How Long does it Take...

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How long does it take to construct a Galaxy class Star Ship, and for that matter how long does it take to construct other class Star Ships. During the Dominion war, on several occasions they mention that Federation ship yards after they were repaired were replacing ship as fast as possible, has it ever been established just how fast would that have been???

 

[CommodoreKong]

I would imagine it takes a very long time to build a starship. Several years at least.

 

[Deks]

Applying present day perspective and limitations to Trek's future (with extremely advanced technology) is not going to work.
Therefore it probably doesn't take years to build a star-ship.
Not by a long shot.
Months? Yes. Years? Not really.
Perhaps for a Galaxy class ship, I would put the time frame of 6 months, maybe up to a year tops (in the mid 24th century when replicators just began to make an entrance to the scene).

But with regular and industrial replicators ... no.
Even if you take replicators out of the picture ... they must have fully automatized construction facilities that can probably make these things far faster than regular people (who for the most part work on the internal systems WITH assistance from machinery).

The Delta Flyer alone was built in less than a week ... that was with man-power for the most part to our knowledge.
And even then I would have guessed the flyer was built partially with assistance from makeshift machinery because crews repair the shuttles on their own for the most part (which is silly because on one hand star-ships in the 24th century are highly automated and capable of self-repairs).

If anything, I would surmise that for the way Trek operates ... the design process is the one that takes most of the time (sometimes over a year) and the construction process not so much.

The Dominion was ahead of the Federation in star-ship construction tech yes ... but let's be realistic ... the Feds were mostly on par with the Dominion in every other area, so they couldn't have been THAT far behind in construction tech (far enough to give the Dominion an advantage ... but not a gap the Feds wouldn't be able to cover after the war).

 

[Penta]

Would this be with or without the inevitable delays, screwups, and overruns?

 

[trekkerguy]

I would suggest looking it up elsewhere unless someone here posts references.

If I recal from the TNG Technical Manual correctly it may have taken years
for a Starship let alone a Galaxy class ship to be built.

 

[sbk1234]

Well, it took about 20 years to build the Death Star, but then again, that's somewhat bigger than a Galaxy class ship.

 

[trekkerguy]

Well, it took about 20 years to build the Death Star, but then again, that's somewhat bigger than a Galaxy class ship.

And in a comparitively outrageous setting. I'm not a huge Star Wars buff,
but it would seem the Empire would be able to employ the labor of an entire
planets workforce if they chose.

 

[RandyS]

Would this be with or without the inevitable delays, screwups, and overruns?

24th century humans are perfect, therefore, no screwups of any kind. And in a moneyless economy, there would be no overruns either.

 

[Timo]

Then again, a Galaxy would probably have enough components that simply screwing in all the screws would take decades, when the maximum workforce that one could squeeze into the physical confines was squeezed into the physical confines. And testing that all the screws really were in place would then take another decade. Eyeblink-fast manufacturing wouldn't help much, if any, with these sorts of problems.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Sisko4Life]

Takes about a minute on Star Trek Armada :-D

 

[mythme]

I think pathfinders and class name prototypes takes years, perhaps over a decade from design to final christening; what with flight and warp tests, stress performance, computer and hardware performance, emergency simulations, etc. I think once all the bugs are worked out and the design is deemed sound, production probably speeds up considerably. Also the need assuredly also speeds up the process. The Defiant class project began life in 1966 and was completed by 1970 (although all design flaws weren't quite ironed out yet.)

According to the Tech Manual, it took 13 years from the first weld of the hull frame to the launch of the USS Galaxy, Yamato and Enterprise. (although Eye of the Beholder and Booby Trap suggest that it was much quicker; with final systems designed a year before launch.) I would guess by the mid-2370s, they could probably construct a Galaxy-class within 5 years.

 

[C.E. Evans]

While I do think that it took the better part of two decades to develop the Galaxy-class (I tend to think that much of the current technology used by Starfleet came out of that design), I think that Starfleet can now crank out one of those ships in around four years, and that includes a lengthy shakedown period after initial construction, IMO. The Galaxy-class may be entering the period of mass-production that the Excelsior-class went through a century earlier.

The only thing that might stop the Galaxy-class' longevity is if Starfleet continues its trend of favoring smaller, more compact starships and make big ships like the Galaxy- and Sovereign-classes more the rare exception than something typical...

 

[Penta]

Which seems likely, for one reason:

Crew requirements.

