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Operational Crew of 1701

. . . The cross section shows another 200 people - and that's enough room for those 200 even if the ship was only 2 meters wide.
And if the crew are the size of ants!

(Okay, it's probably just a typo. But what did you mean?)
He probably means that if the ship were only six feet wide, each person would still have plenty of room. The graphic is only a 2 dimensional representation of how many people fit per deck, yet it shows 200 people. Clearly you would be able to fit multiple cabins across the deck, spreading the wealth as it were.
 
There's also the question of what all those redshirted Security specialists do when they're not on duty. Presumably they spend a lot of time updating their wills and making sure their next of kin can be contacted easily. :)

. . . The cross section shows another 200 people - and that's enough room for those 200 even if the ship was only 2 meters wide.
And if the crew are the size of ants!

(Okay, it's probably just a typo. But what did you mean?)

. . . The cross section shows another 200 people - and that's enough room for those 200 even if the ship was only 2 meters wide.
And if the crew are the size of ants!

(Okay, it's probably just a typo. But what did you mean?)
He probably means that if the ship were only six feet wide, each person would still have plenty of room. The graphic is only a 2 dimensional representation of how many people fit per deck, yet it shows 200 people. Clearly you would be able to fit multiple cabins across the deck, spreading the wealth as it were.

Exactly. I was just being facetious with regards to the top image cross section shot with the 200. Just emphasizing a point. I'm always surprised how large the ship really is.
 
Patrick,

I have those prints... and one thing that's always bugged me about them is just how much of the total habitable volume of the ship (in those prints) is devoted to cabin space.

That sort of thing has always bothered me. OK, if the Enterprise was a "cruise liner," it would make some sense to have that much of the ship's habitable volume dedicated to sleeping quarters. But this is supposed to be a WORKING VESSEL, isn't it?

On typical naval vessels, less than 30% of the habitable volume is dedicated to quartering. Sometimes quite a bit less. The point of the vessel is to do a job. Quarters are there for housing the people who are doing those jobs.

So, the crew spends roughly eight hours asleep in their cabins, roughly eight hours on duty, and roughly eight hours doing other (personal) things... including but not limited to recreation.

So, put into place cabins, workspaces, recreational facilities, support facilities, cargo facilities, etc, etc.

It's just not practical, unless the ship is a mere cruise liner, to have every crewmember, or even most crewmembers, having private quarters.

Now, insofar as putting people into a space, honestly, we can fit all 430 into a single room on the ship. You could have put the entire complement of the starship into Main Engineering, if you really wanted to. That's really a 20 x 21.5 rectangle (that's 21 rows and one half-row).

It's not hard to put 430 people into bleachers at a school, is it? But if you break it down to each of those people having a private apartment, and the space each of them uses at work, and so on and so on... it's a lot more space.

That's what I'm talking about.

The idea that Deck 6 is ENTIRELY cabins still only permits private quarters for about 200 personnel. Deck 6 is, by far, the largest single deck on the ship. (The undercut, on Deck 7, dramatically reduces the habitable volume of this deck.)

Really, I've got the Enterprise "guts" pretty much completely laid out. The majority of the crew live on decks 5 and 6, with just a few cabins in the secondary hull (mainly assigned to engineering personnel and flight deck personnel). There are quite a few junior-enlisted cabins (4 per cabin), a lot more double-occupancy cabins for senior enlisted and ensign-rank officers, and single occupancy cabins for other officer and just a few "special" positions who work largely from their cabins.

This leaves enough room for all the other things that the ship also needs.
 
^Fair enough. Though those plans (admittedly not my favorite- nor TOS's Enterprise), do have impulse deck space, the rec area, and very large loungey areas, as well as some miscellaneous space. So even if that one deck was largely exclusive to crew, it's not a ridiculous concept to have another 200 rooms dispersed around another 2 decks.They are quite small rooms after all...

And- if we did want to go your route, if all those beds were bunks, then that would certainly make the rest of the ship all work for sure. We just didn't see any evidence of that until STTUC. At least as far as I can recall- I could be mistaken.

