We all know the Enterprise-D is big, but how big IS it? Well, turns out it's massive. Insanely huge, in fact. Brought to you by 150 amazing patrons on Patreon! / echenry
The Enterprise was also expected by Starfleet to be used to carry delegations for peace talks and other gatherings, not to mention for emergency evacuations of whole colonies. So a lot of the extra living space was used in those specific situations and was probably kept mainly offline/powered down when not in use.
The evacuation part always seemed strange, a massive amount of space for a rare occasion. Dedicated transport ships would be much cheaper. They don’t have endless recourses and time.
@@iamagi Yeah but dedicated transports take time to get to locations. They're often dispatched too late to make it in time. Plenty of situations have probably occurred where starfleet had a ship like the Enterprise respond to an emergency at a colony or some other such place that needed an evac within a number a hours that those dedicated ships couldn't reach in time because the emergency was already in progress. Thus, the extra space would be required to be used. So they plan that into ships like the Enterprise, ships that are already in deep space and not being dispatched from places more central within the federation.
Now Starfleet regulations also make OSHA look like a joke with how many redundant/backup systems they have. It would make sense to have an oversized ship because for every system Starfleet builds, they build a backup system to cover it. That alone would at least increase the size of the ship 50%. Also like how large ships used to operate before commercial passenger flight, you're probably not just transporting one delegation/set of cargo at a time to a singular place. Unless a mission is particularly important/time constrained, they probably stop at several space ports along the way to a mission to pick up new crew, drop off people awaiting transfers, collect trade and operational materials needed by their next stop etc. The Enterprise was on five year mission, so you gotta figure that if someone resigns from Starfleet or goes on shore leave they don't have to wait the five years, they just hang out on the ship till the next opportunity to leave.
This makes me think of the episode "Remember Me" where Beverly asks Picard why, if there are only 230 people onboard, why there is so much extra space, and Data says something about transportation of colonists, emergency evacuations. That supports the idea that there are thousands of empty quarters onboard even in normal situations.
picard replies, "nearly 800 missing" as is the plot point of the episode -- then at 44 minutes into the episode Beverly asks how many onboard, Picard says 1,014
@@joshhibschman When the Yamato, the sister ship (if I'm recalling the name correctly) blows up, it has a crew complement stated. Alas, I don't remember what that number is, but it could be used as a guide. The episode with the iconian gateways.
Kinda weird that the flagship would be equipped so heavily for personnel transport, instead of sending in the 'support' ships with dedicated transports. One could argue first contact may involve an emergency, but realistically it is a poor use of resources to have such a generalised ship and single point of failure.
@@AndrooUK - The exact count was never announced on the death of the Yamato. On the script itself, "Captain's log, supplemental. The Yamato's entire crew and their families, more than a thousand people, have been lost. Circumstances unfortunately permit us no pause for grief." So it could be the same compliment of 1014 or greater depending on how many were married with children.
Exactly! Even a Nebula class vessel (like U.S.S. Farragut) can carry about 8000 people, and a Galaxy (like Enterprise-D) can carry almost twice as much, about 15000 people. These ships were indeed made to be long-range carriers rather than dedicated explorer ships or battlecruisers.
Early episodes make frequent mention of an "arboretum." Which is a tree garden. The Enterprise D has actual trees growing in it. Scotty is ushered into unoccupied guest quarters, and marvels at the size of them. There are multiple shuttle bays and multiple cargo bays.
@@ortzinator it's bigger than all the other arboretums on all the other spacecraft known to humans throughout all of history, combined, to put that in perspective.
The arboretum is probably bigger than the TV show budget would allow. The shuttle bays are examples of areas that would be larger on a real ship than they're depicted on the show.
"How do you explain all the empty rooms!?" "..........Transportation of colonists... diplomatic missions... emergency evacuations..." "Thank you, mister Data...."
Once upon a time, I made a scaled representation of the enterprise D for google maps, and then placed it in my home town where my house was. When I saw how many blocks were being covered, I truly understood the magnitude of this ship. I even planned out a walk around the neighborhood to further illustrate the size in my mind.
@@josephnebeker7976 still pretty big, compared to modern aircraft and space craft. Especially when you consider that it has like 20 decks. Means it's taller than my apartment building.
I'm not sure the "crew" count listed to the Enterprise "D" includes family members... When they say "crew" I believe they are referring to actual crew members only... Tagging along with other good comments about evacuation assistance and other things, the ship being so large makes perfect sense...
I could see civilians being counted as crew. Picard often mentions the 100 crew when concerned for the safety of the enterprise. Surely he is equally concerned for every individual not just those in uniform.
I actually don't find the empty corridors odd at all, especially the levels with living quarters. If you compare them to apartments or hotels, including massive apartment buildings like in NYC, or giant hotels like Las Vegas, outside of the areas you expect to have people, the average corridor is usually quite empty. You may run into a neighbor from time to time, but they aren't packed with people.
Well, that's true. But you're comparing hotels and apartments, which are almost entirely living spaces. The enterprise is a small, but complete, piece of a city. If we compared it only with a warship, then a similar problem emerges where the warship has A LOT of personnel going place to place. The Enterprise starship is kinda in the middle.
A better comparison might be a cruise ship. If you look at the halls and decks where there are just cabins, during the day, they are pretty empty (disregarding the housekeeping staff). While the areas for entertainment and food are packed.
Consider also that a MASSIVE portion of the interior is, realistically, taken up by storage for things like the massive amount of matter used to operate the replicators, transporters, etc.
