Every crewmember gets an executive suite. And they have 3 malls, a nature preserve and 2 mini golf courses.
This estimate, in addition to being MASSIVELY wrong, is also contradicted by multiple ILM sources that put the length at exactly 2357 feet (or 718 meters) long. Now as for the OP: dialog aside, Kelvin couldn't possibly have a crew of 800, simply because the ship didn't launch that many shuttles. It only deployed ten to twelve craft in the evacuation, one of which was Winona's medical shuttle. You would have to fit eighty people on each shuttle for that to work, and even the larger Enterprise shuttles didn't have that much room. I'd chalk this one up to a slip of the tongue and Pike actually meant "eighty" which seems just about right for a ship that size. Enterprise crew complement could be anywhere between 50 and 10,000. I mean that, literally, because modern Naval vessels much smaller than Enterprise can have crews of 5000 or more. It really depends on what Starfleet wants the ship to do with its time; if its mission is anything similar to the original Constitution, four to six hundred is a good range, with a mix of engineers, lab technicians, science specialists and an ample supply of redshirts.
All the crew quarters are in the saucer section, which is only about 300 meters in diameter anyway. As the saucer is about five decks high at the rim, this would be the equivalent territory of a section of a major city one and a half blocks long by two and a half wide. It would be much less cramped than indicated in some of the TMP/TOS cutaway designs, which depicted one entire deck packed solid with double-bunked crew quarters; more likely, the larger ship either gives each crewman his own room or frees up space to put crew quarters in a SECTION of the saucer instead of hogging a whole deck, thus freeing up space for other useful things like cafeterias, gymnasiums, workshops, machine shops, science labs, simulators, parts storage, etc etc.
Regarding the Kelvin, maybe Pike said "a hundred" and slurred a little and it just sounded like "eight hundred"? Everyone knows Pike's pronunciation is not his strongest suit.
How could a Science vessel or frigate or destroyer hold 800 crewmen in the 2230's, and still maintain the Prime Universe's tech and expected designs???
Maybe some of the predecessors to the prime-constitution class where huge ships; but advances in technology allowed the constitution class to be smaller and still have significantly greater capabilities. Being smaller would let them be build faster/cheaper.
It couldn't, which tells me that Nero didn't create an alternate timeline, he wound up in one to begin with and futzed around with that one.
We could regard that as a dialogue error, since there's no way "800 lives" could have fit into those shuttles. Unless they had 199 crewmembers, a crazy cat lady and 600 cats.
Well, if you figure nine lives per cat, that could drastically reduce the number of cats needed to make that work.
The hull details (windows, mainly) on the Kelvin could easily be interpreted in support of a "prime universe -sized" vessel, essentially a 250m long Saladin with a slightly older style of saucer and engine and an additional dorsal pod. The shuttlebay vs. shuttlecraft comparison doesn't require a larger scale, either. And yes, such a ship would be awfully small for 800 people - so "ah hundred" is an elegant rationalization for what Pike said. Now, trying to interpret the Enterprise herself as a TOS-sized vessel is markedly more difficult. The bridge window would nicely allow for a 300m vessel, as would other surface detail. The spacing of window rows would be the same as on the TOS vessel, more or less, while the round docking ports would be slightly on the small side but still perfectly manageable. The saucer rim detail is identical to that of the TMP ship, too; trying to interpret it as something three times larger is a bit silly. The engineering set/location would fit nicely in the secondary hull, too, despite being larger than any other Trek engineering set/location so far. It's just that the shuttlebay is ridiculously large... Not only does it displace volume from engineering, it also dictates a kilometer-long ship by comparison with the shuttlecraft stored inside. But that's all part of the altered timeline, not something that would have predated Nero's intrusion. So no real problem there. Timo Saloniemi
It most certainly would not. That "window" feature is roughly the same vertical dimensions as the saucer rim windows; for a 300 meter ship, such a feature would be the size of a stationwagon's windshield. Except the windows are a different shape, the lack of a gangway hatch, and the rec-deck windows are smaller. We had a whole thread about this in the STXI section. After 45 pages of debate and multiple sources we churned out two or three dozen estimates that pegged the ship at 700 to 750 meters. Then we stumbled on multiple references from ILM sources that pegged the ship's length at exactly 718 meters; backwards-measuring from there, this is consistent with both the shuttlebay AND the bridge window. Lastly, I can't help but notice that the rim of NX-01 is similar to the TMP ship by about the same measure, with different RCS thrusters, different gangway hatch, and it tapers upwards instead of downwards. Apparently the "three rings" design isn't dependent on the scale of the ship as much as it is on some function those rings are supposed to play. I would guess some kind of sensor package or thereabouts, seeing how a similar feature is also present on the excelsior.