Besides, It's not supposed to represent a modern naval vessel packed to the gills. It never was.

And to be blunt, being a fan of your ship, and possibly speaking for others, I'd like to see the whole bloody thing! Is it ready yet? ;)
 
There was a line from TMP where the computer reads out the current crew situation and it was:

COMPUTER VOICE: Crew status is one seven two at duty stations, two four eight off duty, eleven in sickbay, all minor, Over.

For the movie Enterprise it sounds like still a crew of 432 (well 430 at the end of the movie :) ) with 172 on duty and the remainder off duty. The 11 in sickbay could be distributed to either on or off duty. So maybe upwards of 183 on duty.

That probably includes a mix of specialists as well as a core group of people that would operate the ship though. You could work that backwards to TOS and tally up the number of people seen at various rooms/duty stations.
 
PThat sort of thing has always bothered me. OK, if the Enterprise was a "cruise liner," it would make some sense to have that much of the ship's habitable volume dedicated to sleeping quarters. But this is supposed to be a WORKING VESSEL, isn't it?
Well, two things working against your theory here. First of all, a 300m long by 40m wide cruiseliner with 13 decks can hold over 4,000 people (3,000 guests and over 1000 crew). Secondly, the Enterprise is significantly wider than a cruise-liner, allowing for many more cabins than a cruiseliner can hold. Sure, there are going to be a lot more working areas on a starship than a cruiseship, but even if you limit the cabins to a few decks and if you increase the size of the cabins even three-fold, you're still talking about a significant number of available living space.
 
PThat sort of thing has always bothered me. OK, if the Enterprise was a "cruise liner," it would make some sense to have that much of the ship's habitable volume dedicated to sleeping quarters. But this is supposed to be a WORKING VESSEL, isn't it?
Well, two things working against your theory here. First of all, a 300m long by 40m wide cruiseliner with 13 decks can hold over 4,000 people (3,000 guests and over 1000 crew). Secondly, the Enterprise is significantly wider than a cruise-liner, allowing for many more cabins than a cruiseliner can hold. Sure, there are going to be a lot more working areas on a starship than a cruiseship, but even if you limit the cabins to a few decks and if you increase the size of the cabins even three-fold, you're still talking about a significant number of available living space.

Two problems with that..

First, you're treating "length x width x depth" as the actual volume of the vessel, which is "reasonably close" for the cruiser liner but not remotely close for the starship.

Second, the cruise liner is essentially a floating hotel. It is not intended for long-term occupancy. It makes nearly daily ports-of-call. It receives daily resupply and support. It can devote the ovewhelming majority of its space to packing in passengers.

This is not remotely the case in the case of a modern naval vessel, much less a working starship. The starship isn't built to "carry lots of people." It's built, first and foremost, to do a particular job. A secondary feature of this is "the ability to carry the people needed to do those jobs."

While I'm sure that there would be spaceliners in TOS times that would be equivalent to in length/beam/draft to the Enterprise, and which would carry thousands of passengers... for short-duration cruises, I do not see that as being relevant to the idea of a long-range exploratory starship which, for many of the crew, is the only home they'll know for years at a time. A ship designed to do WORK, not merely to haul people around from port to port.

What I OBJECT to is the treatment of the Enterprise as primarily being a "person carrier" rather than being a big machine set up to do specific work, with a portion of its volume set aside to house those people required to do that work.

A cruise liner is what the Enterprise should NOT be compared to.
 
And my description addresses that. I even specify that you could give the crew cabins THREE TIMES the size of a typical cruise stateroom, and you'd still have plenty of space.

I think you're vastly underestimating the sheer volume of the Enterprise. If a cruiseship (which as you say ports nearly daily) can carry 4000, surely a starship that is not only similar in length and height but also wider in the saucer section can hold 400 crew plus workstations plus supplies. Which discounts the benefits of the replicator entirely.

A significant portion of the Enterprise is indeed devoted to Engineering, cargo bays, shuttlebays, and other "work" places. I'm sorry you object to the ship needing a crew.

