430 crew?

My father always thought 430 was too large a crew given the technology. The ~20 we saw in "The Ultimate Computer" was more reasonable, he thought.

 

While it never occured to me as a kid, but as an adult who spent too much time in hotel meeting rooms, the walls on the E have an adjustable look to them. Like at anytime a set of rooms could be turned into a ballroom at a moments notice.

 

[turns corner in thread, stops short]

Who left this dangling participle in the floor?! I could have broken my neck!

 

From The Making of Star Trek (direct quotations from Gene Roddenberry are in bold):
___________________________

Such a large vessel, even though highly automated, would need a fairly large crew to handle the complexity of the ship, as well as to enable it to carry out all of its many and varied duty assignments. In addition, having both men and women as crew members would make the voyage more enjoyable and bearable. There are also the realities of television to face. A large crew would provide more flexibility for story lines in future episodes. A coeducational crew would, hopefully, have greater appeal to a wider television audience.

“All those people” are needed for other, very practical reasons. The Enterprise occasionally will leave a small group of people behind on some planet for a variety of purposes. It could be for scientific investigation, teaching the local inhabitants, survey work, etc. These specialists are then picked up at a later date by the Enterprise or one of her sister ships. This is a very necessary capability for a ship's mission, which includes exploration and scientific investigation. It dictates a crew complement large enough to withstand these temporary losses of personnel and still continue normal operations.

One of the reasons for having this many crewmen on board was to keep man essentially the same as he is now. I believe that man is, and always will be, a social animal. I therefore felt we had to provide widely varying types and widely varying opportunities for interplay in human relationships. It is good to have people aboard and available to lend their creative touch when automated machinery goes wrong. But this wasn't the primary reason, since we might easily hypothesize that, by this future century, equipment would have the ability to repair its own damage or bypass damaged parts and let auxiliary parts take over the job. Indeed, we have already built such capability into equipment landing on the moon.

You can't divorce man from men. And you can't divorce man from the things human relationships can give him.

What a “wild” idea!

 

Considering that operating an arguably LESS complex vessel like a current-day wet-navy carrier requires a complement of over 2000, I'd say that 430 is quite the feat of automation.

You also have to account for the 24 hour nature of ship operations. You have a minimum crew to keep the ship going, and a minimum COMPLEMENT that is 3-4x that number (depending on 8 or 6 hour shifts).

You also have to account for a "safety margin" in crewing in case your fancy command and control technology goes belly up on you. Sisko and Co found that out once when the Defiant's computer was sabotaged and they had to do every thing "by hand".

 

Hey, how did they(the people who developed the series)decide how many would be in the crew, how'd they settle on 430?

James

 

When they doubled the size of the ship they probably just roughly doubled the size of the crew. An early episode writer probably came up with a number that sounded plausibly specific - like 428 - and in later scripts they stuck with that.

 

From what I can tell, when the design of the Enterprise was nearly doubled in length (October 1964), Jefferies and company most likely looked at the plans on the page and assumed that they would now have four times the area to work with and bumped up the crew size from around 50 to 200 persons for The Cage. Some time over the next couple years (before the first season) someone most likely noticed that when you double the length you actually end up with 8x the original volume and they doubled the crew count again (to over 400 persons).

Besides the fact that the models were built to the sizes they were meant to be in November/December of 1964, one need only consider what 200 persons in a roughly 500 foot long version of the Enterprise would have been like to realize that that figure wasn't intended for the smaller ship.

So while the double the length, double the crew argument seems like a good (and plausible) argument... it really isn't.


As always... please feel free to disregard all of the above.

 

Sounds plausible - but how did they get the extra 28? Well, 28 is 4x7...YES! It's possibly the earliest example of a 47!!!

Okay, that was a stretch.

 

^ No worst than the Klingon ships are call D7's because "D" is the forth letter in the alphabet, so D7 give you 47.

 

For anyone who is curious, the D7 stands for Drell 7 Class Battlecruiser.

Here is the link for the webpage where the above information is from.


Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

 

I would say I am posting this late in this discussion however this is my take on the crew of a Constitution Class Star Ship
Six hour watches ( 1 on 3 off) Bridge watchOfficer of the Deck
Helm watch
Navigator of the Watch (old navy/quarter master of the Watch)
Engineer of the Watch
Communications Officer of the Watch (radioman of the Watch)
Duty Science Officer
Plus any sub system duty officers

Engineering
Main engineering watch officer
Assistant Main engineering watch officer
Warp plant supervisor (port engine)
Duty engineering specialists (port Engine X 2)
Warp plant supervisor (Starboard engine)
Duty engineering specialists (Starboard Engine X 2)
Impulse engine plant supervisor
Duty engineer Impulse Plant specialist (X2)
Various engineering subsystem supervisor
Duty specialist (X1)

Weapons/Ordinance
Duty Weapons/Ordinance Officer
Fore Ward Battery Officer
Port Battery Officer
Starboard Battery Officer

Communications Section
Duty Communication officer (non-bridge watch)
Communication specialists ( X4)

Deck Department/Maintenance
Deck Officer of The watch
Deck Technicians (X6)

Security Force
Duty Security Officer
Security Team Leader
Security Team (internal X6)
Security officer/Team (landing team/ashore duty X4)
Duty internal senor technician

Medical Division
Duty M.O.
Duty Nurse
Nurse
Duty Medical Technician (X3)

Flight Deck
Duty Flight Controller
Duty Shuttle pilot
Duty Flight deck crew (X 2)

Grand total of Persons on watch is 48.So if you have 6 hrs on 18 hrs off watch (refresher training/extra duties/sleeping/eating/recreation) that would mean 192 not counting the various department heads and assistants. Maybe a total 200 to 220. Also if you were going out deep space would you want extra people just in case something goes wrong.

 

wow did not think that would happen, my bad. next time I'll do it in the white box and not cut and paste from a word doc.

 

Here's a tip: copy the word doc text and paste it into NOTEpad (the most basic document editor you should have on your computer. This should take out all the formatting tags. THEN recopy the text from Notepad and paste into your reply field. Adjust formatting as needed.

As to your numbers, that might work for a Pike era ship, barely. But you entirely left out the Sciences (astrophysics, geology, etc) departments.

 

ok edited the first post disregard the second

 

yeah ur right I was just thinking about those on watch. didn't think about the sections. so yeah that could be a Pike era crew make up.

 

The Connie has 14 different labs on board, so you could estimate 1 "officer" and, say, 2 "techs" per lab/shift, so an additional 42/shift x 4 shifts = 168 crew...which is problematic for a Pike era ship that is supposed to only have ~230 crew total.

 

I agree that class of ship would need a large crew to do that she has to do. computers can only do so much you still the human part

 

Nice - I might try to incorporate those ideas into my crew roster too. I would say that, unlike engineering, bridge, and security there is no reason why labs have to be manned on a 24 hour basis. However, you would need communications monitoring (the bridge officer can't monitor everything) and sensors working all the time.

 

That's possible. You might have Science below decks operating on a 12/12 schedule, for example.

The other thing I'd bear in mind is that 168 would be a MINIMUM staffing, covering all 14 labs. Some labs might need more than 1 officer and 2 techs on duty at any one time.