i would imagine that's because much of discovery's habitable space is occupied by the mechanism that makes the saucer spin around.
Speculation on other Starships we might encounter?
- Thread starter AaronMorse
- Start date
Wasn’t that 460ish figure for the three ships mentioned?
that was my impression as well
Pretty sure the average on most ships is around 200 personnel during this era. 100 on the low side and maybe as high as 400 for a few ships. Discovery being 136 and Enterprise being 250. Also if we take the casualties for EPx8 and divide it more or less evenly across all 3 lost ships its 154 crew per ship.
The fact that Starfleet is short on shs in the 2260's makes more sense that the Enterprises the only one nearby.
The 462 dead was from the three ships all right. We know two of them by design: one was the Hoover, which is backstage-established as the class of the Edison, a single-hulled ship of the average Battle of Binaries size, and one was the Gagarin, also a single-hulled ship of the average BoB size. The size or design of the Muroc is unknown at this date.
But the average would indeed seem to come to about 150 per ship, which may well be in harmony with Pike's 207 for a two-hulled ship (still of the same approximate size), and with Lorca's ship being two-hulled but perhaps sparsely crewed for her special nature.
I doubt the spinner mechanisms take up much room, though. They appear only skin deep, what with decks full of glowing portholes just beneath...
Timo Saloniemi
But the average would indeed seem to come to about 150 per ship, which may well be in harmony with Pike's 207 for a two-hulled ship (still of the same approximate size), and with Lorca's ship being two-hulled but perhaps sparsely crewed for her special nature.
I doubt the spinner mechanisms take up much room, though. They appear only skin deep, what with decks full of glowing portholes just beneath...
Timo Saloniemi
what are people's thoughts on last night's USS gagarin?
i love the design of the shepard-class, sort of a half step between the walker-class shenzhou and crossfield-class discovery.
The Gagarin and Shenzhou are now my two favorite ships from DSC. The more minimalist and streamlined designs convey, to me at least, a very no-nonsense and efficiency-based aesthetic. Should also note that the underside of the Gagarin is a 90% match for the top side of the Shenzhou, deflector dish and hull profile included (just minus the 'fins').
Honestly, I'm very much liking the design and hull color consistency between the Federation ships present in Discovery. I think it a bit rediculous that ships from a centrally-commanded para-military organization would be done in different color schemes when every modern military paints their ships in identical colors, only differentiating them using their name and/or hull number. Props to the art people for keeping to a similar look and feel for the various classes of ships we see.
Then again, every air force out there has multiple, sometimes insanely gaudy schemes for their aircraft "camouflage", varying from type to type but typically also from unit to unit.
Navies had a lot of that, too, back when camouflage counted.
Also, why repaint? The ships of Starfleet supposedly come from a broad range of decades or even centuries. There's no pressing need to maintain a uniform paint scheme from decade to decade.
The DSC ships are indeed surprisingly uniform, in aesthetics and also in engineering (all have the square nacelles with three round things at the bow, all have the red-glowing twin phasers, etc). This never happened in Trek before, really. Did Starfleet suffer a catastrophic loss of ships shortly before DSC, having to rebuild everything? Or did they get a sudden inrush of funds so that they could refit everything?
Timo Saloniemi
Navies had a lot of that, too, back when camouflage counted.
Also, why repaint? The ships of Starfleet supposedly come from a broad range of decades or even centuries. There's no pressing need to maintain a uniform paint scheme from decade to decade.
The DSC ships are indeed surprisingly uniform, in aesthetics and also in engineering (all have the square nacelles with three round things at the bow, all have the red-glowing twin phasers, etc). This never happened in Trek before, really. Did Starfleet suffer a catastrophic loss of ships shortly before DSC, having to rebuild everything? Or did they get a sudden inrush of funds so that they could refit everything?
Timo Saloniemi
i should've put this emoji
to indicate i was being "funny":are they uniform though? i kind of found the fleet at the battle of the binary stars a little hodgepodge. i can see the evolution from the shenzhou to the fleet ships (like the kerala and the gagarin) to the discovery, but discovery feels like the odd man out here, with her bonze hull, ball-shaped command section, long, spindly nacelles...