And other races. Imagine youre in a little Klingon bird of prey (not particularly tiny, mind you), and this absolutely massive structure appears out your window. Now think about how large the borg ship is.
If you remember from the episode which I believe is called *Yesterday's Enterprise* The enterprise is described as carrying some 3,000 troops or personnel. The ship is built for comfort in the canonical setting, and everybody's quarters are very spacious from a military vessel's point of view. If crewman had bunks instead of quarters, say four crewmen to a unit, you could pack a lot more people in that ship for relatively little change in energy cost. The rest of that ship can easily be assumed to contain equipment, power conduits, bulkheads, weapon subsystems, etc. For example, corridors have multiple security force fields that can be put into place. Without knowing the size of a force field generator, it's difficult to know how much of the invisible space behind the walls is taken up by the machinery necessary to power and control that system, and that's for each independent field generator. They also use force fields to fill hull breaches, which means they're going to have field generators literally crisscrossing the entire hull. That's in addition to the standard issue structural integrity fields, which I imagine are a dedicated subsystem of force fields that have the sole job of protecting the physical hull of the ship from damage. You need space for all of those force field emitters, power systems, back up power systems, batteries and capacitors, etc. And that's just force fields. Grav plating similarly takes up an unidentified amount of space underneath the flooring of any given square foot of ship deck. It could be a meter thick for all I know.
Everything is crazy miniature by the time of Enterprise D. Projecting the field where you want it appears to be the difficulty as they've shown field emitters that fit into the palm of the hand several times but when they need it to cover a specific area they have to set up equipment to change the size and shape of the bubble almost independent of actually generating it.
3:08 - not actually that strange. The internal arrangement of active-duty warships tends to be classified, to prevent enemies from knowing exactly where to hit them for massive damage. We have deck plans viewable of certain internal spaces (like the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer CIC and bridge), but the locations of those spaces, while they can be guesstimated from knowledge of where the same spaces are on previously-decommissioned ships of the same type, are not specifically known.
Thanks for bringing this up. I had the same thought. As much as I'd love to have the deck plans for the Nimitz class, I don't want that information available to those who would use it with ill intent. I'm curious if Starfleet would want the Romulans to have the deck plans for the Enterprise, but they would probably have it anyway.
It is strange because tourists can take pictures inside floating aircraft carrier museums. Modern systems may be different but the overall layout in basic ship design is not top secret.
@@t.c.b4722 They probably do, but the initial blast that compromised the deck in the first place probably failed to kill anyone because there's so much unoccupied space on the ship. Everyone else on the deck probably got sucked 50 feet down the hallway before the force fields went up and then went back to what they were doing lol
@@Kurayamiblack - Except t hey would only be affected if they were rather close to the area. Decompression like that works on a pressure gradient. So if the port side gets blasted open, and you were on the starboard side, you wouldn't even notice. Your ears might pop/change pressure after the containmentfield snaps into place and the pressure equalizes.
This explains how the senior officers can always do these walk-and-talks over miles and miles of corridor and only encounter like one random technician at a console. I always wondered why the halls were so empty on a busy ship. Thanks! :D
Currently I work at IKEA but we've closed the store for the 2nd UK covid lockdown, but we're still doing online orders, so my work days consist of shopping in an empty store, kind of feels like I'm walking about empty corridors passing the occasional person until I get to the warehouse where more of us are gathered at the area we confirm the orders and send them out.
note, they also need to be able to house everyone in either saucer OR stardrive sections so technically there would be twice as much space as required right off the bat. They also transport and hold large numbers of delegates and their entourages for various reasons throughout the series.
As well as purposely built to house hundreds of scores of refugees if needed in an evacuation. Or in wartime as an afterthought many numbers of troops and equipment.
Stardrive section's crew accommodations could largely look like _Defiant's_ did in _DS9._ Minimal, just adequate to give the crew and passengers somewhere to sleep and eat. Those old blueprints and other technical manual diagrams indicated that junior crew would share quarters, two personnel to a cabin, or shared bedroomlets with a small common room. Unlike the video I have not bothered to count, but it would not surprise me if there was considerably more bunk space in those drawings than the stated crew complement on the show. As for descriptions of how many could be accommodated for troop-transport missions, likewise the numbers seem really, really off. Additionally on reflection with the _Generations_ bridge revamp,, there should realistically have been considerably more personnel on the bridge. There should have been those side-stations with probably two crew each side, and the _Voyager_ Astrophysics add-on should well have been a division in one of those side-stations, directly linked to the officer at the Helm station. The Ops station should have been a sensor officer's station, and Ops should have migrated to one of the side stations. Two other side stations could well have been interfaces to crews serving the two major weapons systems, or to small-craft operations and shuttlebays, or to general communications along the lines of what Uhura's role was. Sciences and Engineering along the back wall would probably be reconfigurable for whatever task was at hand. The Battle Bridge should have replicated most of these positions, with the exception of perhaps the sciences, and possibly had more extensive positions for various weapons systems to take some of the load off of the main weapons officer. The captain's ready-room off of the main bridge should have been a bit more extensive, basically a second cabin for his use while underway, so that he remains accessible to the bridge at a moment's notice. His main cabin should have been in the stardrive section, and perhaps could have been located off the Battle Bridge in the same fashion. The Battle Bridge should have been manned as auxiliary control at all times, probably with a rotation of junior officers, with many roles reversing when the Captain transfers command to the Battle bridge.
