Starship Size Argument™ thread

[EJD1984]

Anyway, I've always wondered, with a crew of 1100 or so, where do they all sleep? And relax? Can they fit so many quarters in the ship plus the massive engineering and shuttlebay, plus the science labs and torpedo bays, etc?

Oh, sure. Even if you confined them all to only the saucer section you'd have more than enough room for the crew quarters. The thing is massive.

The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise in the picture below, had a crew of:

5,828 (maximum)
Ship's company: 3,000 (2,700 Sailors, 150 Chiefs, 150 Officers)
Air wing: 1,800 (250 pilots, and 1,550 support personnel)

Aircraft carried: Hold up to 90 / 60+ (normally)

That's with the hangar deck, nuclear reactors, workshops, aviation fuel storage, engine room, armories, mess hall, etc. taking up a ton of space.

It's about as tall and long as the rim of the ST09 Enterprise saucer alone, and only a fraction of the width. She's a big girl.

The Enterprise-D there typically carried a crew of about 1,014 in luxurious hotel suite sized quarters, and it had plenty of room to spare. It's actually a small crew given its immense volume. It probably was pretty lonely in a lot of corridors aboard ship.

It just dawned on my why the nuEnterprise seems like it should be smaller - Windows

We have grown accustomed to the visual reference that if there are a lot of small windows, that gives the sense of immense size.

The Enterprise-E is instantaneously seen as huge due to the fact of the hundreds of windows. Whereas the nuEnterprise, has just a couple/three dozen in comparison to the Galaxy Class ship.

I think that if the producers had just added a few extra windows to show that the saucer rim is now 3-4 decks, most likely would have avoided most of this argument.

 

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ This likely lends credence to the fact that it was originally supposed to be around the size of the TOS-E and refit, but was retconned into being larger because of the shuttlebay and engineering area sets. Sadly, the CG artists clearly didn't get the memo and the windows that were originally modeled into the mesh still imply a smaller design at around 300 meters.

I'm still kind of baffled how big the Kelvin was, as it was supposed to have been built in the pre-timestream-split prime universe and there has never been any evidence in any iteration of canonical Trek that Starfleet built ships that big during that era. THIS almost implies that there may have been a split prior to Nero's arrival.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Taking INTO DARKNESS into consideration the size of 350 meters is about right.

Several hints at that: Kirk and McCoy dive to the Enterprise.

A bigger issue that relates to a smaller ship size concerns this "dive". First, the E has to be sufficiently under the surface to remain hidden. Let's say it's only 30m down. A 350m ship is about 100m tall. A 750m ship is over 200m tall. As I recall from the 10min preview (haven't seen the movie yet), Kirk and Bones swim down to the secondary hull hatch to enter. That means they dive either about 100m, or they dive 200m.

Both are ridiculous when you consider pressure effects (but hey, maybe they have a widget for that), but one is much less ridiculous than the other....

 

[F. King Daniel]

Taking INTO DARKNESS into consideration the size of 350 meters is about right.

Several hints at that: Kirk and McCoy dive to the Enterprise.
Vengance attacks Enterprise we see several hull breaches, and they consist of one at max two decks at the endge of the saucer.
When the Vengance crashes, it's saucer is not higher than 150 meters, considering it is much bigger than the Enterprise, it will probably be somewhere in 600 meter range.

350 meters fits the ship perfectly, therefor one has to readjust that chart.

LOL, I came away from the film (which I've just rewatched) with the exact opposite opinion! That the Enterprise was unquestionably far bigger than her prime-universe counterpart.

When the Vengeance crashes, the engineering hull dwarfs the entirety of Alcatraz Island, and when it hits the mainland the saucer breaks from the hull and tips, showing it to be far taller than the largest of the super skyscrapers.

Evidence of a bigger Enterprise is the saucer-top dome and core of corridors below, which extends downward onto infinity. Plus, to fit the bridge in front of it on the third deck would unquestionably be impossible on a 350m Enterprise. We also saw two shuttlebays, the main one at the rear, which was the same size it was in the prior movie (which could never fit two rows of 12m shuttles if it were only 17m across), and starboard-side shuttlebay 2, which launched the trader ship toward Kronos. All that, plus the brewery engineering section has to fit into just the rear half of the secondary hull.
FWIW, we also learned that the area where Kirk found Uhura in the last movie is directly behind the deflector dish.

I did notice some cool Franz Joseph-style deckplans on Sulu's console when they're scanned by the Vengeance (they passed too quickly to make out any scale-establishing detail, and I can't wait to freezeframe the DVD!), as well as a floorplan of the brig complex on the screen behind as Kirk and Spock speak to Harrison.

 

[Kemaiku]

I'm looking at an HD screencap of the damaged saucer portion from the movie and there are up to 4-5 distinct layers showing through.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

I'm looking at an HD screencap of the damaged saucer portion from the movie and there are up to 4-5 distinct layers showing through.

Link?