I know that I was speaking of all the Starfleet ships except the Discovery as yes, she is the odd one out that doesn't follow the same queues as the other ships. But considering that the Gagarin and Shenzhou share saucer parts, the Europa and T'Plana-Hath share saucer parts, and most of the nacelles on these ships appear to be minor variations on a base design, yes the fleet's ships all seems rather uniformly made from very similar components.
Now add on top of that the fact that they're reusing the Shenzhou's bridge in scenes where we see other ships along with Discovery's hallways, and we have a very uniform appearance to the ships, both inside and out. The only thing that's left is to reuse Discovery's main engineering set minus the spore chamber and the uniformity will be pretty much complete.
Randomly... Speaking of the Discovery's main engineering set, I'm glad to see the nod to the TOS Enterprise's main engineering set with the warp core placed behind a partition and roughly trapezoidal in shape. It was one of the first things I noticed in that set and was happy the production designers went that route.
yeah i appreciated that they used the shenzhou bridge for the gagarin too.
and i suppose that discovery doesn't quite fit into the design lineage is... acceptable. the vengeance in star trek into darkness is purposefully pretty divorced from the rest of starfleet in those films and it's effective. i guess i'm just not quite clear on discovery's place in the fleet quite yet: i had assumed going into the series that she was a one-off like the vengeance, but then they immediately showed her sister ship. so i guess the question still remains whether the crossfield-class is a typical federation ship outfitted for experimental tech, or is the class something unique altogether?
IMHO, the Discovery is meant to be the unique and distinguishable ship in the series where, thanks to basing the series around a war, will have a ton of ships popping in and out of the show all the time.
My own personal take on the Discovery, and indeed the entire Crossfield-class as a whole, is that she is akin to the US Navy's Sea Fighter FSF-1. The FSF-1 is a testbed ship designed to deploy and test the effectiveness of new technologies. Her internal hull space is about 85% empty with the exception of the bridge, crew, and engineering spaces, allowing the ship to function as a "plug-and-play" platform for whatever they decide to stuff inside and test out.
Similarly, I see the Crossfield-class as a testbed ship, large sections of the interior of the ship being left empty (e.g. the tons of labs the Discovery has for science) with only the bridge, crew, tactical (weapons), and main engineering portions of the ship being "finished" right out of the shipyard. Ostensibly, all the extra space (labs) can be reconfigured to suit whatever need may pop up or new technology may need testing. Yes, the Discovery and Glenn were fitted specifically for the purposes of developing the Spore Hub Drive, but that still leaves a ton of space empty to do whatever (Science!) with.
when lorca takes burnham to his private research facility in "the butcher's knife cares not for the lamb's cry", it looks like the entire deck around it is deserted. so there's that too.
Looking at the bridge exterior, it reminds me a lot of the window arrangement on the Kelvin.
It's actually the Shenzhou's bridge module flipped over. So yes, all three ships (Kelvin, Shenzhou and Gagarin) have 3 windows in front of the bridge. I don't think that makes the Gagarin any more like the Kelvin than the Discovery's single window makes it like the JJ-prise. :P
very curious to know exactly how much of the shepard-class is just a straight up kitbash of the walker-class. looks like it's a lot, but would surprise me that they chose to feature what is basically just an upside-down shenzhou so heavily. either someone on the production fell in love with it, it's a higher-res build than the rest of the binary stars fleet, or it's a more original design than it seems...
either case, i might actually like the shepard-class more than the walker-class, which has so far been my favorite new design from discovery. as much as i love the shenzhou's racing stripes and underslung bridge, she feels a little out of place where the gagarin and kerala fall in line with what i expect from a federation ship while still feeling fresh and unique.
Being a 3D artist myself I find it easy to pick out the visual differences between vessels that use the same parts. Gagarin only re-uses two parts of the Shenzhou in whole: the top side of the Walker-class minus the fins (now bottom of the Shepard-class) and the bridge module. The nacelles are the same type seen on the Europa and several other ships, the nacelle pylons are actually two-layered from what I can tell though they're different shapes than the Walker-class, and the superstructure on the top of the ship leading to the impulse engines is unique to the Shepard-class.
I see the re-use of minor parts more a means of keeping visual continuity than true "kit-bashing." Only the nacelles are used in whole between classes and every class has multiple portions that are unique to just that class of ship.
I approve.