Not to mention two bowling alleys.
 
Pike's crew numbered 204.
Pike might not consider everyone aboard his ship to be "crew." A modern naval Captain, with 2,000 marines on board probably does consider them to be "crew." Pike's crew might be the control crew, engine crew, operations crew, ordinance crew. But not medical, sciences, security, etc.

In terms of accommodations, in TUC we saw that at least some of the crew sleep in multi-tiered "bunk beds."

The enlisted crew perhaps don't each get a individual mini-apartment cabin.

:)




.
 
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It receives daily resupply and support. It can devote the ovewhelming majority of its space to packing in passengers.

Speaking from direct experience, it's depending on the length of the cruise. Re-supply is done on embarkation day of the cruise almost exclusively. The ship I worked on ran 21 day cruises in the Mediterranean. The only day (except for the odd item here and there) we took on supplies was the first day of the cruise. But your point still stands. Cruise ships are never far from shore if they should come up short.

Oh, and to add fuel to the fire here. On cruise ships you had to be at least a 2 stripe officer to have a chance of getting a private cabin. And not all of them did. Luckily as head of IT I was 3 stripes and had quite a nice cabin. Most of the crew onboard shares cabins with ships built pre-1990's putting 4 crew per cabin in some cases. Modern ships only put 2 per cabin.

My cabin was pretty sweet and much like what you would imagine in Star Trek, but with lower tech. I had a full size bed, small lounge area (sofa and coffee table), desk with computer and internet, refrigerator and microwave, and a bathroom the size of a postage stamp. Oh and a large porthole over the bed.
 
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Roddenberry's opinion was that every crewman had his own cabin. He resented the way present day military forces treated the men like little more than cattle, sometimes sticking twenty men to a barracks, and figured that if you're proven yourself smart enough and capable enough to serve on a starship, at the very least you deserved your own room.
 
And my description addresses that. I even specify that you could give the crew cabins THREE TIMES the size of a typical cruise stateroom, and you'd still have plenty of space.

I think you're vastly underestimating the sheer volume of the Enterprise. If a cruiseship (which as you say ports nearly daily) can carry 4000, surely a starship that is not only similar in length and height but also wider in the saucer section can hold 400 crew plus workstations plus supplies. Which discounts the benefits of the replicator entirely.

A significant portion of the Enterprise is indeed devoted to Engineering, cargo bays, shuttlebays, and other "work" places. I'm sorry you object to the ship needing a crew.

Not to mention two bowling alleys.
The one thing that I can't imagine anyone who knows me saying about me is that I've "underestimated" the internal space of this ship. People might claim that I've "misapportioned" it, perhaps, but I'm not "estimating" it at all. You may have never seen my fully-populated 1701 model (which I've left alone for a while... pretty much after finishing laying in cabins, I got sick of it and it's been on my "I'll get back to it" list for months now).

You might want to thumb through this (now-closed, and pretty old, but not yet "pruned") thread.

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=89810

I'm not "estimating" the internal volume of the ship. This has been a practical exercise.

In fact, it's worth pointing out that my version of the ship is more than 10% larger than the popularly-accepted size, and I've still had to exert some effort to get the whole crew in, AND to have them have places to work and play outside of their cabins.

There's only one really large deck on the ship... that's deck six. And yes, deck six is mainly cabins and crew support. And deck five is mainly officer quarters. Deck four is mainly taken up by medical and life-sciences. Deck three is science labs, including the high-bay lab. Deck two has two VIP cabins, the communications center, and the high-bay lab. Deck one is the bridge.

Deck 11 is basically a maintenance crawlspace, with deck 10 being devoted to tactical systems. Deck 9 is devoted to secondary engineering systems (including exterior hull maintenance systems). Deck 8 has the main computer center, the library computer banks, auxiliary control, and the like.

Deck seven has an outer ring and an essentially separate inner region. The outer ring's usefulness is limited, of course. The inner region includes the transporter complex, the quartermaster's offices (including replication and cargo systems, the central food replication system feeding food slots throughout the ship, etc), and a few additional cabins (mainly for the security team), plus the security offices (including the brig).

