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If you were crewing a starship...

FatherRob

Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
I am curious...

I am in the process of developing a comprehensive roster of positions aboard a starship, and while I find myself having an easy time in most areas, I am having a very difficult time pinning down how many scientists are absolutely necessary for the mission of a spacecraft.

I wondered if anyone here had some thoughts about what sciences you would need specialists for as standard crew aboard a ship, what you would defer to 'mission specialist' (i.e., pick up at a starbase), etc...

Rob+
 
FatherRob said:
I am curious...

I am in the process of developing a comprehensive roster of positions aboard a starship, and while I find myself having an easy time in most areas, I am having a very difficult time pinning down how many scientists are absolutely necessary for the mission of a spacecraft.

I wondered if anyone here had some thoughts about what sciences you would need specialists for as standard crew aboard a ship, what you would defer to 'mission specialist' (i.e., pick up at a starbase), etc...

Rob+

Well, I suppose it'd mostly be dependant on the mission at hand. However, I would have at least a Chief Science Officer, one each division head for Physical, Social, Biological, or whatever major scientific field-categories exist in the 24th and a half century. In addition, probably someone in charge of general lab services, with some lab-tech types to do the scut work.

Add scientists in specific specialties as needed.
 
I'm nowhere near qualified to figger that out, but I'd imagine (for a long-term exploration mission like Enterprise's) you'd need at least one scientist expert in each of the disciplines needed to study a planet's physical makeup and ecology, its inhabitants' present societies and histories, and their technology. Come to think of it, sounds like you'd need a couple hundred scientists!
 
FatherRob said:
I am curious...

I am in the process of developing a comprehensive roster of positions aboard a starship, and while I find myself having an easy time in most areas, I am having a very difficult time pinning down how many scientists are absolutely necessary for the mission of a spacecraft.

I wondered if anyone here had some thoughts about what sciences you would need specialists for as standard crew aboard a ship, what you would defer to 'mission specialist' (i.e., pick up at a starbase), etc...

Rob+
See, that's like asking "how many people does it take to crew a naval vessel" or "how many people make up a sports team?" You need to know a bit more. A football team is made up of a different set of needs than, say, a synchronized swimming team.

Be more specific. Think about the SPECIFIC JOBS you want to be accomplished. Are you focusing on hardcore geological and planetary sciences? Are you focusing on biological research? Are you talking about a medical ship? Is this a ship with fairly limited abilities in many areas (like the original 1701 had), able to do a first "scrub" of any new discoveries but not really set up for the hardcore R&D type stuff? Are you talking about something like the Galaxy that carries a full complement of just about every science research institution out there? (See, the only real justification for the Galaxy being as massive as it was, was that it needed to have a full research team for every possible science area... something that no smaller ship would ever reasonably be expected to have, I think.)

Don't try to crew a ship based upon what someone else says. Instead... literally think about what tasks you need your crew to perform, and work from there. Assume three shifts for anything specific to ship functioning... but the research science guys don't have to be three shift, necessarily... that's your call to make. Figure out what areas of study... figure out how many people you need... if you're designing a ship, you get to make the call!
 
Mr. Brown also hits on what I was going to say.

The biggest things that you'd need to give us beore we could give advice is how big of a ship, what's her mission profile and how long of a duration is each tour going to be? For the E-D, as Mr. Brown said, you have at least or two of every scientific speciality out there, it seems from TNG's run.

For the TOS Enterprise or the Refit, I think that you'd have to have more generalized scientists than specialty fields.

... and that's all I've got that hasn't already been said....
 
If you look at the content of TOS, "The Ultimate Computer" and "That Which Survives" seem to suggest a significant role for geologists. Starships would also have need for various engineering specialists, both to tend to the ship's ongoing needs and for missions to Federation/deep space missions/colonies/space stations.

Depending on what era your starship operates in, you may have a civilian presence on board as well. Looking at TNG's "Evolution", it should be evident that some universities or other deep space organizations (American Continent Institute?) may work out deals with Starfleet to place civvy specialists aboard starships, either on a mission basis or a long-term basis.

One thing "Evolution" only hinted at: inhabited planets would still be special discoveries, even in the life-rich STAR TREK universe. A more common phenomenon that starships would discover/study would be outer space phenomena. How would the Federation study/chart black holes, to avoid the time-tripping problem? ("Tomorrow Is Yesterday") How would the Federation study the lives of stars, the formation of planets, the interactions of dark matter and dark energy with visible matter and energy? I would say the profession of "astrophysicist" would evolve into numerous sub-categories in the United Federation of Planets.

As far as detailed rosters for starships are concerned, there would, of course, by special "supercargo" passengers (civilians) and permanent crew (Starfleet officers and non-commissioned personnel) to consider. Depending on the size of your starship, I would expect a large enlisted contingent ("crewmen" and "chiefs") which would be supervised by commissioned officers. One thing that was never mentioned in TREK (but also never refuted) is the notion of warrant officers. These are senior non-com specialists who are not enlisted. I could see WO's serving as pilots, certain engineering senior specialists, and maybe other kinds of highly trained, highly experienced specialists (staff for science labs, cargo control, and maybe junior helmsman and navigators).
 
One further point... this isn't "canon" but it's my preferred explanation for the original TOS Enterprise.

