D-7 Class Battlecruiser

[Maurice]

I was just on the old carrier USS Hornet (CVS-12) the other day, and it's smaller than a Nimitz or the Enterprise, and post-war its crew complement was 3000–3500. I walked through some of the crew's berthing and some of those compartments had 48 bunks each, sometimes in racks three high. You could get a crew of over 400 just by having eight of those berths and a few more private compartments in officer's country.

 

[T'Girl]

We saw crew sleeping areas in TUC with triple level bunks.

.

 

[Timo]

able to maintain about 3500 crewman

But starships aren't designed to "maintain crewmen". If they could, they'd get rid of the annoying Carbon Units altogether; a few are needed nevertheless to keep the ships going, but the fewer, the better.

An aircraft carrier might have three or four thousand people aboard. A somewhat larger oil tanker would "maintain" only just a few dozen people, though. And a military oiler such as the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T2_tanker had something like 40 crew to handle normal operations and wartime emergencies. The crew count of a Star Trek starship isn't necessarily unrealistic or unexpected as such, just not particularly comparable to a ship that performs major things other than sailing forth and firing (modern and largely automated) guns.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Knight Templar]

able to maintain about 3500 crewman

But starships aren't designed to "maintain crewmen". If they could, they'd get rid of the annoying Carbon Units altogether; a few are needed nevertheless to keep the ships going, but the fewer, the better.

An aircraft carrier might have three or four thousand people aboard. A somewhat larger oil tanker would "maintain" only just a few dozen people, though. And a military oiler such as the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T2_tanker had something like 40 crew to handle normal operations and wartime emergencies. The crew count of a Star Trek starship isn't necessarily unrealistic or unexpected as such, just not particularly comparable to a ship that performs major things other than sailing forth and firing (modern and largely automated) guns.

Timo Saloniemi

My point was simply that the 400 plus crews of the Enterprise and Klingon ships was quite reasonable based on the size of the ships.

The real anomaly is the Enterprise-D, which reportedly has EIGHT times the volume of the original Enterprise but with little more than 2 and a half times the crew.

 

[nightwind1]

In the US Coast Guard, I served on a 180' Ocean-going Buoy Tender/Icebreaker. We had a crew of 65, on a ship only 180' long.

I think the crews of most Trek vessels are much smaller than they should be.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

blssdwlf did the computation a while ago: A Nimitz class carrier has a volume of about 367,000 cubic meters. A Constitution class starship has a volume of about 230,000 cubic meters.

Primarily this is because both the saucer and engineering hull are significantly shorter than the carrier's hull, and of the saucer's seven decks only one of them spans the entire length and width of the module.

But, for both the carrier and the starship, how much of that volume is actual living and working space for the crew?

Irrelevant. It's the total volume of the entire ship including non-habitable space, including workspace, including hangars, magazines and cargo bays. Significantly, the Nimitz class with its larger volume doesn't have 40,000 cubic meters worth of engine nacelle sticking out of the side of it.

 

[Knight Templar]

blssdwlf did the computation a while ago: A Nimitz class carrier has a volume of about 367,000 cubic meters. A Constitution class starship has a volume of about 230,000 cubic meters.

Primarily this is because both the saucer and engineering hull are significantly shorter than the carrier's hull, and of the saucer's seven decks only one of them spans the entire length and width of the module.

But, for both the carrier and the starship, how much of that volume is actual living and working space for the crew?

Irrelevant. It's the total volume of the entire ship including non-habitable space, including workspace, including hangars, magazines and cargo bays. Significantly, the Nimitz class with its larger volume doesn't have 40,000 cubic meters worth of engine nacelle sticking out of the side of it.

He has a point. Because internal space and habitable spaces are an entirely subjective thing. In real life, aboard U.S. nuclear submarines it isn't uncommon for crewman to put a mattress in the torpedo room in the empty torpedo racks and sleep there (in peacetime, most U.S. nuclear submarines don't go out with full torpedo loadouts). People like to sleep there because it is normally roomier and quieter than the typical crew spaces.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

But, for both the carrier and the starship, how much of that volume is actual living and working space for the crew?

Irrelevant. It's the total volume of the entire ship including non-habitable space, including workspace, including hangars, magazines and cargo bays. Significantly, the Nimitz class with its larger volume doesn't have 40,000 cubic meters worth of engine nacelle sticking out of the side of it.

He has a point. Because internal space and habitable spaces are an entirely subjective thing.

In which case it wouldn't be quantifiable, which is why it's irrelevant. In the first place, we don't really KNOW how much of the Constitution's internal space is "uninhabitable," in point of fact we don't really know this of the nacelles either (they were habitable in ENT and we saw the insides of them in TAS a few times).

I doubt that homesteading in the machinery areas is common practice on a starship, though, especially a starship that evidently has enough room for every officer on the ship to have a small hotel room for accommodations, in addition to recreational spaces, a gymnasium, a swimming pool and a bowling alley.

In real life, aboard U.S. nuclear submarines it isn't uncommon for crewman to put a mattress in the torpedo room in the empty torpedo racks and sleep there (in peacetime, most U.S. nuclear submarines don't go out with full torpedo loadouts). People like to sleep there because it is normally roomier and quieter than the typical crew spaces.

So what exactly prevents the maintenance crew from pitching tents in the hangar of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier, or helicopter pilots to take naps in their aircraft? Nothing much, probably, but it's not something you really need to do if your accommodations aboard ship amounted to a two-room studio with your own bathroom and a desk. If hot-bunking was common practice on a starship it would be one thing, but with a crew of only 400 there's basically ZERO reason to believe it is.

 

[Knight Templar]

^I pretty much agree with all that. So why are we arguing.?

 

[Albertese]

^I pretty much agree with all that. So why are we arguing.?

Cause this is the Internet!

--Alex

 

[anh165]

My point was simply that the 400 plus crews of the Enterprise and Klingon ships was quite reasonable based on the size of the ships.

The real anomaly is the Enterprise-D, which reportedly has EIGHT times the volume of the original Enterprise but with little more than 2 and a half times the crew.

Living standards and attitudes changed between 23rd to 24th century. Even Gene Roddenberry thought living standards for crew members ought to be alot better than a hot bunked human sardine in the TOS era.

The Galaxy class was a ship that was supposed to be out on long term missions - including those of diplomatic matters, so you had improved and more spacious living quarters and facilities.

The Ambassador class was probably the first type of long range vessel of this nature, the Galaxy took it one step further.