Sizes of each Enterprise

[M'Sharak]

Thankfully, one need not attribute the physical look to a particular function. Looks are constantly changing anyway. Tomorrow hulls may be polka dotted and saucers will have lots of spikes...
...

Or possibly a ship that features fleur-de-lis
On ochre corrugated tin!

 

[miraclefan]

To Cyke101: WHOW DUDE! all I am saying is that STARFLEET realized that the defences that served them well for over a century were NOW outdated to new threats! THAT'S ALL, I'm not saying the FEDERATION shuld drop diplomecy alltogather. Trust me! if I thought differantly I would say STARFLEET was'nt doing ENOUGH!

 

[trekkerguy]

Nearly all Starfleet vessels seem to be built to be "Warships" in their respective classes.

Their primary mission is peaceful exploration, but they most certainly have wisely altered
the design schemes to be more battle ready.

 

[miraclefan]

Nearly all Starfleet vessels seem to be built to be "Warships" in their respective classes.

Their primary mission is peaceful exploration, but they most certainly have wisely altered
the design schemes to be more battle ready.

THANK YOU! that's all I was trying to say. And if I remember correctly Starfleet even went back and upgraded the Galaxy, Excelsior, and other classes to soverign level defences!

 

[trekkerguy]

Nearly all Starfleet vessels seem to be built to be "Warships" in their respective classes.

Their primary mission is peaceful exploration, but they most certainly have wisely altered
the design schemes to be more battle ready.

THANK YOU! that's all I was trying to say. And if I remember correctly Starfleet even went back and upgraded the Galaxy, Excelsior, and other classes to soverign level defences!

I don't know about the Galaxy since it was already pretty heavily armed
even for an exploration ship. The Excelsior got the "Lakota upgrade" for
armament.

 

[Bill Morris]

Here are some stats on various vessels:

However, there might be a change for the Ambassador class (the 1701-C), after some new measurements were taken recently, like this:

Length: 478.5 M
Beam: 292.92 M
Height: 116:44 M
Mass: 2,787,00 M.T.

We have a thread on this in Trek Tech.

 

[miraclefan]

Nearly all Starfleet vessels seem to be built to be "Warships" in their respective classes.

Their primary mission is peaceful exploration, but they most certainly have wisely altered
the design schemes to be more battle ready.

THANK YOU! that's all I was trying to say. And if I remember correctly Starfleet even went back and upgraded the Galaxy, Excelsior, and other classes to soverign level defences!

I don't know about the Galaxy since it was already pretty heavily armed
even for an exploration ship. The Excelsior got the "Lakota upgrade" for
armament.

For some reason I remember hearing that the remaining galaxy's had been upgraded, in fact if you go to www.ex-astris-scientia.org there is a comparison picture with the Galaxy and the VENTURE type refit. I don't know how much of a refit they got thou, I mean the only differance is a phaser strip on the nacell's.

 

[SupAJ1M]

lol

 

[EmperorTiberius]

upgraded galaxy can be more powerful than sovereign, and none were lost during the dominion war in fleet engagements

 

[CoveTom]

Well, that reasoning is kind of depressing, actually. It seems to imply that late-24th century Starfleet has transitioned away from an exploratory mission toward being a more strictly military fleet. Seems kind of at odds with the underlying philosophy that always made Trek special.

Well, keep in mind that in the late 24th century, Starfleet almost lost Earth to the Borg -- the deadliest threat they'd ever faced -- and fought a war with the Cardassians, fought a brief war with the Klingons, and the ended up fighting a massive and costly war against the Dominion/Cardassian/Breen alliance. It only makes sense that Starfleet would be thinking in terms of making new ships as rugged and powerful as possible.

However, that does not mean that it was to the exclusion of their exploratory functions. A ship the size of the Enterprise could be outfitted with massive armaments and still have all the science labs, research facilities, diplomatic facilities, and so forth that were necessary to facilitate such missions.

But when push comes to shove, Starfleet's first job is to protect the Federation from attack. All else becomes secondary.

 

[miraclefan]

Well, that reasoning is kind of depressing, actually. It seems to imply that late-24th century Starfleet has transitioned away from an exploratory mission toward being a more strictly military fleet. Seems kind of at odds with the underlying philosophy that always made Trek special.

Well, keep in mind that in the late 24th century, Starfleet almost lost Earth to the Borg -- the deadliest threat they'd ever faced -- and fought a war with the Cardassians, fought a brief war with the Klingons, and the ended up fighting a massive and costly war against the Dominion/Cardassian/Breen alliance. It only makes sense that Starfleet would be thinking in terms of making new ships as rugged and powerful as possible.

However, that does not mean that it was to the exclusion of their exploratory functions. A ship the size of the Enterprise could be outfitted with massive armaments and still have all the science labs, research facilities, diplomatic facilities, and so forth that were necessary to facilitate such missions.

But when push comes to shove, Starfleet's first job is to protect the Federation from attack. All else becomes secondary.

I could not have said it any better CoveTom. BRAVO.

 

[RAMA]

The E-D specifically was designed for general missions AND carrying families. That's why it was so much bigger than an Excelsior or Ambassador class. The E-E can be presumed bigger because the age of peace when the E-D came about was pretty much over. With a larger powerplant, the E-E's size would allow for more and stronger weapons. Also as WendellM points out, successive ship types tend to get bigger in real life if they have similar roles because of technological development. Cruisers got smaller and almost disappeared after WWII, but as their roles changed, they became bigger again.

RAMA

 

[RAMA]

I

Just curious.

Legths of each ENTERPRISE. NX Class: 225m = 675f. Constitution Class: 289m = 867f. Constitution Refit: 305m = 915f. Excelsior Class: 467m = 1,401f. Ambassader Class: 526m = 1,578f. Galaxy Class: 643m = 1,929f. Soverign Class: 685m = 2,055f. If you want to see them in detail just go to www.merzo.net

I would recommend the "no squint" add on for firefox when going to that page. Its very useful!

