The lounge area on TOS, did it have a name?

[Gagarin]

Then again, TOS already nicely establishes that the ship has a great number of Rec Rooms, quite possibly with several different internal layouts and functions.

Really, the ship sounds like a flying amusement park, in TOS, TAS and TMP alike. Is it truly realistic for the designers to dedicate so much volume to recreation, to giant communal halls, to entire onboard parks? Would the folks truly go stir-crazy if they didn't get their daily dose of walks in the woods?

Timo Saloniemi

I think if the mission was just going A-to-B, those things would be unnessesary. But the mission included going from A to...wherever, and the ship had to function like a millitary ship, a police boat, a small research university, a hospital, and it's own repair shop.

And you would want to take and preserve as much culture with you - I think - if you were going to go out and represent the culture(s) that were sending you. First contact with a small portion of a civ rather than their uniformed GIs.