Trek Ships Are Too Small Compared to Star Wars

[Kemaiku]

The Galaxy Class has enormous hanger bays, twin hge computer cores, a deuterium tank that lasts for 7 years, most of the engineering section taken up by machines, industrial replicators, antimatter tanks, the oceanarium while whales in the saucer, several "unspecified" uncompleted decks for further expansion, the bubble cartography suite etc

Lots of things on that ship take up ridiculous amounts of room.

 

[Mytran]

Usually Trek has depicted most of the various support equipment as being dispersed across the ship and accessible by Jefferies tubes between the decks and by removable panels in corridors. An argument could be made that the only sections on a Galaxy-class ship not intended to feature living quarters could be in the pylons and nacelles.

Actually, the very existence of the TNG Jefferies Tube network might support my notion. In TOS, Jefferies Tubes were only used to access high voltage circuitry and the like. The rest of ship systems were accessed via the corridors themselves (which is also a far easier working environment for such tasks).
On the Enterprise-D and Voyager, we find hundreds of metres of these service access crawlways snaking their way horizontally and vertically all over the place. It would clearly be more efficient to just use the corridors to perform maintenance (they even have those pop-off hatches), so it stands to reason that there are no corridors in these sections. And given the scope of the JT network, that means there are no corridors in a significant portion of the ship.

The Galaxy Class has enormous hanger bays, twin huge computer cores, a deuterium tank that lasts for 7 years, most of the engineering section taken up by machines, industrial replicators, antimatter tanks, the oceanarium while whales in the saucer, several "unspecified" uncompleted decks for further expansion, the bubble cartography suite etc

Lots of things on that ship take up ridiculous amounts of room.

Indeed - which is why everyone lives on the outside edge of the ship - rooms with a view, of course

 

[C.E. Evans]

Actually, the very existence of the TNG Jefferies Tube network might support my notion. In TOS, Jefferies Tubes were only used to access high voltage circuitry and the like. The rest of ship systems were accessed via the corridors themselves (which is also a far easier working environment for such tasks).
On the Enterprise-D and Voyager, we find hundreds of metres of these service access crawlways snaking their way horizontally and vertically all over the place. It would clearly be more efficient to just use the corridors to perform maintenance (they even have those pop-off hatches), so it stands to reason that there are no corridors in these sections. And given the scope of the JT network, that means there are no corridors in a significant portion of the ship.

I think it's the opposite of that, that there are a lot of corridors throughout the ship. With the exception of some major components like the warp core and related systems, a lot of Trek's tech tends to be on the small side, but integrated throughout an entire ship in miniaturized circuits, and that's where the Jefferies tubes come in. Other circuits are contained within the bulkheads of the various corridors, which are laid out in radial, concentric, and nestled patterns (depending on where you are in a ship), with the space between them filled with crew quarters, work areas, common rooms, etc., as well as space for utility and data network systems. That leaves a lot of habitable space outside of the nacelles and pylons, with only some of it actually being used, with the rest reserved for future possibilities. As such, later Galaxy-class and the Intrepid-class ships could have significantly larger crew complements as well as a larger number of onboard facilities than the Enterprise-D and the Voyager had.

I like to think a similar scenario played out for the original Enterprise in which the ship's crew complement more than doubled in the time between Pike and Kirk.

 

[MacLeod]

Well actually bigger is always better, except for Galactica and Space above and beyond series (babylon V ,only applied for white star on the hand of EAF), in which fighters could take out capital ship easily. Bigger is always better, however it become worsen if their technology couldn't matched their size or oversize...

Bigger isn't always better, whats more relevant is something the right size for the task it's supposed to accomplish.

 

[Mytran]

I think it's the opposite of that, that there are a lot of corridors throughout the ship. With the exception of some major components like the warp core and related systems, a lot of Trek's tech tends to be on the small side, but integrated throughout an entire ship in miniaturized circuits, and that's where the Jefferies tubes come in. Other circuits are contained within the bulkheads of the various corridors, which are laid out in radial, concentric, and nestled patterns (depending on where you are in a ship), with the space between them filled with crew quarters, work areas, common rooms, etc., as well as space for utility and data network systems. That leaves a lot of habitable space outside of the nacelles and pylons, with only some of it actually being used, with the rest reserved for future possibilities. As such, later Galaxy-class and the Intrepid-class ships could have significantly larger crew complements as well as a larger number of onboard facilities than the Enterprise-D and the Voyager had.

The thing is, if miniaturisation of circuits and other machinery is so widespread and corridors are so numerous , it should be a simple matter to position the mini-machinery adjacent to the existing corridor structure. Having to build EXTRA service crawlways in order to access a comparatively tiny amount of machinery just doesn't make good design sense (and that's before you factor in oddities like the vertical JT's low ceiling height).