 

[EmperorTiberius]

The E-D specifically was designed for general missions AND carrying families. That's why it was so much bigger than an Excelsior or Ambassador class. The E-E can be presumed bigger because the age of peace when the E-D came about was pretty much over. With a larger powerplant, the E-E's size would allow for more and stronger weapons. Also as WendellM points out, successive ship types tend to get bigger in real life if they have similar roles because of technological development. Cruisers got smaller and almost disappeared after WWII, but as their roles changed, they became bigger again.

RAMA

But E-E is not bigger than the Galaxy. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make

 

[kent]

Indeed up until the Enterprise-D, all ships previous were smaller.

This seems odd to me as it contradicts certain things. One, usually if time advances technology becomes smaller and more efficient, that's been the way for the last 60 years or so. I GUESS some of the systems would be or could be larger, but not usually.

There is a higher crew compliment to assist in more complete and long term missions. The size of a ship indicates how independent it can be usually. But again, with more efficient engine design and better technologies, having a ship with the capacity of a Galaxy seems rather weird.

Although, larger ships can pack WAY more scientific packages for a MUCH more efficient exploration. This would require more back ups, and the increase in data understandably make the computer cores massive. Could be that older computer cores that could hold that much data would be even bigger than the galaxy class' existing core (8 decks/per), and the same could go for other systems.


Now however, starfleet is beginning to lean to smaller, equally capable for the most part ships like the Intrepid class or sovereign class' respectively. The Sovereign class is smaller than the Galaxy class, just longer, and the Intrepid was designed as a smaller Galaxy cousin with much the same tactical and scientific capability. I'm sure they won't suspend galaxy' class's altogther as they are extremely resiliant, but I doubt they'd be making a whole bunch of them as there are already at least 10 out there.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

Indeed up until the Enterprise-D, all ships previous were smaller.

This seems odd to me as it contradicts certain things. One, usually if time advances technology becomes smaller and more efficient, that's been the way for the last 60 years or so. I GUESS some of the systems would be or could be larger, but not usually.

There is a higher crew compliment to assist in more complete and long term missions. The size of a ship indicates how independent it can be usually. But again, with more efficient engine design and better technologies, having a ship with the capacity of a Galaxy seems rather weird.

Although, larger ships can pack WAY more scientific packages for a MUCH more efficient exploration. This would require more back ups, and the increase in data understandably make the computer cores massive. Could be that older computer cores that could hold that much data would be even bigger than the galaxy class' existing core (8 decks/per), and the same could go for other systems.


Now however, starfleet is beginning to lean to smaller, equally capable for the most part ships like the Intrepid class or sovereign class' respectively. The Sovereign class is smaller than the Galaxy class, just longer, and the Intrepid was designed as a smaller Galaxy cousin with much the same tactical and scientific capability. I'm sure they won't suspend galaxy' class's altogther as they are extremely resiliant, but I doubt they'd be making a whole bunch of them as there are already at least 10 out there.

You might have the point about Sovereign, but no way is Intrepid much the same tactically and scientifically as Galaxy. That's absurd. Galaxy class is about 6 (SIX) times larger than Intrepid. That's a lot of equipment, both scientific and tactical that can be loaded onto Galaxy. We never see anything on any of the shows that points to them being similar at all. And even Sovereign doesn't seem to have as much scientific equipment aboard, it seems to be assigned on non-exploratory duties.

You can argue that things are smaller, but that can hardly be true when you consider that only around what, 10 years or less?, go between the launch of the Enterprise and Voyager/Sovereign. No way they have advanced that fast in every field.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

The Sovereign isn't bigger than a Galaxy class, longer perhaps but no larger.

Only by 20m or so...the most important difference is that the Soverign is only 29 decks to Galaxy's 42, and her sacucer is much narrower, leading to a much smaller volume. (Her standard complement down from 1100 to ~850).

Behind the scenes souces have indicated that the space savings came about due to the removal of the parts of the ship reserved solely for long-term civilian use (meaning no families on board).

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Well, that reasoning is kind of depressing, actually. It seems to imply that late-24th century Starfleet has transitioned away from an exploratory mission toward being a more strictly military fleet. Seems kind of at odds with the underlying philosophy that always made Trek special.

Given the threat of the Borg, resurgant Klingons, and the Dominion War, is it any wonder?

 

[miraclefan]

I

Just curious.

Legths of each ENTERPRISE. NX Class: 225m = 675f. Constitution Class: 289m = 867f. Constitution Refit: 305m = 915f. Excelsior Class: 467m = 1,401f. Ambassader Class: 526m = 1,578f. Galaxy Class: 643m = 1,929f. Soverign Class: 685m = 2,055f. If you want to see them in detail just go to www.merzo.net

I would recommend the "no squint" add on for firefox when going to that page. Its very useful!

You think THOSE are big? Remember the ENT-J?http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/enterprise-j-search/ From the words of Drexler himself!

 

[CaptainStoner]

Because small ships aren't cool! jk

HEY! there are plenty of COOL small ships! The DEFIANT, THE NX-O1, THE EQUANOX, And by TNG era standerds the Constitution class IS rather small. And that's just from the FEDERATION! look at the KLINGON Bird of prey, that,s a pretty small ship and it's one of the COOOLLLEST starship designs ever made.

Indeed. Also love the TWOK Reliant class. And the Oberth class I think it's called (in ST:Legacy - U.S.S. Vermont is a bad little ship). The Constellation class. Good stuff.

The Enterprise ships though, are flagships, so I guess that explains it. They are typically in the biggest, baddest class that Starfleet builds.