They could cram everyone into a couple of cargo bays if they really wanted to. I mean, I can imagine them being so spoilt that even in a crisis they want an ensuite bathroom each, but still... 😅
The Galaxy Class was designed to fulfil multiple roles, but the main one would have been deep space, long term exploration. To go off on 5 or 10 or longer year missions into unknown regions to explore. The Enterprise-D never got to do that, being the Flagship. But that's why it's so big. It's a floating city in space, capable of a wide array of functions. You could evacuate a small colony comfortably, or a large colony with everyone being cramped as you got them to safety.
It was budgetary restraints that got us the teleporter and space combat that resembles slow motion sail and oar sea battles as opposed to fighter swarms. The bottom line is that we would have had a very different show if budget was not an issue.
Or even if the computers we had at the time were as powerful as they are now. Which would have requested to less cost because more was able to be done. Though DS9 last couple seasons had hundreds of ships but I imagine they budgeted for that
@@heathbruce9928 Simple answer: "Picard" is a travesty of a show "written" by people without talent nor skill, and especially not any respect for the lore that came before. The Galaxy Class was designed for at least 100 years worth of service, and by the point of "the Romulan incident that shall remain nameless as it allows idiots to fudge up the entire franchise" still well within their service lifetime. There were a fair number of them at the end of the Dominion War, and more still being built. Other ships and designs had improved, or were simply for different roles (more for war, especially anti-Borg), but the Galaxys were still being made. The proper answer to anything that came up with Jar Jar Abrams and his alternate nightmare of mystery boxes, as well as anything span off for "Picard" is: send in all the Galaxy Class ships to evacuate. Each can hold upwards of 10000 at a push. Maybe more. But that takes respect for the Lore, and some talent to write. Neither of which is present in anything produced since Star Trek Enterprise, and that was showing some flaws.
If I remember correctly, no one told the artist how big the Ent-D was supposed to be. So he drew it for a crew of 6,000. When Gene Roddenberry found out, he said they didnt have the budget for that many extras, so they would claim it had 1,400 or so crew. But it was designed to be spacious living for a crew of 6,000+
It was also classed as a sort of embassy in space too given it's mission as a first contact or for representing the Federation given it was the flag ship. Kind of ironic given it's predecessor was the Ambassador class lol.
@@prismaticmarcus This makes the most sense. Even in DS9 (struggling to remember which race) supposedly saved around 3 million individuals of a species, that's a lot of 'energize'
i'll never forget walking up to the 1701-D in minecraft at a 1:1 scale for the first time. i had never seen a proper scale model that really shows how insanely massive the ship design is. and then just wandering around the inside, without turbolifts because its minecraft, takes FOREVER. Even with flying, it still took ages to move around.
The fifth starship to be named Enterprise, she was commanded by Captain Jean-Luc Picard. With a total of 42 decks, the Enterprise-D was twice the length and had eight times the interior space of the Constitution-class ships of over a century earlier. She carried a combined crew and passenger load of 1,012.
Scott: "Good lord, man, where have you put me?" Kane: "These are standard guest quarters, sir. I can try and find something bigger if you want." Scott: "'Bigger'? In my day, even an admiral wouldn't have had such quarters in a starship!"
Honestly the most bewildering thing I found hard to believe in this video was the amount of people that could actually staff that Aircraft carrier ship.
People do insult the Galaxy class nowadays but honestly it was a perfect ship for the time in which it was built: the Klingons were allies, the Romulans were in hiding, the Cardassians were at peace. No one else was anywhere near the Federation's weight class. Cruising the galaxy in a flying mall isn't all that silly a concept during peacetime and people overlook that it was capable of taking on any conventional threat and coming out on top. The problem was that once the Borg and especially the Dominion appeared the Galaxy class became a huge, lumbering target; which is why we suddenly started to see the Sovereign, Intrepid and Defiant classes appear that did away with many of the Galaxy class's design flaws. ''The Galaxy class is an elegant ship, for a more civilised age'' - Obi Wan Kenobi (probably).
So basically Starfleet went from this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Scharnhorst_(1934) to this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Scharnhorst after the Borg and Dominion War.
Very good analysis. I've brought up similar in the past. Although even after new threats emerged, the Galaxy class could more often than not hold her own and then some. Performance against the Dominion was excellent once the advantage of being able to shoot through Federation shields was eliminated and a single Romulan Warbird does not appear to have a major advantage given that in most cases the the Romulans would use more than one Warbird against the D if they intended to stand and fight. The Borg... well that's the Borg. Beating them conventionally is like trying to stop a hurricane with bullets. Plus the space frames are rather adaptable. Some of the noncanon content indicates that the Galaxy class was often launched with a lot of empty space for future mission modules and within canon that we see the D report in for upgrades regularly. As for the Defiant, Intrepid, and Sovereign. They're less accounting for weaknesses than they are fulfilling different mission profiles. The Intrepid is a long range explorer like the D, but she's also got a much lower duration with a planned mission time of three to four years. The Defiant is a space version of a coastal defense ship. Slow warp for her era (9.5 can only be reached by putting everything into the engines and compromising other systems), minimal crew supports, only basic medical facilities, etc. The _Defiant_ herself pre-war was probably a good example of what the class was meant to do. System patrol and guard duty. The Sovereign... well we hardly knew her. We really need more information there. But if I were to guess, I'd say that the class was designed around new warp principles to get a faster warp speed at the cost of having as much space for future upgrades or the ability to carry as many civilians for potentially decade+ missions. Mind if I steal 'quote'? It's pure gold.