Well, we don't really know what the purpose or mission of the Kelvin was, do we? What if the Kelvin's purpose was purely to deliver massive planetary-survey parties from planet to planet... you have one big-ass nacelle (good for high speeds, but low maneuverability... in other words, zipping from one well-known position to another quickly. Think of that sort of travel more like getting on the train, and less like going cross-country in an SUV... ) It wouldn't need "comfortable, long-term quarters," because the survey teams would only spend a few days aboard-ship either way (coming or going). Most of the time, they'd be living in tent-camps planetside. This would still leave Kelvin as a "science vessel" but not in the same sense as, say, Grissom (which had a tiny crew and was basically a big flying sensor platform). I can envision this as being the general "exploration scheme" for Starfleet: Starmapping expeditions identify systems with likely habitable planets. Exploration expeditions go in and do initial orbital surveys of the "target planets" identified by the starmapping operation, and maybe send down a landing party to do a basic initial "check out" (ala Enterprise looking at the "Shore Leave Planet.") Detailed planetary scans are taken by a ship like Grissom, which can detect things that a multi-role ship like Enterprise might miss. A ship like Kelvin delivers massive surface-exploration assets to the planet, who identify all the hazards and threats (and resources) which might have slipped through the cracks during prior operations. And finally... given all this... you might see a final step - colonization transports moving settlers to the target planet. If you think about what the Federation is really trying to accomplish... a ship like Kelvin makes perfect sense, as part of a larger plan, doesn't it?
Simple - more primitive technology requires more manpower to operate it. Old navy cruisers and battleships often had crews of over 1,000. Modern cruisers carry a complement of around 400, largely due to advances in technology and automation.
Yeah, I could buy a gigantic Kelvin with a crew of 800 for a number of reasons, or a smaller Kelvin with a crew of "ah hundred." Either way, not a deal-breaker for me.
The Kelvin wouldn't necessarily have to be gigantic to hold a crew of 800. That saucer is two decks thick in the center and wide enough to hold 800 people if most were in modern Navy-style berths. Modern attack and missile subs cram 150 people or more into a fraction of the space available on the Kelvin.
...But the argument regarding saving those lives is a good and valid one. As stated, 800 lives could not have been saved by George Kirk, not unless something else besides evacuation shuttles saved them. (Perhaps the ship actually survived the collision, and the remaining 700 were recovered from the wreckage?) I'd still vote for "ah hundred", then. However, it seems that the ships in the big starship scramble scene were kitbashed from Kelvin components. In theory, we could measure some of those 'bashes against the Enterprise and see if the components come up at a scale establishing a kilometer-long Kelvin. I wouldn't wonder much if they did... Timo Saloniemi
I cannot see the technology at that time(earlier than 2333 in deisgn) able to support 800 people. Pike's Enterprise was a larger, more powerful ship and had a crew of over 200. 800 poeple saved with those few shuttles? The Kelvin rammed the Narada; I expect the Kelvin not to have any pieces left large enough for life support to continue. If anyone was still alive, would Nero let them go or torture them for any useful information(or outright kill them?) I am, beginning to agree with Captain April, in that Nero and Spock did not appeared in the Prime Universe.
I'm thinking Nero and Spock completely bypassed "Star Trek, Created by Gene Roddenberry" and went straight to "Star Trek, Created by Glen Larson".
So try this... Maybe the Kelvin was a part of a small unseen squadron that was only able to flee because of the Kelvin's self-sacrifice? Those other ships would have been relatively defenseless compared to Kelvin, and so Kirk's sacrifice enabled those ships to pick up the Kelvin survivors (of say, ah hundred) and flee, saving in total, 800 people. Howzabout that?