There are only a few cabins in the secondary hull, because the secondary hull is largely mechanical... with the ship's keel, the primary engineering systems, the deflector subsystem, the landing bay facility, the main cargo facilities, and non-essential recreation facilities (swimming pool, colocated with the main water processing system, a recreation facility which has a three-lane bowling alley, etc).

I've got the whole thing pretty much laid out. There are some internal details still pending... but the general layout is complete.

My crew cabins are generally 4-up cabins... two bunks for four beds, a common sitting area, and a larger bathroom shared with another 4-up cabin. My senior enlisted and junior officer cabins are 2-up. Only the most senior enlisted (think "Master Chiefs"), and officers of above Ensign rank, get private cabins, with the exception of a few special cases who are required to use their cabins as their offices as well (the quartermaster, who's enlisted, the personnel officer, an ensign, the captain's yeoman, a crewman, etc)

It's pretty well completely laid out. So I'm not "estimating" anything. You may argue that I've misapportioned, and that's fine... but not that I've "estimated" anything.
 
Cary L. Brown: I remember your project. I hope to see more of it. I think it's fair to say that your approach is beyond reproach.

As to a cruise liner comparison, lets' recall that while the majority of the volume of the cruise liner is devoted to cabins, the starship has little more than 2 or 3 decks. Granted, they are the bigger decks, but even those decks make room for the impulse engines and other engineering bits.

T'Girl: That's an interesting idea. I can see how Pike could make a distinction between the operational crew and the other specialty personnel, but I don't see why he would not count security or medical crew. In either case I'm trying to determine how many people operate the ship at any moment so the distinction might not matter.

On the other hand, the line in "The Cage" is: "You bet I'm tired. You bet. I'm tired of being responsible for two hundred and three lives. I'm tired of deciding which mission is too risky and which isn't, and who's going on the landing party and who doesn't, and who lives and who dies. Boy, I've had it, Phil." (He says 203 and I say 204 as I assume he isn't including himself in that count.) The actual line doesn't make a distinction about which of the 203 are or are not technically crew, but rather how many people are aboard the ship and therefore how many lives he is responsible for. As Captain, he's responsible for who may or may not beam down regardless of what other auspices someone may or may not work under.

BK613: Thanks for the links. That stuff is fascinating reading. I bookmarked it for future reference.

--Alex
 
Roddenberry's opinion was that every crewman had his own cabin. He resented the way present day military forces treated the men like little more than cattle, sometimes sticking twenty men to a barracks, and figured that if you're proven yourself smart enough and capable enough to serve on a starship, at the very least you deserved your own room.
Well, Roddenberry made some mistakes, of course... he's the guy who insisted that the Enterprise's landing facility could hold "an entire fleet of airliners" and that main engineering was at the aft centerline of the primary hull.

Roddenberry also said that everyone on the Enterprise was an officer, with the lowest rank being Ensign, yet clearly that was never the case on the real ship as seen on-screen (we were repeatedly shown people referred to as 'Crewman" and in a few cases, "Chief," neither of which are officer ranks).

Roddenberry's take on the military was based upon some fairly limited experience, while many others who worked on the series had significantly greater experience. (By contrast, today, very few people in general, and pretty much nobody in the entertainment industry, have any real-world military experience.)

I'm a big fan of people having privacy... and living in a 30-man open-bay barracks (with an identical 30-man bay upstairs, sharing our bathroom facilities and our one washer/dryer set) for a summer was really tough for me, but it wasn't as bad as Roddenberry would make it seem.

People need privacy... but not necessarily private quarters. I've addressed this by providing several "privacy rooms" in the dorsal... which can be "checked out" so to speak. These would be places to just go be alone, or to make private communications, or even to have a little romantic stuff going on. There are also lots public lounges and rec rooms on the ship, for more social activities.

From my perspective, the cabins are not where the crew would be expected to spend most of their time off-duty. In most cases, this would be where the crew sleeps and dresses, and that's pretty much it. The rest of the time, they'd either be on duty or they'd be in some form of personal activity (mostly social, athletic, or educational).