I think the Cardassian war was still going strong when the Enterprise was being constructed, let alone when it was being designed. So they'd certainly have had that in mind, though they likely wouldn't have envisioned using it on the front line. Additionally, it was a multi-purpose ship so they needed a significant amount of extra quarters and workspace even if a large majority of it wasn't in use at any given time. At times it was used to ferry large portions of a new colony's initial population, for example. And then when they'd go on major charting or research missions the overall crew might triple or quadruple, and the civilian population would likely increase as well. And, finally, we see on a number of occasions that the ship is also used as a general-purpose ferry, non-starfleet personnel booking passage along the ship's already scheduled route (the miners seen in Ten Forward in The Perfect Mate).
No ranking officer on the Federation flagship is going unlaid, Barclay included; it could not happen. The most fictional part of the show; an impossibility.
I read once that 30% of the ship is intentionally unused volume/space to use it as buffer zones during battles, so that the ship can take a large amount of destruction and still be not seriously damaged or having loss of crew lifes…
This explains why the crew was always shown walking around the corridors and only running into one or two or sometimes zero people along the way. But yeah, the Enterprise is basically a flying city in space.
Don't forget about the 3 shift system. A third of the crew are asleep at any one time, a third are working so will be with Colleague in designated areas and the rest are either in ten forward or on a holodeck. The ship is a ghost town.
@@Hewkll It's like how Springfield Nuclear Power Plant magically knows to not have any problems after 17:00, and wait for the 'day shift' on a weekday (not a bank holiday) before needing staffing again or having any meltdowns.
@@Hewkll because the 2nd shift and 3rd shift characters aren't main characters. With the exception of Data who seems to be on 2 shifts since he doesn't need to sleep.
As someone who served on a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. The living areas are minimal. Sure the galley is big, but as far as sleeping areas are concerned, you have bay-berthing (think a really big hall lined top to bottom with three-high bunks and a small lounge with a TV. The bunks themselves double as lockers. You are sleeping on a glorified locker with your personal effects in it that has a mattress on top. All enlisted. Chiefs live the same way, but their bunks are made of fake-wood and their sleeping area has a gaudy carpet. Junior Officers are two-to-a-room, and actually get enough room for a desk or two. Senior officers might actually get rooms to themselves. Admirals and Captains actually get suites, complete with a secretary who is usually a yeoman of one pay grade or another.
Yup. Whereas the Galaxy class is luxurious by comparison even to the enlisted crewmen. Im reminded of scoty's comment when he was place din "Guest" quarters. He was shocked at the size.
Yes, but even the NCC 1701 quarters consisted of fairly generous sized 2 room suites (at least for senior officers and guests, which is all we ever saw.) They did have Bunk Bed style housing in the movies, but that was largely as a result of the creative direction spearheaded by pushing the designs into a more realistic military direction (which I actually kind of like personally).
@@timf7413 On a spaceship where you can't go above decks to get some air, your private space matters. Navy ships make routine ports of call where personnel get shore leave. Spaceships, you might get off the ship once or twice a year if you don't get an away mission. In space, space really IS the final frontier. Also, recall that in the Navy, the majority of people on board are enlisted men and women. In Star Fleet, the overwhelming majority of personnel, like 7/8 are commissioned officers with a 4 to 6 year academy education on their first assignment. So, the majority of quarters are junior officers quarters.
To be fair Star Trek has been incredibly inconsistent when it comes to the amount of enlisted personnel to officers, at times implying that they didn't exist at all and other times implying that they might make up a substantial portion of the crew. I don't think we can really make a definitive in universe statement on that account given how inconsistent the franchise has been.
"crewman" was also used as a presumably enlisted rank in TOS and it was especially implied in the TOS movies that a lot of the crew was enlisted. Voyager also had enlisted crew referenced from time to time. As I understand it, the original conception of TNG was that there were no enlisted crew which lasted until they eventually decided to make O'Brien a non commissioned officer.
I believe the galaxy class was a primary design as mini mobile star base. It had a huge hanger bay, lots of storage and living space. Which could adapt to many different mission profiles, such as - pre plan mission profile, such as a science mission to a new planet to act like a hub, from which many different task could be done. These required long term planning and additional personal. - reactionary mission profile, such as providing emergency assistance to a colony. These require short lead time, specialist crew, lots of cargo space and shuttles / transport - action profile, such as a escort to a diplomatic meeting or blowing things up or getting somewhere really quickly. In todays terms it would be if we mashed a ice breaker with a destroyer and add more helicopter pads
Indeed, from the ships profile it's like a mobile starbase. Unfortunatly the tv series wouldn't be that fascinating if we had 200 episodes for a 6 month scientific evaluation of a murloc-like pre-warp civilization, which comes up with art and philosophy in their early cultural development.
But also we find out in DS9 the federation uses a double redundancy building protocol. So you’ve effectively 3 ships worth of ship in one ship aside from the warp core.
I think it's in the Trekyards special where Andrew Probert stated that he intended for their to be about 3000 people on board, but one of the producers said "we can't afford the extras". So those empty corridors were intentional in one way.
That's so weird because I don't see why they would have to change anything if they just said it crewed 3000. It not like we ever see more than one room of people at a time onscreen.
In S1 E8 Justice, Data asks Picard if he will "choose 1 life over 1000", implying that the Enterprise (at least at that time) had about 1000 people on-board. There were likely many more people at times (the colonists planted earlier that episode, planet evacuees, diplomatic groups, etc), but 1000 seems to be its standard complement.
