Discovery Size Argument™ thread

[Longinus]

Also, Excelsior was specifically referred as a 'big ship' in way that made it clear that its size was remarkable. I think there should not be ships bigger than Excelsior prior to it.

But yeah, I think modest rescaling of old ships is a good idea. About 400m Constitution, 600m Excelsior and 300m Oberth would probably look pretty OK next to the DIS ships, and would match the windows and the interior sets better. I think this will be my headcanon now, at least until directly contradicted.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yeah, you're really waaay off the rails here.
Both Enterprise have been the premiere starship (classes) of it's eras. In fact, the D was even the flagship.

It's never been defined what "flagship" even means in the context of Starfleet except insofar as it's the most prestigious assignment in the fleet. In that sense, no one has ever explained why the Enterprise-D was the flagship instead of, say, the Yamato or the Odyssey. All three ships are exactly the same size, and the Yamato (originally) has an -E suffice and is called Enterprise's "sister ship."

As for Constitution, even your Memory Alpha article makes no reference to the Constitution class being the newest, largest or most advanced ship in the fleet at any time in its history. TOS makes no such references either. So again: there isn't a single source ANYWHERE that corroborates that claim.

Funny little nitpick:
"The dimensions of the Constitution-class, 947 feet (289 meters) long for the original configuration and 1,000 feet (305 meters) for the refit-configuration, have been set in stone in time immemorial as far as Star Trek lore is concerned. That being said and oddly enough, neither dimension has actually ever been canonically confirmed, as neither dimension was ever seen or referred to in any of the live-action Star Trek productions."

Which IMO lends even more weight to the theory that the ship is actually a bit larger than that, more fitting to the size of the shuttle bay and other sets.

I kind of knew that, but it's a VERY good point. We probably COULD retcon the TOS Connie to something in the 500 meters range without actually violating canon.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Also, Excelsior was specifically referred as a 'big ship' in way that made it clear that its size was remarkable.

By McCoy, who's already seen this ship at least three times before.

it's size isn't remarkable in absolute terms except to say it's bigger than Enterprise. McCoy would probably say the exact same thing about the Kelvin if he saw it ("God, that's a big ship too!")

But yeah, I think modest rescaling of old ships is a good idea. About 400m Constitution, 600m Excelsior and 300m Oberth would probably look pretty OK next to the DIS ships, and would match the windows and the interior sets better. I think this will be my headcanon now, at least until directly contradicted.

it would certainly explain the floor to ceiling windows in "The Final Frontier", yes?

 

[Tuskin38]

CBS has sizes for those ships.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

It has been fixed so it does not breed IIRC, this could have had other effects.

Could be. Maybe Tribbles aren't very complex physiologically speaking.

 

[Rahul]

It's never been defined what "flagship" even means in the context of Starfleet except insofar as it's the most prestigious assignment in the fleet. In that sense, no one has ever explained why the Enterprise-D was the flagship instead of, say, the Yamato or the Odyssey. All three ships are exactly the same size, and the Yamato (originally) has an -E suffice and is called Enterprise's "sister ship."

As for Constitution, even your Memory Alpha article makes no reference to the Constitution class being the newest, largest or most advanced ship in the fleet at any time in its history. TOS makes no such references either. So again: there isn't a single source ANYWHERE that corroborates that claim.


I kind of knew that, but it's a VERY good point. We probably COULD retcon the TOS Connie to something in the 500 meters range without actually violating canon.

Again, you're still wrong. The E's are, and always have been, the biggest guns in the Federation. They are the "Heavy cruisers" (http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Heavy_cruiser) of Starfleet. The equivalent of a modern day aircraft carrier compared to the rest of the fleet. There is a reason why, in 800+ hours of Trek television, everytime we saw a fleet, the E was always the biggest, baddest ship in it.

You're really arguing hard against canon here.

 

[Ithekro]

That or the reaction to Klingons is a predator-prey response, and the Tribble haven't encountered the Klingons yet, but after they do, the following generations (which are produced rapidly) develop a reaction to Klingons. Many generations of Tribbles later (10 years or so) you have shrieking Tribbles on Station K7.

As for the Enterprise. She may or may not be the largest ship in the fleet during Kirk's Five Year Mission. She is considered to be an impressive ship still even though she is noted to be old. It is unclear if it was the original version or the refit that held the Starfleet speed records that USS Excelsior was trying to best with the new transwarp drive.

The Galaxy-class USS Enterprise is however called a flagship. But I take this more in the cruise liner meaning of the word. The ship is the representative of the Federation's best, and the ship Starfleet would send to represent itself to others. This is in counter to the military usage of the word, since a flagship along those lines is either the command ship of a fleet, or the ship where the admiral operates when at sea. Enterprise does operate as a traditional flagship a few times, but in none of these cases is there an admiral commanding from Enterprise. And when an Admiral comes onboard, they tend to already have their own ship to go back to when they are finished dressing down Picard.

 

[Tuskin38]

Again, you're still wrong. The E's are, and always have been, the biggest guns in the Federation. They are the "Heavy cruisers" (http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Heavy_cruiser) of Starfleet. The equivalent of a modern day aircraft carrier compared to the rest of the fleet. There is a reason why, in 800+ hours of Trek television, everytime we saw a fleet, the E was always the biggest, baddest ship in it.

You're really arguing hard against canon here.

Again, size doesn't matter, Even though Discovery is bigger, doesn't mean they're better.

 

[UssGlenn]

As for Constitution, even your Memory Alpha article makes no reference to the Constitution class being the newest, largest or most advanced ship in the fleet at any time in its history.