Roddenberry may have felt this way, but it wasn't JUST his show, was it? And I'm not convinced he felt that way at the time... things he said during his heavy-drug-abusing years, for example, I tend to treat less seriously than things said earlier in his career.
 
Pike might not concider everyone aboard his ship to be "crew."

Pike claimed he was weary of being responsible for 207 people. If there were more people aboard, would the skipper not be "responsible" for those, even if they were prisoners from the last time Pike bagged a Nausicaan pirate ship, or stowaways from Rigel VII?

From my perspective, the cabins are not where the crew would be expected to spend most of their time off-duty

One probably has to ponder the possibility that cabins are where they would spend most of their time on-duty.

People like McGivers would not really need a separate study in order to be efficient historians. Many of the rejects from Deck 15 in VOY "Good Shepherd" would have been conducting productive work if confined to their cabins, too. And for all we know, the people calculating coordinates and routes for Chekov or firing vectors for Sulu are doing that through their cabin computer interfaces.

Separation of living and working spaces may carry psychological benefits, but not necessarily in all cases. And logistically it would be a blessing if people didn't move much during a working day; a good ship would be built so that everything vital can be reached by extending an arm, not by running down fifty meters of corridor and descending two decks.

Timo Saloniemi
 
The one thing that I can't imagine anyone who knows me saying about me is that I've "underestimated" the internal space of this ship. People might claim that I've "misapportioned" it, perhaps, but I'm not "estimating" it at all. You may have never seen my fully-populated 1701 model (which I've left alone for a while... pretty much after finishing laying in cabins, I got sick of it and it's been on my "I'll get back to it" list for months now).
Well I'm sorry. I'm new around here, and no, I don't know you.

From the work you've done, it seems like you've fit it all in quite nicely. Do you have an average square footage for those cabins? How many cabins did you fit?
 
Cary L. Brown: I remember your project. I hope to see more of it. I think it's fair to say that your approach is beyond reproach.

As to a cruise liner comparison, lets' recall that while the majority of the volume of the cruise liner is devoted to cabins, the starship has little more than 2 or 3 decks. Granted, they are the bigger decks, but even those decks make room for the impulse engines and other engineering bits.
Looking over the QM 2 website today and I would conclude, based on their deck plans, that the majority of the internal volume is taken up by ship operational areas (laundries, galleys, engineering, etc) and passenger entertainment areas (casino, library, bars, theaters, etc.), not cabins.

So substitute science and weapons spaces for some of the entertainment volume and it seems to be a fair analogy.
BK613: Thanks for the links. That stuff is fascinating reading. I bookmarked it for future reference.

--Alex
Cool. One of the things I always liked about TOS was that, even if they didn't always explain it all, they hinted that there was more complexity than what we were told or shown. So I will usually come down on the side of a more complex, real-life-ish interpretation of things rather than some simplified ToE.
 
Just back to the accomodations point for a moment. I can see Cary's point that the two rim decks in the saucer, while could hold most everyone, could be an ineffecient use of space. My compromise would be that the one deck holding about 200 rooms would be individual, with 100 on the deck below that are bunks. That would leave the room needed.

Though to stick to my guns here, having gone over enough drawings, there is no reason why the two rim decks couldn't hold most everyone with their own accomodations. That still frees up a whole LOT of ship for operations, still making it nothing like a cruise ship.
 
Surely the ship is designed to house passengers too so they need a fair bit of redundant space? Personally, given that the ship is designed for 5 year missions I don't think it is a surprise that a lot of room is given over to recreation, especially when you consider how mamby pamby the Federation is. My understanding was that the officers and senior non-commissioned officers (CPOs) got their own rooms and that the petty officers and enlisted crew generally slept two to a room (as seen in Star Trek VI). Janice Rand, as the Captain's Yeoman was probably a petty officer but given her own room by reason of her senior role. Not all the space needs to be for quarters though. The TMP plans showed lots of lounges spread throughout the ship.
 
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