Ship Size

[Lighthammer]

I was wondering if anyone had any insight as to why the Enterprise is so much bigger in this version of Star Trek?

Original Enterprise Constitution Class Compliment: 430
New Enterprise Constitution Class Compliment: 1100

Is it to make Red Shirts 3x more expendable ?

 

[T'Girl]

On Tru-Kirk's Enterprise it was 400 crew and 30 red shirts.

On Nu-Kirk's Enterprise, it's 400 crew and 700 red shirts.

 

[therealfoxbat]

I have a theory...

In the alternate timeline, a much more powerful version of warp drive was developed. In TOS, the Enterprise could travel from Earth to Vulcan at maximum warp in 1.8 days. In the new movie, the trip took 5 minutes and 25 seconds. That's almost five hundred times faster. Such a warp drive (and the power systems to run it) would logically be much more massive than previous versions, requiring much bigger ships to operate it...

 

[Voyagerian]

Well, Nero's incursion in 2230 started I would say a series of changes to Starfleet, with an eye towards combatting what at the time they only knew to be a MASSIVE Romulan ship with superior firepower(compared to Kelvin and its sister ships of the line of that time)not a future-vessel; at any rate, this could well have influenced, and that's how I've been hearing it implied , how and what Fleet builds...altering in the process 1701's design lineage/process, and resulting in a beefed-up, lareger vessel(If, according to the link at wiki I just looked up)it's no faster than the TOS version...still, bigger and better, however you match it up, and to be ready as can be for that hardly-forgotten threat, and more. Fleet got very worried..and necessity is the mother of invention. That, to me, is what it boils down to.Plus. out of universe, they just decided apparently the dimensions closer to the original Jeffries version were not big enough in certain 'environments'...

 

[Lighthammer]

I'd say the theory about faster warp speeds to simply be a bad fact check, especially since the orders were to meet the fleet in the Leoranchin (sp?) system if they failed at Vulcan. I mean if it takes 5 minutes to go from Earth to Vulcan, then why would they go to some place more then 5 minutes away.

Besides, it's been stated that their warp speed is substantially lower then the TOS version because it's already normalized. Keep in mind, we've seen the TOS version do some wiked crazy speeds that just don't work in Trek Reality anymore.

The only reason I've been able to dig up is apparently they scaled up the size due to the shuttle crafts being used as troop transports.

I personally don't really like that answer because that could have been easily modified. It sounds like a slip in judgment between budget and set design ultimately >.<.

 

[Mr. Crane]

I'd say the theory about faster warp speeds to simply be a bad fact check, especially since the orders were to meet the fleet in the Leoranchin (sp?) system if they failed at Vulcan. I mean if it takes 5 minutes to go from Earth to Vulcan, then why would they go to some place more then 5 minutes away.

Besides, it's been stated that their warp speed is substantially lower then the TOS version because it's already normalized. Keep in mind, we've seen the TOS version do some wiked crazy speeds that just don't work in Trek Reality anymore.

The only reason I've been able to dig up is apparently they scaled up the size due to the shuttle crafts being used as troop transports.

I personally don't really like that answer because that could have been easily modified. It sounds like a slip in judgment between budget and set design ultimately >.<.

Considering the huge size of the Kelvin compared to other Prime Universe vessels, I like to think that the split in realities actually happened much earlier, when the Temporal Cole War happened in ST: Enterprise. The Xindi attack on Earth, which did not occur in the history until the Sphere Builders intervened in time, caused Earth's Vulcan and Andorian allies to share their advanced shipbuilding tech, much earlier than in the Prime timeline, allowing for much larger, advanced vessels. On the other hand, in the Prime timeline, the Vulcans didn't share these techniques until the 2270s, when the prime Enterprise was majorly refitted (perhaps?). Just some speculation...

 

[Penhall99]

Does it ever specifically say in the movie that the new Enterprise holds 1100 people?

But as Voyagerian said, the destruction of the Kelvin changed everything. Ship designs, size, weapons... It's actually a good way of explaining why everything looks so different (and yet there are similarities) to TOS.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I'd say the theory about faster warp speeds to simply be a bad fact check, especially since the orders were to meet the fleet in the Leoranchin (sp?) system if they failed at Vulcan. I mean if it takes 5 minutes to go from Earth to Vulcan, then why would they go to some place more then 5 minutes away.

Besides, it's been stated that their warp speed is substantially lower then the TOS version because it's already normalized. Keep in mind, we've seen the TOS version do some wiked crazy speeds that just don't work in Trek Reality anymore.

The only reason I've been able to dig up is apparently they scaled up the size due to the shuttle crafts being used as troop transports.