Of course, the crawlway-style Jefferies Tubes were never a part of the original ship design, but introduced and expanded upon in the 5th & 6th seasons of the show. The fact that they were never thought of from the beginning does help explain why they fit so poorly into the layout of the ship as were initially led to understand it.

I like to think a similar scenario played out for the original Enterprise in which the ship's crew complement more than doubled in the time between Pike and Kirk.

Miniaturisation of technology? I tend to agree - probably advances in food synthesizer and automated manufacturer techniques allowed former bulk cargo spaces to be replaced with expanded with sciences and other faculties.

Incidentally, I took the time to revisit Ed Whitefire's original deck plans for the E-D and was surprised to see how closely it fitted my posturings upthread for a mostly non-living quarters layout for the saucer
http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/ed-whitefire-enterprise-ncc-1701d.php

Compare that to the "official" plans, where pretty much every spare inch of space it filled with crew quarters (most of them twin berths) and I know which version feels more like a hotel and which version feels like a functional deep-space starship.

 

[BJ Wagner]

The thing is, if miniaturisation of circuits and other machinery is so widespread and corridors are so numerous , it should be a simple matter to position the mini-machinery adjacent to the existing corridor structure. Having to build EXTRA service crawlways in order to access a comparatively tiny amount of machinery just doesn't make good design sense (and that's before you factor in oddities like the vertical JT's low ceiling height).

Of course, the crawlway-style Jefferies Tubes were never a part of the original ship design, but introduced and expanded upon in the 5th & 6th seasons of the show. The fact that they were never thought of from the beginning does help explain why they fit so poorly into the layout of the ship as were initially led to understand it.

Miniaturisation of technology? I tend to agree - probably advances in food synthesizer and automated manufacturer techniques allowed former bulk cargo spaces to be replaced with expanded with sciences and other faculties.

Incidentally, I took the time to revisit Ed Whitefire's original deck plans for the E-D and was surprised to see how closely it fitted my posturings upthread for a mostly non-living quarters layout for the saucer
http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/ed-whitefire-enterprise-ncc-1701d.php

Compare that to the "official" plans, where pretty much every spare inch of space it filled with crew quarters (most of them twin berths) and I know which version feels more like a hotel and which version feels like a functional deep-space starship.

Yes, I too agree that Ed Whitefire's plans seem more believable. Funny, I never really liked the design of the D, but I appreciated the consistency of a television Enterprise over the ever evolving film versions. The D certainly seems like a true self-sustaining multi-year craft.

 

[C.E. Evans]

The thing is, if miniaturisation of circuits and other machinery is so widespread and corridors are so numerous , it should be a simple matter to position the mini-machinery adjacent to the existing corridor structure.

I think that's generally the case.

Having to build EXTRA service crawlways in order to access a comparatively tiny amount of machinery just doesn't make good design sense (and that's before you factor in oddities like the vertical JT's low ceiling height).

It's actually a good utilization of space to have systems that are fairly accessible throughout the ship by simply removing a corridor panel. The Jefferies tubes then become merely additional access points that run through the ship's inner spaceframe that likely would only be good for being service tunnels anyway. The rest of that space could be used for future full-sized facilities or additional crew quarters.

 

[Mytran]

It's actually a good utilisation of space to have systems that are fairly accessible throughout the ship by simply removing a corridor panel. The Jefferies tubes then become merely additional access points that run through the ship's inner spaceframe that likely would only be good for being service tunnels anyway. The rest of that space could be used for future full-sized facilities or additional crew quarters.

Jefferies Tubes as additional access points only where it is necessary was how they were mostly depicted in TOS. This is also how you mean expect to find them in the E-D as well and there are certainly plenty of non full height areas where crawlways are more appropriate.

However, once the crawlway set was introduced it quickly spiralled out of control (especially in Voyager, but that's another story!). You've got vertical and horizontal JTs leading from Main Engineering - OK. There's one leading up to the back of the Bridge (in addition to the ramps). There's one ABOVE Ten-Forward, right where you'd expect a viewing lounge to be. The JTs themselves are laid out in a grid format and dead straight lines stretching off into the distance, completely removing the possibility that they could be on the periphery of the vessel. The vertical tubes have a ceiling height of around 6'6" compared to the rest of the sets which are between 8' and 10', making compatibility with the corridors awkward at best. By Season Six the vertical tubes seem to have completely supplanted any notion of stairways inside the Enterprise, as all non elevator travel is made by climbing the little ladders inside.