@@MNsLegoChannel Exactly. The Galaxy Class did a lot of ferrying people around and dealing with evacuation emergencies. It was easy to exceed her crew compliment by several times during a mission.
From the way they talked about the Enterprise in the show I always got the feeling it wasn't a warship it was more a heavily armed exploration heavy cruiser that doubled as a diplomatic envoy if they met new races. Certainly a powerful warship in its own right but not nearly as powerful as it could have been if they devoted the entire hull to warship stuff. That one episode where the timeline changes and the federation is at war with the klingons shows what a militarized galaxy class can do.
They explicitly stated lots of times that the enterprise D was a science, exploration and diplomacy vessel. It was very heavily armed exclusively for self defense, and a lot of its' firepower was due solely to its sheer size; there were many ships in starfleet that were way more heavily armed, but they just weren't anywhere near as big as the enterprise. The weapon to ship ratio is tiny on the enterprise, it's just a massive ship.
@@user-xz3pb3dt2u USS in star trek stands for United Space Ship. Kind of an uninspired phrase, but the USS acronym is nice and fits perfectly fine. I'm much more a fan of acronyms from stuff like Halo, where their ships are classed as UNSC, standing for United Nations Space Command, I feel like that's way more realistic to how we would do it if we got to that point.
Something they realized as well after Wolf359 and the Dominion War. The Galaxy Class was designed the way it was because it was meant to go into the void for a decade. 10 years in deep space you'll probably need daycare and school facilities eventually.
@@Vipre- not if you leave the civilians at home. From the perspective of the real Navy it just seems weird. I know she's not TECHNICALLY a ship of war, but when you have all that armament, it implies that war is one of the purposes of your vessel. Hence the Navy would never families with them. The longest time I've been underwater (I served on submarines) is 87 days....some surface ships go for a year at sea...in neither case do we take our families. 🙂
@@neutrino78x Now imagine leaving on deployment at 23 and not returning at all or even seeing a home port until 34-35. That was the original plan for the class, big difference.
@@Vipre- "Now imagine leaving on deployment at 23 and not returning at all or even seeing a home port until 34-35. That was the original plan for the class, big difference." You still can't bring civilians when it's expected that you're going to be in combat situations, come on. It's a suspension of disbelief thing. 🙂
"Strange that we have more information about a fictional ship than a real one." It's not strange at all, because the information about the real ship is highly classified for what I think are obvious reasons.
@Ahri Ayumei Just because there are "spies everywhere" doesn't mean that it's pointless to try to maintain national security through the keeping of secrets.
@Red Arrow There are spies everywhere because material is classified... if information were public and easy to access spies would be unnecessary. You would think you would know that.
@@Wicked_Trojan not everyone can access spies russia an China may know the layout of the ship? Sure,, don't doubt that. But does a random crazy Jhon doe knows it? No, the point is not to keep 100% secret it's just to make it harder. Same logic as leaving your house open wide because an experienced thief would know how to bust a lock.
Having served in the Navy, I feel the blueprint floor plans are fanciful and interesting but lack actual substance. A ship isn't built like a skyscraper where every inch of space is utilised for the crew, large chunks are taken up with anything from plumbing, ventilation, conduits and even small stores (mundane things like paint, tools, cleaning, firefighting equipment all need their lockers spread through the ship a single fire-hose and extinguisher every deck doesn't cut it) which all take up space). Older ships which relied on armour more than modern ships also had sizeable chunks of ship taken up with internal structure and armour. All these things are supported by the series and films where accessing some systems required crawling through access conduits etc. In short I suggest far more of the deck space is taken up with systems locked behind bulkheads than is available for crew to walk around.
Yeah I always felt the same about Star Trek blueprints. They don't leave any room for the actual guts of the ship and act more like they're flying buildings. We see the "jefferies tubes" with access to all of that stuff on screen but there never seems to be any room for them in the blueprints.
This doesn't take into account the extremely massive front to back hangar deck for shuttlecraft that the saucer section had integrated into it that many have said is there, but that the viewers never saw on-screen in the TNG series.
One thing I think you forgot, is that the 1000 standard complement you list there, is the Starfleet crew of the ship. My understanding is the Galaxy normally had a civilian occupancy of several thousand in addition to that, making up the crews family's, non Starfleet research teams, colonists, and the likes, which is why its maximum occupancy is so much higher than the crew complement comprises of. In episodes where the Galaxy class is expecting a fight, and they unload said civilians, references are made to how empty the ship feels without them.
The total number of people is never mentioned as being above 1014, and most background sources say 1012 is the normal full complement, including civilian population. It would be nice if there were more people, as I think a crew of several thousand would fit better, but we only have what we have.
@@MrBulshoy There is a debate of what the wording of "people on board" meant for decades. Those "people on board" may have been referring to the registered crew as crew who also brought their family as registered "steerage" in official logs. So, the actual people on board may be 3-7x the actual crew estimate... because most of those are not crew. They are steerage (passengers, civilians). Think of it from a mariner point of view.
I think I remember Troi mentioning that at least one deck in particular, while giving a tour, was intentionally incomplete (or some terminology to that intent) to give the Enterprise the ability to repurpose it as necessary. Plus, considering the saucer is practically a giant escape pod, you practically want all that extra space for the crew who would otherwise be occupying the other half of the ship and vice versa.