I personally don't really like that answer because that could have been easily modified. It sounds like a slip in judgment between budget and set design ultimately >.<.

Considering the huge size of the Kelvin compared to other Prime Universe vessels, I like to think that the split in realities actually happened much earlier, when the Temporal Cole War happened in ST: Enterprise. The Xindi attack on Earth, which did not occur in the history until the Sphere Builders intervened in time, caused Earth's Vulcan and Andorian allies to share their advanced shipbuilding tech, much earlier than in the Prime timeline, allowing for much larger, advanced vessels. On the other hand, in the Prime timeline, the Vulcans didn't share these techniques until the 2270s, when the prime Enterprise was majorly refitted (perhaps?). Just some speculation...

Well, if the Romulans are a faction of the Temporal Cold War it would certainly explain why 22nd century Vulcan seems to be an imperialist power. And it's worth pointing out--again--that Vulcan ships in the ENT era were quite a bit larger than any of the TOS-era ships we saw a hundred years later, so it makes a good bit of sense that Starfleet vessels would be larger and more powerful in the ENT-Abrams timeline than they would be otherwise.

 

[thesovereignman]

Do we know that the time to vulcan was really 5 minutes or so? Couldn't chunks of that journey have been cut from the movie? I mean, movies jump forward in time often. You don't really think that Old spock and kirk made it to the station that was over a kilometer away in about 10 seconds? just asking, I don't know myself And it's worth mentioning that the Enterprise was not superior in speed to any other vessel in the 6 other ships sent to vulcan, since they all beat him there. In reality, I think it would have been going slower, since all the ships had been destroyed prior to the Enterprise getting there, which went to warp only about 10 seconds before the rest. I think it would have taken more than 10 seconds for the Narada to destroy 6 ships, even with it's advanced borg weapons.

It's also worth noting that even though the Mayflower, Farrugut, and the other 4 ships seem to be older than enterprise, they all were about the same size.

 

[Crewman47]

It's probably been mentioned before on here but how many decks was the Enterprise supposed to have? Was it the same as the Original, at 23, or would it have more as the stated height of the new Enterpsrise is given as 190.5 meters meaning if you had 23 decks, each deck would be on average 8 meters high or if you had an avergae deck height of around 3 meters then you'd have up to 54 decks plus maybe crawl space for Jeffries tubes etc?

 

[F. King Daniel]

The ship is bigger becuase they had a bigger budget. The ship looked amazing to me (brewery and all!). The sense of scale was fantastic. For the first time in Trek i truely believed we were watching people fly around in a giant spaceship.

People who wanted small, TV-show scale sets and a smaller ship need theit heads examined. People who cry because their size-comparison charts have been ruined need to get a life (sorry, this is about the trillionth thread along these lines, and it's sure not to be the last!). People who blindly insist the ship is smaller dispite the corridors off the bridge, the window at the front and the shuttlebay all making that physically impossible (looking at you, EAS) need a good shake.

There's nothing wrong with the USS Kelvin (457 meters) bieng bigger than the TOS Enteprise (285 meters). Why people think the Enteprise must be the biggest ship available makes no sense. Kelvin was mant to be a survey ship, and to do a PROPER survey of a planet (i.e. more than Spock looking though his Spock Scope) you'd need 800 people, dozens of shuttles and god-knows-what-else.

About the decks: I have no idea, but the ship innards were far less 'standardized' in this film. Some areas had huge high cielings, and there was even that weird area with the Giant Eggs where Kirk tracked down Uhura.

Here's to the next dozen threads on this subject!

 

[Tara]

I was wondering if anyone had any insight as to why the Enterprise is so much bigger in this version of Star Trek?

I figure it's a reaction to the destruction of the Kelvin, pretty much the same deal as Enterprise-E being a badass warship in reaction to the Borg and Dominion. Starfleet in the AOS universe has more of a militaristic focus than her TOS counterpart in the 2230s-50s.

 

[Lighthammer]

For Ref

New Enterprise:

• Length: 2500 feet (760 meters)
• Height: 625 feet (190.5 meters)

Old Enterprise

• Length: 948 feet (289 meters)
• Height: 237 feet (72.25 meters)

That makes the new enterprise roughly 40% (38.5% exactly) bigger.

To compare,

Sovereign Class Enterprise

• Length: 2,247 feet (685 meters)

Here's a graph to show size comparisons:
http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/comparison/comparison_medium.png

Please ignore the 2009 Enterprise and Kelvin towards the bottom. This is a chart put out LONG before release. Based on comments from Bad Robot on the Star Trek Blue Ray Disc, the size was increased to the current 760 meter length.

