Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculous?

[Ithekro]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

Carriers as the baseline is not good. They are limited by the depth of our ports and whatever bridges they have to pass under to get to the drydocks. Also with ships the length of the hull and hullform deturmines just how fast can in theory go. Even if you put a larger engine in a hullform that can make it go faster, it will not, as the ship will instead start to plow into the sea rather that steam over the sea (to much speed will cause the ship to sink itself pratically). To get a faster carrier would require a larger hull, but we cannot fit a larger hull into our ports without them running aground, nor running into bridges.

The, must get bigger form work if you use battleships and ocean going ironclads (British/Japanese) from the 1860s to 1940s. It doesn't work as well with American designs as of 1914 as the Panama Canal limited ship size to the 1940s before it was decided that capital ships could be made larger than that and just kept in one ocean or the other because the American economy could afford it. And American capital ship prior to the 1890s and even 1901 were mostly coastal ships rather than ocean going.

 

[IrishNero]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

There really is no point of comparison between objects in space so the larger ships that came later really don't appear any larger unless they're parked near an earlier ship, which has rarely happened. There are very few scenes in all of the movies and series that really use the ships size to effect, so I can't imagine there was any practical reason to make the ships seem larger apart from using the size to connote advanced capabilities.

 

[Ithekro]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

That and television writers tend to not have a sense of scale. Be it the galaxy or the Galaxy-class.

 

[Timo]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

Of course, there's one further aspect for Enterprise growth that stems from TV writing: the E-D needed to be bigger than the E-nil in order to accommodate more "previously unseen interiors" and "previously unseen personnel" than her 1960s predecessor did. That is, the writers hoped TNG would spend more time exploring the hero ship than the 1960s flop of a show did, and they needed to prepare for that eventuality.

The "lineage" from E-nil to E-D then retroactively followed, and was "logically" drawn to gradually increasing scale. The E-E was not part of that lineage or logic, and indeed is smaller than the E-D except in length, there being no story need to provide the "extra interiors to explore" yet no good excuse to make her significantly smaller than the E-D, either.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JTShanks]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

Never bothered me. Though I believe that the Intrepid, Sovereign and Defiant classes are all smaller than the Galaxy class.

The Intrepid is smaller, but not the Sovereign.

 

[T'Girl]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

In terms of volume, I believe the Sovereign was quite a bit smaller.

Long and (somewhat) lean.

 

[mos6507]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

Look at monuments like the Pyramids or skyscrapers. There's a peeing contest over who can build the biggest structure. Kind of a Tower of Babel (hence Babylon 5) syndrome. But along the way, yes, practicality suffers.

 

[Greg Cox]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

Let it be noted that this is hardly unique to the Enterprise.

Godzilla keeps getting bigger, too.

 

[JTShanks]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

In terms of volume, I believe the Sovereign was quite a bit smaller.

Long and (somewhat) lean.

In terms of overall mass and width as well as Height, yes; The Galaxy is larger. But the Sovereign has about the same length (although the Sovereign may be at least larger by 10 meters or so).

 

[Ithekro]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

For the record, Darth Vader's Super Star Destroyer has been fixed at being 19 kilometers long. That is a little under 12 miles long. Or more accurately, 62,336 feet long.

 

[Nebusj]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

The ships are big enough to do what they need to do, and if they need to do more stuff they get bigger.

Really? That simple? Huh.....I thought you always had to account for things like increased energy, propulsion, crew and the things to keep them, access to support facilities.

Guess not.

If only there were some way in which rockets could be designed to needs and built to them, instead of dropping fully-formed from the gods and unalterable by human agency!

I'm sure the boys at NASA will be relieved when this landing men on Mars thing gets rolling and all they'll have to tell the rocket engineers is "Look the Saturn V isn't big enough, just create one that is 600 feet and 3 times larger and we'll be good." Since there in no limit on the size of craft apparently.

Yeah, the idea of ever designing or building a rocket considerably larger than the Saturn V is just crazy moon-man talk. Er, Mars-man talk.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

The size and design of the ship made more sense if the Enterprise D is a deep space exploring community than it does if it is a frontline military vessel.

 

[Kor]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

^ Well it has been described as a "hotel in space."

When I was a young lad, I asked my big brother why the Enterprise was called "galaxy class." He said because it's as big as a galaxy.

