the captain of the biggest ship in StarFleet. Still, it does seem as though something along the lines of an Excelsior would be about the "right size" for mass production. Big enough to be capable, not so big that it requires an enormous crew and HUGE docks. I always thought 1701-D was too dang big. Being a mechanic, all I see is non-stop maintenance.

 

[Richard Baker]

I think I remember reading somewhere (probably memory alpha) that the Enterprise D has a few unused decks. Perhaps the galaxy class was too big to find good use for all that space

Those empty spaces in the hull were for future expansion and adding new technologies to the existing ship without having to remove anything. IIRC the Deflector/Main Sensor has 20% or so open and available for new equipment when it is ready.

The Galaxy class is big enough to handle a much larger crew- with 1000 people on board each person has the equivalent space of a football field to themselves. According to Ed Whitefire (one of the original designers) you could walk around for a day and probably not run into anyone.

The ship had a lot of story potential designed into it but the writers rarely did anything with it. We never even got more than a glimpse of the Main Shuttlebay (the door edge) which was like an airport with a three story tower column in the center and hangars around the edges