You also have to think about how many decs could have been breached before separation occurred. The more redundant your living space is, the less likely you'll be that most/all is destroyed
You also have to think about how many decs could have been breached before separation occurred. The more redundant your living space is, the less likely you'll be that most/all is destroyed
@@novaiscool1 You only put in redundant space for future proofing purposes, to give the ship room for new equipment, sensors, or weapons that haven't been thought of yet. You don't build in large amounts of extra space simply for redundancy, that's a waste of space. It results in the ship being larger than it absolutely needs to be and although weight isn't an issue in space, mass still is and the more mass you have the more power it takes to move that mass.So you'll want to reduce that mass as much as possible in order to make your engines have to work less.
I just got off the Wonder of the Seas ship with 6300 passengers and about 2000 crew. It was so incredibly cramped in every bar and restaurant and pool and activity. But room hallways were empty 90% of the time. Btw my room was in 10 forward 😎
Couple things to keep in mind. First, one of the missions of the Galaxy Class is diplomatic missions, and they actually host large diplomatic gatherings on several occasions, including peace negotiations where you might want to keep the delegates apart. Also, it’s a multicultural crew, including aliens who might have different life support requirements so the crew quarters decks need to have space to accommodate the equipment needed for maintaining a different atmosphere inside. Another of it’s missions is science, which means laboratories, observatories and other scientific spaces, not all of which are in use all the time.
Some relevant excerpts from the ST:TNG Technical Manual: Page 2: "Space allocation for mission-specific facilities: Habitable area to include 800,000 m² for mission-adaptable facilities including living quarters for mission-specific attached personnel." P3: "- Ability to support up to 5,000 non-crew personnel for mission-related operations. - Facilities to support Class M environmental range in all individual living quarters, provisions for 10% of quarters to support Class H, K, and L environmental conditions. Additional 2% of living quarters volume to be equipped for Class N and N(2) environmental adaptation." P6: "As the Enterprise left the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards, approximately 35% of the internal volumne was not yet filled with room modules and remained as empty spaceframe for future expansion and mission-specific applications." P7: "The Enterprise allows for some 110 square meters of living space per person, in addition to community space and the areas allocated to purely working functions." P152: "Each person aboard the Enterprise is assigned approximately 110 square meters of personal living quarters space. These accommodations typically include a bedroom, living/work area, and a small bathroom. Families may request that their living quarters be combined to create a single larger dwelling. Living quarters decks are designed to be modular with movable walls to permit reconfiguration for such requests as crew load and structure change. .... The Enterprise in extended mission mode includes several large areas on Decks 9, 11, 33, and 35 that are configured and maintained as living quarters, but are normally unoccupied. These areas are held in reserve to allow the Enterprise to absorb large numbers of mission specialists or other guest and attached personnel (in various short-term mission configurations, use of these quarters can increase the ship's complement to as many as 6,500 individuals). These accommodations are in addition to normal guest and VIP accommodations." P168: "During Red Alert situations, crew and attached personnel from all three duty shifts..." Note: There are 3x 8-hour duty shifts, so at any given moment, ⅓ of the crew would be sleeping. P176: "Capacity to support up to 15,000 evacuees with conversion of shuttlebays and cargo bays to emergency living accommodations."
That's a really interesting point that I've never considered. The internal space of a ship can be modular, with sections being created by replication and transportation. But with large unpopulated space under a hull looking like the space inside a zeppelin.
Sounds like a real headache to operate those sections. The series always made aquatic races out to be some ultra rare thing that barely anyone ever encounters. I know there's that one bizarre 1986 movie but were there ever any other sources that mentioned it? The idea there's intelligent dolphins in star trek sounds like the kind of fan theory a guy like Joe Rogan would come up with lol.
Initially the Enterprise D was to have a crew of 10,000 but Gene Roddenberry had to cut the number to a crew of 1,000 because they could not hire enough extras to make the 10k number believable and the CGI tech did not exist to duplicate background actors. Source "Trekyards"
Similar reason for how they came up with the idea of teleporters: They didn't have the money or tech to make believable small ships fly down into planets, so they just beamed them down and up again!
@@sel3735 It's weird. Every bit if info about it, seems to indicate the majority of the ship's population stays inside the saucer section, and that the secondary hull is more or less, just a machinery section, so only on duty engineering crew would really be there (maybe some scientists as well), but then Generations shows Geordie marshaling families out of it.
this actually helps me rationalize the canon of the enterprise being able to evacuate entire colonies, which I wasn't sure it could do before. now I'm pretty sure it could. also, I love the shining-esque horror element this adds to the show.
In the TNG technical manual (which was created by and used by the writers of the show, and several plot devices such as the crash landing in Generations were first introduced there) the Enterprise is stated to have entire sections of certain decks left empty for specific mission profiles that the Galaxy class would be used for periodically, such as hosting up to 5,000+ scientists or other passengers on short-term missions, or thousands more during evacuations of colonies.
It seems to me that the size of the ship may also contribute to a relatively low casualty rate. If the crew are spread out when portions of the hull are destroyed few people are caught in it. Also there's a ton of redundant space for survivor occupation.
Survivor occupation. That's a fascinating idea. Imagine a crashed saucer section on some distant planet with no way to leave or contact home. Just stranded there for 30 years. Imagine the society it would become! Would make for a cool episode!