In short - the Jefferies Tubes do not seem to exist to supplement the corridor access, they are instead depicted as their own substance mini-corridor network; vast and independent of the main living areas.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It has been awhile, years since I last posted here and I'm glad to be back.

Star Trek capital ships are too small compared to those lumbering star destroyers of Star Wars.

That's because most Star Wars capital ships also double as carriers, troop transports, supply ships, training centers and mobile garrisons. They have hundreds of fighters, tanks (I'm sorry "walkers") shuttles, landing craft, speeders, and thousands upon thousands of troops. They have equipment we've never seen before and copious amounts of equipment we HAVE seen before. So they're as large as they are purely because they have to carry that crap with them all the time without having to stop by and visit a shipyard or a major base to restock. This is the main difference between the ships of the Imperial era and their smaller Republic counterparts; the Republic cruisers ALSO were gigantic troop/fighter carriers with a big gun armament, but they were far more dependent on bases and supply depots to stay in the fight while a star destroyer was basically a self-contained army with a hyperdrive attached.

Most Kelvin timeline ships are of similar length (though not neccesarily size) as their SW counterparts. The Republic landing ships of the clone wars era were about 800 meters long and so have rough parity with ships like Enterprise and Kelvin; the slightly larger venators were about 1200 meters. Both the Republic and the Empire both operated larger fleets of smaller cruisers between 200 and 400 meters long, which again makes rough parity with some of the smaller ships of both the Kelvin and Prime universe. Loadouts are similar too; an Imperial light cruiser usually carries one or two shuttles and a half dozen fighters while a Federation cruiser like a Constitution or a Miranda carries maybe 6 shuttles and a dozen workbees. And then there's USS Vengeance is about 1400 meters long, comparable to the 1600 meter I-class star destroyer in most respects and probably has a similar mission role.

The outliers appear to be the VERY LARGE ships of the SW universe like the Empire's "Executor" or the Seperatists' "Malevolence." These are massive ships designed to overwhelm anything else in space by brute force alone and are difficult to destroy just by virtue of their enormity. Starfleet builds things on this scale as well (e.g. Shroomdock, Starbase 1, Yorktown) they just don't bother to make them MOBILE. It's not as if they couldn't -- strap twenty warp nacelles to shroomdock and you've got a massive starship -- but Starfleet is an exploration service and would have little or no use for that kind of vessel.

Now I'm not advocating that ST build Deathstars, the SW universe can keep the ultimate sizes of ships, no, I just want the ST capital ships like Enterprise NCC-1701 X keep up with the SW capital ships.

They already do. Most Kelvin universe ships are about one half to one third the size -- volumetrically at least, sometimes by length as well -- of their SW counterparts. Federation starships just aren't used the same way and don't need huge internal hangars, fuel tanks and munitions depot like SW ships do.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

However, once the crawlway set was introduced it quickly spiralled out of control (especially in Voyager, but that's another story!). You've got vertical and horizontal JTs leading from Main Engineering - OK...

Actually that's something that really REALLY bothers me. Any time they have a problem with the turbolifts, they climb into a crawl space and use the ladders in there. Am i to understand, then, that the Enterprise-D was designed without stairwells or ladder access? That the ONLY way to move between decks is either turbolift or shimmying through crawlspaces like a plumber?

At least the Enterprise-E installed those trap doors in the middle of the corridors, but for some reason they didn't bother to install ladders there either...

 

[Mytran]

At least the Enterprise-E installed those trap doors in the middle of the corridors, but for some reason they didn't bother to install ladders there either...

Yeah, those hatches took barmy to a whole new level!
Made for an interesting visual sequence though, as in fact do the Jefferies Tubes themselves. It's just a shame that they are they don't jibe well with the rest of the ships' design and layout

 

[C.E. Evans]

In short - the Jefferies Tubes do not seem to exist to supplement the corridor access, they are instead depicted as their own substance mini-corridor network; vast and independent of the main living areas.

That's pretty much a given and something that wasn't being argued. But the basic corridors still allow access to systems as well via removable panels, suggesting less bulk machinery and more integrated circuits running throughout the ship.

 

[Mytran]

That's pretty much a given and something that wasn't being argued. But the basic corridors still allow access to systems as well via removable panels, suggesting less bulk machinery and more integrated circuits running throughout the ship.

I don't dispute that either

In fact, those pop-off panel corridors make an extensive JT network mostly redundant

 

[publiusr]

There may come a time when you need hospital ships as large as possible.

It is just that--after Star Wars, ships in sci-fi have just exploded in size to where--on some charts--you can't even see trek ships anymore.