And I believed him.

(Another time, when he was chewing bubble gum, I asked him what he was chewing, and he said it was his tongue... and I believed him. )

How large can starships feasibly get, I wonder?
It must be difficult to generate humongous, stable warp fields.

Kor

 

[Cyke101]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

Carriers as the baseline is not good. They are limited by the depth of our ports and whatever bridges they have to pass under to get to the drydocks. Also with ships the length of the hull and hullform deturmines just how fast can in theory go. Even if you put a larger engine in a hullform that can make it go faster, it will not, as the ship will instead start to plow into the sea rather that steam over the sea (to much speed will cause the ship to sink itself pratically). To get a faster carrier would require a larger hull, but we cannot fit a larger hull into our ports without them running aground, nor running into bridges.

I was just thinking that, too. A carrier, as big as it is, still has the advantage of ports and will still have the support of the navy. A starship on a 5 year mission, on the other hand, will probably need to be more self-sufficient, especially given the ginormous gulfs of space.

For a while now, thanks to TNG and the Abrams movies, I've come to think of the original and refit Connies as too small for their missions, at least considering what they go through for deep space, and though I'm aware that modern carriers stuff more crew in there with less space, I don't feel that comparison takes into account the inherent claustrophobia that would come with the vastness of space, for the sake of crew comfort and morale. The Galaxy class and her size seems to fit better with its multipurpose mission. And though the Intrepid is smaller, it has less crew than a Connie, and the one we've seen the most -- Voyager -- was often required to do things that were outside its design parameters, so that's a unique situation right there.

Another thing about the Galaxy was that it was designed in the 1980s, a decade that emphasized that bigger was better. And with that said, some of the biggest ships in Trek came from that era of TNG, like the Cube or the D'Deridex. But the '90s saw smaller, more efficient, almost speedster designs -- gradually Trek became less obsessed with building bigger, and was more for efficiency.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

The Abrams Enterprise is ridiculously large, or was until it got dwarfed by the completely ludicrous Vengeance, but otherwise I have no problem with the size of any of the ships in Star Trek.

I wonder if anyone noticed the irony of putting the Vengenance in the Dreadnought class, a battleship class that proved useless in the war they were designed to fight and too expensive to risk.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

For the record, Darth Vader's Super Star Destroyer has been fixed at being 19 kilometers long. That is a little under 12 miles long. Or more accurately, 62,336 feet long.

Exactly. Amongst it's peers, Star Trek is reasonable.

http://www.comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/spaceship-comparison.gif

 

[T'Girl]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

A carrier, as big as it is, still has the advantage of ports and will still have the support of the navy. A starship on a 5 year mission, on the other hand, will probably need to be more self-sufficient, especially given the ginormous gulfs of space

The Enterprise on it's 5 year mission (imo) was never intended to go without port calls, maintenance visits or resupply. The Enterprise occasionally visited starbases.

 

[Kemaiku]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

In terms of volume, I believe the Sovereign was quite a bit smaller.

Long and (somewhat) lean.

In terms of overall mass and width as well as Height, yes; The Galaxy is larger. But the Sovereign has about the same length (although the Sovereign may be at least larger by 10 meters or so).

The Sovereign is 15 meters longer, but only has 1/8th the internal volume.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

Star Trek is every bit as fictional as Star Wars...

This pretty much sums it up. The creators are going to do what they need to do to catch the audiences eye.

You know if you're going to just eventually say it's sci fi or the shows makers are going to do what they need to drive the plot, why bother to even have a discussion board or post a comment because that line can basically apply to ALMOST EVERY SINGLE THING IN THE FRANCHISE

I don't mind that you generally take up contrary positions to mine. If you're going to do that at least come up with something better than that bit.

It's basically the sci fi equivalent of saying it doesn't matter what you do in life because you're going to die someday.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

Re: Did the constant increase in size of each Enterprise get ridiculou

For the record, Darth Vader's Super Star Destroyer has been fixed at being 19 kilometers long. That is a little under 12 miles long. Or more accurately, 62,336 feet long.

Exactly. Amongst it's peers, Star Trek is reasonable.

http://www.comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/spaceship-comparison.gif

I'm not talking about it compared to other franchises. I'm talking about it against itself and the general human growth curve of things.