Just to nitpick, by definition the Constitution Class would have to be the newest class when it was brand new, if only for a day.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Again, you're still wrong. The E's are, and always have been, the biggest guns in the Federation.

Then you should have no trouble finding a source that corroborates that, no?

They are the "Heavy cruisers" (http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Heavy_cruiser) of Starfleet.

And the evidence that a "heavy cruiser" is the largest and most advanced ship in Starfleet is...?

There is a reason why, in 800+ hours of Trek television, everytime we saw a fleet, the E was always the biggest, baddest ship in it.

Heh...

I suppose you meant the biggest baddest FEDERATION ship in there? That's also factually untrue; EVERY Federation starship we saw was exactly the same size and same level of "badness" because there was only ever one type of starship they could even afford to show.

You're really arguing hard against canon here.

There are NO canon references that describe the Constitution class -- or the Enterprise for that matter -- as the largest, or near the largest, or even notably large for the 23rd century. NONE WHATSOEVER. Nor are there any references to its firepower or technology relative to any other Starfleet vessel.

Unless you're trying to say that the Constitution class was the ONLY starship the Federation had at the time, in which case, yes, it is the "largest" ship just because they never built anything smaller.

 

[The Librarian]

If the Constitution is just a heavy cruiser, doesn't that imply larger ships? Even if given some suitably Starfleet euphemism name.

 

[F. King Daniel]

From The Making of Star Trek. It's not canon, but it makes the producers' intent in 1966 very clear:

"The Enterprise is the largest man-made vessel in space."

 

[Longinus]

I don't mind if there are some ships that are a bit larger than Connie, but it should be among the largest. It really doesn't make sense if heavy cruiser is among the smallest ships in the fleet. We don't have the sizes of the binary stars ships yet, but at least Europa is enormous.

 

[Timo]

But nations with fleet ambitions in the past only built puny heavy cruisers if they absolutely had to - bigger was better, and a battlefleet of an upstart navy (looking at you, Wilhelm, but South American navies would also fit the bill) might be 75% mighty battleships and just 25% assorted other riffraff such as cruisers or battle cruisers or destroyers.

Kirk's ship tellingly was never sent by Starfleet to do frontline stuff. Kirk ferried people; Kirk ferried medicine; Kirk deployed guerilla teams to secondary targets during wars. In addition, Kirk accidentally stumbled on big things he then had to sort out, but never by Starfleet intent or even with Starfleet blessing. Classic cruiser stuff, this, for a navy that has big battleships for actual fighting (and perhaps big explorers for actual exploring if that's Starfleet's day job, or big colonizers for actual colonizing etc.).

If Kirk's ship has one thing going for it, it's speed records. But as often pointed out, the actual record performances would be due to alien meddling, leaving it utterly unclear how high the ship's standard propulsive performance ranked in the Fleet.

Is the Excelsior our benchmark for big, then? Well, there's a single reference to this, in STVI:TUC - and the same reference establishes Hikaru "Tiny" Sulu as a benchmark for big. So there might be something slightly bigger. But hopefully not by much, as the Trek eras from that point on feature a very large number of ship designs and carefully omit anything bigger than the Galaxy. So we could live with the ship sizes of the Abrams movies (these being the capital ships, while Shatner's Kirk flies a second-rate vessel in the cruiser category) and then decide that Starfleet for the next century sees no point in increasing the size further.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tomalak]

There was a thread by @Praetor a few years ago arguing (very convincingly) that the Excelsior was around 640m based on her screen appearances. You could scale up the Connie to 400m and still have the Excelsior be suitably "big" in comparison.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, our primary (and only?) scale-establishing features, the airlock doors, are so tiny in relation to the whole that minor fudging allows for at least this degree of inflation.

Conversely, that is, by the very same token, the Kelvin could be correspondingly smaller. Indeed, she has a humungous multi-deck airlock door on her spine if we "accept" the "intended" size!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Prax]

I've heard that 09 Enterprise was designed to be similar in size to the TMP Enterprise, but the interior shots created an inconsistency.

The original Enterprise may be too impractically small, but the reboot Enterprise is impractically large. The Engineering section is mostly wasted space. The heating bill must be astronomical.

And the Galaxy class, too. Too large.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I don't mind if there are some ships that are a bit larger than Connie, but it should be among the largest. It really doesn't make sense if heavy cruiser is among the smallest ships in the fleet.

Why? In the very brief period of time where the term "heavy cruiser" was used by any real world navy, it was a medium-sized ship, behind pocket battleships, battleships and fleet carriers. The thing that made them cruisers wasn't their size, but their long travel range without the need to refuel or frequently resupply. Battleships were known to be gas guzzlers and aircraft carriers were... well, aircraft carriers (OTOH, the Soviet/Russian navy originally called their carriers "aviation cruisers" because that's basically what they are: cruisers that also carry a squadron or two of fighters).

Also, in Babylon 5 and Star Wars terminology, cruisers are among the smallest vessels in the fleet, notable more for their speed than their firepower. In both cases, cruisers are mainly used as small escort vessels or picket ships while the larger destroyers are the mainline combatants. Which makes a certain amount of sense: if I want to cruise around looking for troublemakers, I send a cruiser. If I want to destroy said troublemakers after I find them, I send a destroyer.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

There was a thread by @Praetor a few years ago arguing (very convincingly) that the Excelsior was around 640m based on her screen appearances. You could scale up the Connie to 400m and still have the Excelsior be suitably "big" in comparison.

If we're to believe the sizes of Discovery et al, I'm happy with the idea of the original E being scaled up to 400ish metres. The original size always seemed a bit small to me, compare to the interiors. Chalk up the dimensions given in the Making book as rookie errors like "James R. Kirk" or "Vulcanians".

 

[Prax]

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