 

[NaughtyTrekkie]

regarding internal space (and its waste): turbolift.
I think they are useless and, problably, dangerous

 

[MacLeod]

regarding internal space (and its waste): turbolift.
I think they are useless and, problably, dangerous

Isn't that like saying a lifts in a 42 story building are a waste of space? Surely in a taacitcal situation you want to get your people to the right place as quickly as possible.

 

[Spot261]

Now I'm not advocating that ST build Deathstars, the SW universe can keep the ultimate sizes of ships, no, I just want the ST capital ships like Enterprise NCC-1701 X keep up with the SW capital ships.

Why?

 

[Idran]

Isn't that like saying a lifts in a 42 story building are a waste of space? Surely in a taacitcal situation you want to get your people to the right place as quickly as possible.

Honestly, a tactical situation is the last time you want to be in a small enclosed capsule moving through open shafts; it's the same reason you don't want to use an elevators in a fire. Turbolifts would be perfectly fine most of the time though, so yeah I wouldn't agree that they're useless. But using them when the ship is being attacked is honestly pointless risk that doesn't really make much sense when ladders or stairs would be leagues safer.

 

[sciquest2525]

Trek and Star Wars are apples and oranges with different rules for their universes, different drive systems, sensors and weapons. However, the trend for supersized ships in SW and Galactica shows a need for upscaling ST ships to roughly match SW sizes. It just looks better to have the principal ST ships in the 1400-1600 meters post ST: Beyond and Nemeses universes.
When ST was conceived, the largest ships were USN aircraft carriers at about 1092 feet long by 133 feet wide at the hull and 250 feet wide on the sponsoned out flight decks and so Enterprise was 947 feet long by 417 feet wide.
A moored supertanker that has since been scrapped, was 1600 some feet long and weighed a lot more than the 190,000 tons of the Big E and so some correction is needed.
Kelvin universe Enterprise is 2380 feet long officially and thus can compete with SW and Galactica ships, at least for the small number of very large ships in the ST universe for Kelvin timeline and post Nemeses ships.

When ST was conceived, armed helicopters that could fly off the hangar/helo deck aft on surface combatants to sink surface ships and submarines were very new and the STOVL Harrier was yet to enter service and practical tilt rotor aircraft such as the V-22 Osprey which can operate as a vertical takeoff/landing helo by tilting it's proprotors vertically and then converts to a turboprop fixed wing aircraft for high speed by tilting it's proprotors horizontal, were decades away and supertankers were just then being built and so an aircraft carrier was the biggest ship around for scaling purposes.

Now, most ships can operate an armed helo off the decks and many could operate an attack or antisub/antisurface ship V-22 and so today tactical surface combatant shipboard aircraft are common while future STOVL aircraft may have enough engine thrust to lift a meaningful payload of a ship's helo deck.

However, when SW came out 11 years after ST, armed helos were becoming common and tilt rotors were being researched and tested and Harriers were being operated by the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and the USMC and the concept of operating fighter jets off helo decks only waited for jet engines powerful enough to enable VTOL to be developed while supertankers were in service while supertankers bigger than ST were in service.

The world has changed and the other franchises have very large ships and so a rescaling of ST ships is overdue.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

When ST was conceived, the largest ships were USN aircraft carriers...

This and the rest of your post pretty much assume that Scifi ship sizes have anything whatsoever to do with "real" naval vessels. Despite what fandom likes to think, they really don't; model designers don't really have that solid of a sense of scale as people think they do, and filmmakers and special effects designers have even less. If you have a ship whose external features are ambiguous to begin with, rescaling the entire thing to fit its internal set design is both perfectly logical and perfectly OBVIOUS. Alot of the "larger sizes" you're talking about exist for that very reason: to enclose the larger sets, to enclose other ships, and to enclose design elements that wouldn't make sense otherwise.

Put another way: the I-class is as big as it is only because Lucas needed a ship big enough to actually swallow the blockade runner, and the blockade runner is as big as it is because it needed to be big enough to fit all those corridors and still take a couple of minutes for a platoon of troops to take it over.

There's no actual analogy to modern military hardware in science fiction. Rule of Cool is the only rule that counts. There are closer (and sloppily applied) analogies in literary science fiction, but in TV -- and even in most novels -- space ships are the size they are PURELY because they need to be that size in order to fit the story.

The world has changed and the other franchises have very large ships and so a rescaling of ST ships is overdue.

It's overdue, but not for that reason. As writers and SF crews put more thought into what they want their ships to be able to do, giving them more internal space to hold all their gadgets and equipment becomes more popular. If the ships are meant to be limited in capability (e.g. the Milennium Falcon, the Serenity, the Rocinante) their size remains relatively small and compact.