"More refugees than the ship can support"

[Sisko_is_my_captain]

On numerous occasions, we hear that there are more folks needing to hitch a ride (e.g., due to a disaster) on a starship than the ship can "support". I guess I'm confused about what that really means. For example, I was reading a synopsis of an upcoming book where it states that 3000 people would be too much for the NCC-1701 to support.

Now I understand that things would be cramped to the point of misery, but surely the ship could physically drag even 3000 people from one planet to another one and support their minimal needs for air, water, and food for a couple of weeks. I mean, heck, even without food, you could probably toss 3000 people in a box and keep them there for a couple of weeks before folks started dying, right? It might stink, there might not be enough food for a really filling meal, and you might have to sleep on the deck under your jacket...but if it's that or certain DOOM?

Why can't these ships carry...well...more people than they claim to be able to carry? Is this just a stupid question?

 

[SchwEnt]

If we were talking about a ship at sea, I can see your point. If you look at some WWII photos, you can see people sardine-packed quite as you describe aboard ships.

Aboard a spacecraft, there are other issues besides deckspace and food. At least IRL, spacecraft have limited resources to maintain a breathable atmosphere. Scrubbers to remove CO2 buildup and so on. Items like that run out and would be quite overtaxed with all those people, you know, breathing. There are other issues like waste heat management, sanitary facilities, and such.

However, Star Trek crew consumables and life support needn't be limited to our real-life conditions (unless the plot calls for it). Maybe there is a limit to what a starship environmental system can handle, regardless of actual physical space availability.

 

[Caesar753]

I always thought the the number of people a ship could 'support' referred to the living spaces available. A starship could carry x number of people and have adequate quarters, bunks, heads (toilettes), etc. for them. A starship could carry more, if people slept in the corridors and what have you, but that would be considered over capacity and used only in emergencies.

 

[SchwEnt]

I suppose there's a difference between available sq feet where people can physically fit (whether in quarters, bunks, corridors, cargo bays, etc) and the capacity of consumables (air, water, food, energy, etc). Depending on the ship, there may be a discrepancy.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Store them in the transporter pattern buffer.

 

[Greg Cox]

FYI: there was an extended thread on this subject in the "Trek Tech" category a few weeks back.

In the case of my book, which is the one cited, I eventually decided that the TOS Enterprise could handle life-support for maybe twice its normal capacity, but no more.

So we're talking maybe 500, 700 refugees, tops. Especially if the nearest starbase or colony is weeks and weeks away . . . .

 

[MacLeod]

To compare, I think the Galaxy Class can support a maximimum of about 15 000, given the size difference if that is the case 3000 being too mant may not be far off the upper max for aconnie

 

[C.E. Evans]

FYI: there was an extended thread on this subject in the "Trek Tech" category a few weeks back.

In the case of my book, which is the one cited, I eventually decided that the TOS Enterprise could handle life-support for maybe twice its normal capacity, but no more.

So we're talking maybe 500, 700 refugees, tops. Especially if the nearest starbase or colony is weeks and weeks away . . . .

Oddly enough, that corresponds with the materials in the old AMT/ERTL model kits of the original Enterprise--accommodations for about 500 passengers in addition to her normal 430 crew complement.

 

[Greg Cox]

Well, if you watch the old show, they seldom take on more than a few hundred people at the most.

 

[Anji]

Inspite of all the whining the Engineering and Medical staffs may make, I don't believe that any starship would leave even one individual behind, regardless of safety conditions.

I've never seen one do it, and if I was captain, I would never, ever do it.

 

[blssdwlf]

Well, if you watch the old show, they seldom take on more than a few hundred people at the most.

True, but they never had to evacuate a large number of people at one time either.

However, if they did, an unmodified Enterprise should be able to take onboard the full crew of another sister ship at the very least (that's about 4-500). If Kirk gave Scotty the order to manufacture additional life support equipment to hook up to the Enterprise to support even more people, then why not? In "Operation: Annihilate" they manufactured 210 satellites to get a job done. Life support equipment should be easy to make (one would hope.)