Instead of enormous amounts of empty space they could use that space for more weapons and shield generators (for warships), or since most Enterprises are more science/exploration ship maybe massive sensor arrays or something. Although the idea of lots of empty rooms for evacuations, diplomatic missions and the like- maybe they can be converted from those luxurious suites the crew have to bunkbeds as packed as military ships- would make a lot of sense for a certain type of ship. I suppose maybe if the warp engine efficiency is insensitive to how massive the ship is (although impulse engines still use rocket-style propulsion I think), but useful high tech stuff like weapons and shield generators are super expensive and thus the main limit on how many warships you can build, for a hybrid warship/mixed use ship just throwing on a bunch of mostly unused metal for survivor occupation and maybe to make it less clear to enemies where to shoot wouldn't hurt much, since making metal walls hardly costs them anything.
When the Enterprise was attacked we only ever saw the reaction of the Bridge or Engineering crew. I wonder how parents and their children reacted when the Enterprise was being hit by alien weapons
ewaf88 yea omg I totes think this whenever I watch reruns😂 “Oh goddamnit George I dropped the meatloaf when that phaser blast hit the ship! Can’t we even have a meal in peace?!”😂 I always wondered too, when main power gets hit and goes offline, did people get pissed bc their lights went out and all their stuff quit working? What if u were in the middle of a holodeck thing?
I think the first and second time they get scared, the third time they get anxious, the fourth time they get annoyed, the fifth time it becomes like Earthquakes in California, the sixth time they barely notice. By the seventh time the ship is fired on they're basically playing Uno in the battle stations shelter.
They were usually moved into the saucer during a crisis. Depending on how serious the situation is, the Bridge crew were always ready to separate the saucer form the star drive.
@@WaveForceful I saw that a few times but normally when the Enterprise was being attacked there were no shipwide emergency announcements from the bridge to move to the Saucer section let alone take cover. Typical scene post attack. Hi dear is my supper ready? Sorry but all the eggs ended up in the floor during the attack - I did complain to the bridge who have forwarded it on to the Romulon high command.
According to the game before it was destroyed, the Galaxy class ships usually held around 1,500 crew members and can comfortably house up to 5,000 refugees if necessary. The cargo areas are also massive. There are 2 mess halls, and also a captain lounge. A lot of space is probably taken up by ships components. And apparently the nasals are non-accessible (unlike the older models).
@@noahreson-brown8943 actually the crew was 430 on launch, a bit under half. But the ship is notably smaller in all dimensions, and has more internal space proportionaly dedicated to machinery needed to actually run the ship.
Also all of the walls contain high resolution screens and communications electronics. I wonder how many of the corridors peripheral electronics [ lights communication screens etc] are actually powered.
@@michaelskywalker3089 Given practical efficiency and internal sensors panels with the combination of processing being in majority handled by the computer cores its quite likely that only primary systems receive constant power and luxury systems like all the information displays are deactivated in the majority of situations such as the yellow and red alert states of the ship, or other situations where you would want your power to be focused on a particular group of systems But given the theoretical power output of the warp reactor its also possible that they didnt care at all about such minimal power consumption and let them all stay on... If this were a dedicated warship these panels would probably not exist or have a dedicated set of functions to give them a real reason to be there. like being defensive phaser arrays to slow or stop boarding klingons or each of them being able to view or control primary systems given a hull breach could prevent reaching dedicated control stations in places such as main engineering or the two bridges
Yes! Exactly. Anti-matter/matter power systems are an entire class above nuclear fission or weak fusion reactors. They could probably run video station panels, power the lights heat and air circulation whilst blasting music in every corridor without taxing the power supply. These Galaxy class vessels remind me a lot of the engineering choices that were made on the Atlantian ancient city in Stargate Atlantis.
It also has a system of labs that get swapped out and the space they occupy reconfigured. The main shuttle bay that takes up the bulk of the back of the saucer. Machine shops industrial fabricators. The Galaxy is a fleet carrier, scientific institute, Embassy, Hospital Ship, long range explorer, warship, and a family resort (with rec and teaching facilities). I think a lot of the reason for the galaxy class size to crew ratio is it's multi role profile. Starfleet wanted a design that could do everything.
This is one of my favorite videos on TH-cam. I'm a Star Trek fan, and I first came across this during lockdown, and I just always liked it. It's a good analysis, and very entertaining as well.
Yeah why would that be even a little strange? They make blueprints for world building where you want to give everyone lots of info. Real world ships have either classified layouts or record keeping isn't as simple as a IP's wikipedia page, you would probably be hard pressed to find layouts of war ships that haven't been used in 75-100 years
@@nick-314 Actually, the newest one I could find easily, were deck plans for the Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer. Granted, it was Flight I, the original ship(commissioned in 1991), but the upgrades were mostly in electronics, the spaces would be pretty much the same.
Why would the Navy publish the blue prints for an aircraft carrier? People forget....its a machine of war. I was stationed on the USS Eisenhower, and it is massive. from the 8th deck (bottom of the ship) to the flight deck 04. Half an aircraft squadron can be housed in the her three hangar bays, plus working, eating, berthing and office spaces. It took me six months to learn how to get around it. Think of the ship as being designed like a cork, thousands of individual spaces. Anyway, its not strange public information isn't available, and you want it that way.
@Porco Rosso well let us see, first, it would be a massively idiotic idea to not exempt active military assets when the release of said information could endanger the lives of those onboard. having the plans of an active ship with 6000 people aboard publicly available would mean that people who would want to strike against the owner of that vessel would have access to information on key weak points. like, as a fictional example, a small exhaust port in the polar trench that leads directly to the reactor core of an otherwise impervious moon-sized space station.