We all know, canonically, that the ship had a crew of ~200 under Pike, but that she had a crew of ~430 under Kirk. How many were aboard at the time of WNMHGB is debatable, though I tend to assume that she still had a crew of 200 at that point.

Here's how I see it. The Enterprise, after the Barrier incident and the emergency field repairs at Delta Vega, limped back to home space, where she was put into a full refit. Her frame wasn't rebuilt but her installed systems were largely replaced. New bridge module, new computers, improved engines and powerplant, etc, etc.

But most significantly, the refit 1701 got the first "replicators." So did eleven other ships out of the much larger starfleet... and these twelve ships were done, and probably relaunched, at the same time.

What would replicators mean to a ship? Well, it would mean that you wouldn't have to carry nearly so much in the way of supplies... no need to carry food supplies, just use the "food slot" replicators to make your meal for you. No need to carry replacement uniforms, or replacement repair parts, or whatever... at least not very much. You'd just need "raw material storage" which could be transformed into whatever you needed... and your waste materials would be reclaimed to serve as raw material for the next batch of replicated stuff.

How much storage space would you free up by doing that? Seems to me that you'd likely open up as much as half of the inhabitable volume of the ship.

So, then - what do you do with a half-empty ship? You don't just put more people on there... not unless those people have a JOB.

Well, I see it like this. Prior to this point, you had the cruisers and frigates and so forth, which were mainly reconnaissance and patrol vessels during peacetime, with almost no science capabilities. You also had a lot of dedicated survey ships.

In this case, they would have simply taken the crew and resources of the survey ships and put them into the now-available extra space. And instead of having a Constitution-class that's essentially a warship, you have a ship that is a HYBRID... a warship with a survey ship inside of her.

Obviously, the 1701 under Pike has a science crew, but it was probably very small. I'm sure that there was no "Marla McGyvers" on board...no more than a dozen total science stafff, I'd say.

But with the "refit for TOS" version, you'd have an engineering and operations crew of ~200 but another full ~200 or so of scientists, and with a detachment of Starfleet Security aboard as well topping off the 430 crew count. All those new crewers would be living and working in spaces that used to be occupied by food lockers and so forth.

Out of that ~200 science types, you'd reasonably have it broken down into planetary sciences (geology, meteorology, etc), life sciences (biologists of various stripes, agriculture and horticulture experts, etc), physicists, astronomery/stellar cartography types, some pure math types, etc. And also a number of "soft science" types... an expanded linguistics team to fall under communications, of course, but you'd need sociologists, anthropologists, historians, protocol types, etc. You'd burn through that ~200 "survey vessel crew" roles pretty quickly, with maybe between three and twelve people in any specific field.

The thing is, and this is why I raised the point... I always got the impression that these "twelve starships" which were sent on this mission to explore beyond the borders of known space were not not "typical." They were the first attempt at the "explorer" that was carried to its extreme in the Galaxy design.

Most ships, I'd think, would have much more limited scientific resources aboard.

Anyway, that's my personal take on it... your mileage may vary.
 
That would also explain why the NX-01, which doesn't have significantly lower volume (-~5.5%) has less than 1/4 the crew count: The rest is volume taken up by the protein sequencer supplies and such-like, not to mention the presumably much larger machinery.

As for which classification the NX-01 falls under, in your list, I'd argue for survey with limited combat capability pre-season 3, and primarily warship post-season 3.

I love it when such disparate eras of Trek fall together neatly.
 
It is also possible that the ships have roughly similar capabilities but simply embark different crew contingents with great flexibility. Pike might just have left half his crew behind. Or one-third, with Kirk in turn eschewing with one-third of the maximum capacity.

Kirk's mission was quite different from those of Pike and Archer, after all. The young hero skipper was sent out to go where no man had gone before, exploring strange worlds and stuff - while Pike was apparently doing a milk run to Rigel and back, and Archer was explicitly on a shakedown cruise that got extended by happenstance, and then was sent on a narrow-scope military interdiction mission. Starfleet simply might not be able to afford different ship designs for those different missions, but would instead send out the capital ships of the day crewed with as many personnel as need be. Eighty would be the minimum to run an Enterprise class vessel for an extended period of time (three-four shifts); something like a hundred could probably run a Constitution, although as few as twenty would do for brief periods of time (say, the single-shift backup crew during the M-5 experiment) and a single person could pilot the ship in an emergency ("Doomsday Machine", "Mark of Gideon") albeit with severe limits ("This Side of Paradise").

IMHO, crewing a starship is a bit like crewing a Special Ops helicopter. There's the crew you absolutely need to fly the thing; then there's the crew needed to defend the thing; and then there's the crew or equipment needed for the mission, with all sorts of different mixes and balances available. There are some hard limits to how much can be carried, but most missions can be accomplished with less than 50% of the maximum personnel/load aboard. And running the thing at mere 50% load is not considered inefficient or anything - it's the way it's supposed to work.

Timo Saloniemi
 
My take on the TOS "starships" is very much like Cary L Brown's above. Except I'm not sold especially on the replicator deal. It seems to me that the non-starship-class Connies would have been equipped similarly to the Starships but with fewwer labs and more cargo/mission swappable space.

That's all I really have to add, most of my other points were more or less covered by earlier posts....
 
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