 

[T'Girl]

In Journey to Babel, the Enterprise was carrying one hundred and fourteen delegates, Sarek brought a wife and three or four others in his party alone. If that was typical, then the Enterprise would have been carrying about eleven hundred people total.

In one of the novels (trek to mad world?) Scotty told Kirk the main problem was life support. Kirk's solution was to leave a number of the crew behind to fit aboard the maximum number of evacuees, the ship would make multiple trips, with the "abandoned" crew members rejoining the ship with the last load of evacuees.

 

[Caliburn24]

I'm almost certain that Okuda mentioned this topic in one of the old Tech Manuals from the mid-90s. I wish I could find my copy of the book, but I think he said something like 20,000-25,000 people could be crammed onto the Enterprise-D during an emergency evacuation.

Even if we want to say that such a number would overload the existing life support systems starships(aside from ones like the Defiant) have more than enough power(turn off weapons Mr. Worf!), materials(replicators!), and deck space(cargo bays!) to construct and maintain a vastly larger life support infrastructure if needed.

We're not talking Apollo 13 here.

 

[mitchconner]

They need to get a TARDIS because it's bigger on the inside.

 

[That Weirdo In The Corner]

They need to get a TARDIS because it's bigger on the inside.

Good idea, but how many would drown in the pool?

 

[Timo]

In Journey to Babel, the Enterprise was carrying one hundred and fourteen delegates, Sarek brought a wife and three or four others in his party alone. If that was typical, then the Enterprise would have been carrying about eleven hundred people total.

To be sure, Sarek was not only a "delegate" (of whom there were 114) but an "ambassador" (of whom there were 32). If the retinue of each ambassador was three to five people, that already gives us the total of 114 delegates, even if some of them are mere servants, entertainers or spouses.

I doubt the carrying capacity of a starship is any single number anyway. It's more likely to be a function of carrying time: you can jam-pack people in there shoulder to shoulder for thirty seconds before the weak begin to die, but if you can give each an extra square foot, they will survive for six hours before air circulation and thermal regulation fails to cope. If you give them, say, a square meter, thermal regulation can cope indefinitely and it becomes a matter of the latrines filling up. With two square meters, air recycling can finally start to cope, too. And ultimately you hit some limit beyond which "passengers" will survive just as long as "crew" normally does.

I doubt there would have been life support problems with accommodating those 114 diplomats indefinitely, say. But there were explicit problems with providing them with suitable bunking. With 1,114, some other critical resource would be the limiting factor, but the diplomats could still be evacuated from an unexpectedly crumbling Babel asteroid to the second-best conference venue a few days away. With 11,114, the best Kirk could do might well be to house everybody aboard his ship for 1½ hours while Security dealt with a bomb threat against Babel. And so forth.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deks]

I think the only issue on ST starships as advanced as Federation would be available beds/space.
The technology at their disposal is more than able to handle loads of people in terms of breathing and even food for some time (Voyager crew opened the ship to other races when they made their 'pit-stop' in Season 7).
Drama limiting technology not-withstanding, a regular Federation ship of virtually any class in the 24th century that has replicators and transporters is self-sufficient.

When you take into account loads of space in cargobays and even corridors... in a pinch, I think one can deduce that even an Intrepid class would be able to transport at least several thousand people at a time (if the trip lasts for say up to a day or so).

The Galaxy class maximum capacity was stated to be what?
10000?
Is that with all the quarters occupied and non-filled up corridors, cargobays and holodecks)?

 

[spockrocks]

According to TNG Tech. Manual, 15,000 evacuees is the max. Enterprise D

 

[Rulius]

How many could fit on each Enterprise's hanger deck?

 

[Timo]

...And how should they be stacked? Feet down, in three layers (of physical supports or holodeck-style forcefields)? Or feet towards a wall, in, say, fifty rows of 200 and in ten layers, with the gravity tilted accordingly? Which is psychologically the most comfortable? Which is logistically (movement to food slots and porta-pots, medical aid etc.)?

Timo Saloniemi