It's really kind of annoying because no one on the production team seems to have a good reason why the size was increased so much and I really prefer not to make a up a reason for them.

To me, there's far too much speculation going on in this thread where as everyone is trying to shove a puzzle piece where it doesn't fit.

I think the real reason really tracks back to Holywood needs better people following up on continuity >.>.

 

[Classic Fan]

The ship is bigger becuase they had a bigger budget. The ship looked amazing to me (brewery and all!). The sense of scale was fantastic. For the first time in Trek i truely believed we were watching people fly around in a giant spaceship.

People who wanted small, TV-show scale sets and a smaller ship need theit heads examined. People who cry because their size-comparison charts have been ruined need to get a life (sorry, this is about the trillionth thread along these lines, and it's sure not to be the last!). People who blindly insist the ship is smaller dispite the corridors off the bridge, the window at the front and the shuttlebay all making that physically impossible (looking at you, EAS) need a good shake.

There's nothing wrong with the USS Kelvin (457 meters) bieng bigger than the TOS Enteprise (285 meters). Why people think the Enteprise must be the biggest ship available makes no sense. Kelvin was mant to be a survey ship, and to do a PROPER survey of a planet (i.e. more than Spock looking though his Spock Scope) you'd need 800 people, dozens of shuttles and god-knows-what-else.

About the decks: I have no idea, but the ship innards were far less 'standardized' in this film. Some areas had huge high cielings, and there was even that weird area with the Giant Eggs where Kirk tracked down Uhura.

Here's to the next dozen threads on this subject!

A agree.


I, along with you and many others, have had countless discussions on this topic, but its back so what the hell.


The larger scale. Yes, im all for it. Its not our TOS Enterprise, so who cares. The TOS Enterprise is just a wormhole away in an alternate timeline. So, fire up the alternate timeline DVDs and watch them.

As for the upscaling, again, i agree that it is more believable to have a huge ship with loads of crew members. The sense of scale on the Kelvin and the Enterprise was imense. I didnt much care for engineering, but the way they matted the digital mattes onto the existing physical plates was great, especially the tracking shot through engineering and into the imense hanger bay. Yeah, it did look like an aircraft carriers hanger, but wasnt that the point.

Im all for huge mofo ships, and yeah, the idea of crampt working and living areas is a bit crap, its all too 'dark and moody sci-fi' for me. The huge open bridge, access corridors etc all open it up and its great.


Although, Gene Roddenberry did want to convey the technological advances by having almost all of the ship(s) automated and concealed, but again, maybe that was a reason thought of because of the lack of money to A) afford all the extras and sets needed to tell the storys. B) To realistically film the ships hanger bay using a tracking shot on a model the size of a dolls house.

 

[Nevyn]

The only reason the ship is bigger is because someone screwed with the scale. I wouldn't be surprised it someone confused feet with meter, or the other way around. Even the guys who made the ship haven't reached an agreement about the size. Lets hope they do so soon so we can move over this discussion.

 

[Corran Horn]

Well, Nero's incursion in 2230 started I would say a series of changes to Starfleet, with an eye towards combatting what at the time they only knew to be a MASSIVE Romulan ship with superior firepower(compared to Kelvin and its sister ships of the line of that time)not a future-vessel; at any rate, this could well have influenced, and that's how I've been hearing it implied , how and what Fleet builds...altering in the process 1701's design lineage/process, and resulting in a beefed-up, lareger vessel(If, according to the link at wiki I just looked up)it's no faster than the TOS version...still, bigger and better, however you match it up, and to be ready as can be for that hardly-forgotten threat, and more. Fleet got very worried..and necessity is the mother of invention. That, to me, is what it boils down to.Plus. out of universe, they just decided apparently the dimensions closer to the original Jeffries version were not big enough in certain 'environments'...

I agree. Starfleet ramped up its hardware designs which changed the design of the Constitution class, bumped Robert April, etc, etc...

 

[GhostFaceSaint]

^That sounds correct after all the Enterprise's maximum warp given by wiki's memory alpha is warp 8, designed by the film makers with room for improvements upgrades and refits.

 

[Dukhat]

I agree. Starfleet ramped up its hardware designs which changed the design of the Constitution class, bumped Robert April, etc, etc...

Who in the hell is Robert April? A person with that name wasn't in the movie, or in any episode of TOS

 

[KottenFutz]

It was more cinematic choice in my mind... I bet JJ just said: "let's make it bigger, that'd be cool"... the end.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Even the guys who made the ship haven't reached an agreement about the size.

Yes they have. It is 2357 feet long.