Families on starships.

[GalaxyClass1701]

So this became a thing with the Galaxy class but does it still happen? I know Picard, Riker, and the Paris family are on board star ships but you never really hear anything besides that.

With the destruction of Yamato, Odyssey, and Ent-D has starfleet rethought this practice? Besides Galaxy class is Sovereign class the only other class large enough for this?

 

[Christopher]

What constantly gets lost in the "families on ships" discussion, because TNG itself abandoned the idea pretty promptly, is that the Enterprise-D was meant to spend up to 15 years away from Federation space. It had families aboard because nobody could be expected to spend 15 years away from their loved ones. Also, it was meant to have a largely civilian complement of scientists, something else that later TNG producers forgot or ignored.

So with the paradigm we ended up with, of ships whose crews are mostly military and whose missions tend to be more short-term, I'm not sure how necessary families would be. It would make sense for the Luna-class ships like Titan, on their long-term deep-space missions (although those too have had a tendency to be cut short), and maybe for the Full Circle fleet (though that's nominally a three-year mission), but fleetwide? I don't know.

 

[Mysterion]

^^^
FWIW, Christopher's novel The Buried Age laid-out the rationale for families on the Ent-D about as well as it has been since the idea was introduced. IMO.

 

[DimesDan]

^^^
FWIW, Christopher's novel The Buried Age laid-out the rationale for families on the Ent-D about as well as it has been since the idea was introduced. IMO.

You're telling the writer of the book you mentioned something that he did. I'm sure @Christopher would remember.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Besides Galaxy class is Sovereign class the only other class large enough for this?

Sisko had his family with him on a Miranda, so I'm going to say, "no".

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

In the just released Force and Motion, Ben Maxwell's family is living on the Rutledge with him for an unspecified amount of time.