The Galaxy-class has a crew of, what, 1000?

That's huge.

Consider that, even with an...optimistic tooth-to-tail ratio, there are probably 3 or 4 people working support for every 1 person actually posted to a ship.

So every Galaxy requires, oh...4-5 thousand people.

If SF made the Galaxy a mass-production design like the Excelsior, the Fleet would have to have a huge personnel complement.

 

[Mister_Atoz]

We know a Galaxy Class has some 1000 people on board, but how many of those are actually crew members and not family.

 

[C.E. Evans]

We know a Galaxy Class has some 1000 people on board, but how many of those are actually crew members and not family.

I think it varies from ship to ship, but I think the general rule of thumb is that the Enterprise-D carried 800 crewmembers and 200 civilians.

 

[Deks]

1000 crewmembers on a star-ship is 'huge'?

Give me a break.
We aren't talking about a single planet in the early 21st centry trying to construct that ship ... it's a Federation that spans 8000 ly's and has virtually enormous resources at it's disposal, not to mention the highly advanced technology for space exploration/economy/star-ship construction, etc ...

So the time-frame of a decade or two ... years for that matter is ludicrously large for SF and their technology.

 

[C.E. Evans]

The idea that's being floated about is that the initial development of the Galaxy-class took an abnormally long period of time due to a number of new technologies that were being incorporated for the first time, including the LCARS computer system and the latest generation of warp engines. But during that time there were also a series of major setbacks that delayed the original scheduled launch of the USS Galaxy by several years.

Even with the technology the Federation possesses, some things still have to be done the old-fashioned way, IMO, to prevent design or construction problems later...

 

[Deks]

The design process as I also stated myself would probably take up to several years.
Actual construction when everything else is already done is a completely different matter and wouldn't take decades or years.

'The Old fashioned way'?
That's the problem, you can't employ contemporary way of thinking to the 24th century of Trek because technology and human perception are bound to be different.
'The old fashioned way' could possibly from their perspective mean something along the lines that was done 100 years ago (in the 23rd century) ... and not something from the 21st century.
And even if we are talking about actual human labor doing the work ... they still use far more advanced technology for aid.
On-screen interpretation is to be taken with a grain of salt because the show was made to cater to today's audience for the most part (which was somewhat necessary, but also could have gone without) followed by the crippling on what the technology can actually do because the writers became less capable of implementing the drama to fit the time-frame/tech as each show progressed.

Implementation of new things for SF would be much faster compared to today, given the fact they have far better technology than we do to begin with ... plus they aren't limited by stupid/idiotic aspects like money, and for the most part, some of them like to take more risks which puts numerous technologies into the field early on and provides even further advances.

I'm sorry, but from what SF technology in the late 24th century is capable of doing, starship construction to take years is ludicrous.
Design?
Possibly ... actual construction and implementation of systems?
Definitely not, and the delay would be minimal as far as time-frame is concerned.

 

[Timo]

But let's look at history. Shipbuilding today isn't markedly faster than shipbuilding yesterday, in at least two senses.

First, it takes about the same time to build a capital ship today as it did five hundred years ago. Sure, our building machinery has improved, but the job has also increased in both scale and complexity. There still remain crucial items that take years of lead time until they can reach the assembly yard; it used to be timber, now it is items like raw steel, or preassembled nuclear powerplants.

Second, today's finest machinery couldn't build a capital ship from 500 years ago any faster than it was built back then. The factors holding back construction weren't the obvious-seeming things like manpower or performance of cranes or transportation of raw materials. The factors would be seasoning and settling of wood, bending of planks, letting gravity shape the hull before buoyancy reshapes it. Those could not be appreciably hastened.

Starship construction might be affected by either or both types of difficulty. The starship simply could be million times more difficult to build than an aircraft carrier, negating the advances that have made dockyards ten thousand times better. And there could be items that cannot be replicated on the spot, but have to be manufactured in processes that cannot be hastened, or made of raw materials that have to be obtained from afar and processed and simply aren't plentiful enough to be kept on stock so that only very few construction runs can arrange for a timely flow of material.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dayton3]

For what its worth.

The largest warships constructed today are Nimitz class aircraft carriers.

There is a newer upgraded carrier class being built of course.

Anyway, it normally took about 6 years to build a Nimitz class carrier.

But,

The shipyard that builds U.S. carriers was said to be fully capable of building a Nimitz class carrier in only 18 months if they had to.