 

[Kemaiku]

I'm looking at an HD screencap of the damaged saucer portion from the movie and there are up to 4-5 distinct layers showing through.

Link?

You cannot be that lazy.

 

[Xavier_Storma]

I'm looking at an HD screencap of the damaged saucer portion from the movie and there are up to 4-5 distinct layers showing through.

Link?

You cannot be that lazy.

Yup... don't forget the Jeffries tubes in between the decks!

And if you just take a closer look at the saucer... the window pattern is exactly the same as on the refit Enterprise from the original movies.
Plus in the scene with the hull breach, you can see people being sucked out into space.
Another prove is the shot that zooms in on Kirk standing in front of the main window/viewer when the Enterprise is crippled in the Kronos system. No way the ship is longer than 400 meters.

 

[BillJ]

Link?

You cannot be that lazy.

Yup... don't forget the Jeffries tubes in between the decks!

And if you just take a closer look at the saucer... the window pattern is exactly the same as on the refit Enterprise from the original movies.
Plus in the scene with the hull breach, you can see people being sucked out into space.
Another prove is the shot that zooms in on Kirk standing in front of the main window/viewer when the Enterprise is crippled in the Kronos system. No way the ship is longer than 400 meters.

If you want it to be four-hundred meters, then continue to think it's four-hundred meters.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Another prove is the shot that zooms in on Kirk standing in front of the main window/viewer when the Enterprise is crippled in the Kronos system. No way the ship is longer than 400 meters.

Erm... what? Look again: CLICK

Window = huge Enterprise.

 

[Kemaiku]

I think maybe we should start on something simpler for them. Coloured cards for instance.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I'm still kind of baffled how big the Kelvin was, as it was supposed to have been built in the pre-timestream-split prime universe and there has never been any evidence in any iteration of canonical Trek that Starfleet built ships that big during that era. THIS almost implies that there may have been a split prior to Nero's arrival.

I took it simply as evidence of reimagining the look of the Prime Universe, which, frankly, was always going to be necessary in a film today about Kirk's era. In this case, the filmmakers were pre-Pike and pre-incursion, so, with the Kelvin sequence, they let a little something peek out from behind the fig leaf.

I'm rather glad they did, because the Kelvin sequence was the only part of STXI where wonky theories, about how Nero's incursion must be responsible for all the minor differences between nuTrek and first-run TOS, are all but definitively ruled out. It is only in this part of the film that we see a pure, unadulterated reimagining of Star Trek, and boy did it rock!

I just think of this as something like the recasting of the main characters. Since, relatively speaking, it is inconsequential whether or not the Kelvin sequence fits perfectly into the space between ENT and first-run TOS, I see it on that level as something on par with a cosmetic change of the Prime Universe.

Spoiler: What I think about the Kelvin sequence

It's really a reboot, though.

 

[Xavier_Storma]

Another prove is the shot that zooms in on Kirk standing in front of the main window/viewer when the Enterprise is crippled in the Kronos system. No way the ship is longer than 400 meters.

Erm... what? Look again: CLICK

Window = huge Enterprise.

If I had the time I could hold at least a dozent of arguments and screenshots against it...

But it is a common problem with TREK. Remember how they sized the Galaxy-Class in Season 1 of TNG? The Oberth was almost as big as the Galaxy-Class... same with the Constellation class.

Shuttlebay of the nu-prise changes size in 2009. When Pike's shuttle leaves they bay above Vulcan, the bay doors are wide open, yet the shuttle almost narrowly fits through.

 

[Kemaiku]

We get extended scenes taking place in the shuttlebay in Into Darkness, we get a much better idea of it's size, and it's still huge.

 

[BillJ]

We get extended scenes taking place in the shuttlebay in Into Darkness, we get a much better idea of it's size, and it's still huge.

The shuttle deck is also huge in Star Trek: The Video Game.

 

[Kemaiku]

Plus the side bays for larger ships.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Shuttlebay of the nu-prise changes size in 2009. When Pike's shuttle leaves they bay above Vulcan, the bay doors are wide open, yet the shuttle almost narrowly fits through.

It's the same size in both shot, it's only the camera that's moved from a long distance shot to a close-up. From a few pages ago...

 

[137th Gebirg]

Another thing I don't get is the placement of the nacelle pylons. They sit too low and too far back on the secondary hull, go straight into that cavernous shuttle bay, and yet there is no place for the intermix chambers to be positioned from engineering. Doesn't make any sense.

Still don't know why they didn't keep the articulated clam-shell shuttle bay doors. It looks far too easy to hit those slanted things with a shuttle on the new one like Xavier_Storma pointed out.

 

[Kemaiku]

The nacelles themselves are pretty damn big, they may only need superconductors from the warp core to power the machinary inside them that we see when they're opened up in this movie.

 

[SonicRanger]

I think maybe we should start on something simpler for them. Coloured cards for instance.

You think they're yellow, but they're really an avocado colour.