I was on the USS Carl Vincent, CVN 70. 8 can tell you that the majority of the crew don't know the entire layout of the vessel. SECRET CLEARANCES, are real and real for a reason.
The amount of firepower that can be packed onto a Galaxy Class with retrofits, the spinal lance phaser , etc . with multiple shields make it the best thing on the battlefield for a fleet. It is a mobile command center, battle station, and cover/repair/MASH unit. It would piss on the Scimitar and anything the dominion could throw if it was just utilized properly. Imagine 4 photon torpedo launchers or even add several phaser rings. Imagine firing 4 fully powered phasers simultaneously from multiple phaser fire control towers. It would be a MONSTER.
The brightly lit, colourful, fully carpeted aesthetic was extremely comfy. If real-world navy ships had a similar aesthetic, I'd join the navy tomorrow.
Yes, the Enterprise D has more empty living quarters than crew-occupied because the ship is used to transport planetary and other-ship evacuees, as stated in at least one Next Generation episode.
Correct. In fact, 3/4 of the ship is cargo bays, shuttle bays, operational systems and empty rooms and so on that are powered down and not even accessed until needed. Think of it more like a flying conference center. The main entrance areas where day to day stuff happens and most of it is simply big spaces for thousands of people or a year's supplies to a colony or similar. That the crew rarely even goes to.
Considering the types of missions Enterprise D routinely goes on, it actually makes a ton of sense that the ship has so much (generally) empty space. They're always picking up delegations, beaming out entire colonies from some disaster, hosting interplanetary functions, etc. The Galaxy class seems to be something of a combination of a defensive military vessel, and a diplomatic cruise ship.
BEVERLY: It's all perfectly logical to you, isn't it? The two of us roaming about the galaxy in the flagship of the Federation. No crew at all. PICARD: We've never needed a crew before.
Geordi's room being nearly as big as O'brien's makes sense, he's the Chief Engineer and therefore enjoys the perks of Rank. I would assume a single person who's an ensign or crewman has a smaller room. Not that space is really an issue on the Galaxy
In Lower Decks (the episode), they said holding the rank of Lt. j.g. was required to have their own private quarters, while having to share quarters as an Ensign. Presumably on the same lines, enlisted personnel would have to hold the rank of Chief before having their own private quarters as well. I'd guess civilian personnel would have their own quarters since they would be specialists recruited for very specific purposes.
@@needaman66 they have workshops for that, we are talking private quarters here. While some may at times choose do part of their jobs or thinking on it even at home and use the existing computer there for these, it is not mandatory.
In the mid 70's they published the Star Fleet Technical Manual for the original Star Trek Enterprise. It is VERY detailed and COOL AS SH*T! I'm surprised they haven't released the same thing for the TNG Enterprise.
The Enterprise D is also the flagship of Starfleet. Which is a military organization. It is a diplomatic ship, a science ship and on the most powerful military ships in the entire fleet. It's could be that grandiose for various diplomatic reasons.
Most single purpose ships are much smaller, sized to fit it's role. The Enterprise's role is being a big shining example of Starfleet, so being oversized can have multiple sociological reasons more than other reasons. But there are also military benefits of having so much space. Every system has more space, it's beam emitters have more potential charge time for more potential damage, or more shots at a quicker pace. It would have more space for munitions like torpedos. All of it's arrays and emitters need more space to cover a larger ship, but they also have drastically more volume in the ship to put them. There are literally dozens of examples of having a massive mostly empty ship can convey across and aspect of a flagship. In fact the weirdest thing about the Enterprise is that it never has an escort.
More like the TNG crew enjoyed comfy large apartments vs TOS who had cabins that where more akin to a submarine bunk which they had to share with roommates.
This Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quote also comes to mind: “Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
@@jayhom5385 i'm 100% possitive there is more intelligent life then us here in our own galaxy, statistically it's genuinely impossible for us to be alone, if even just 1% of all the planets in our galaxy alone had life, and 1% of those planets in turn had intelligent life on them, this would mean there is many millions upon millions of developed alien civilizations out there. people often *seriously* underestimate just how big galaxies is, how many stares there is and how many planets there is in one single galaxy, and there is more galaxies in the known universe then there is grains of sand on earth. hell, our very own solar system is so big that aliens could with ease hide a armada of several hundred thousand ships somewhere.
@@theldraspneumonoultramicro405 I'm pretty sure that there are aliens out there in the galaxy, in fact, it's more probable than the opposite. However, who's to say that they're more advanced than we are? If we can't go visit the aliens, they can't come to us either.
After all this time i remembered this video and i had to come back to it because of the final episode of Picard where they maneuver this huge beast like a merely starfighter and used it in a Millenium Falcon-Deathstar sequence. oO
@@charlesbaldo I get that you're anti Trump. Is whining about a username and avatar really worth your time and effort? It accomplishes nothing except needless contention.
@@charlesbaldo wot m8? idk if an avatar should annoy you that much tbh, I mean you can always ignore it? Especially when talking about something completely different.
Just compare it to high rises and cities. The hallways are usually empty, the flats people live in are (mostly) empty during the day, work places are mostly empty during the night, entertainment areas are usually empty during the day, storage area is nearly void of humans, etc. If you consider that 3% are currently used for crew quarters, the ship can hold 6 times the crew, that's 18%. If you add in work space, entertainment space, storage space and travel space with about the same amounts, you're left with 10% to fill the gaps.
Navy ships run four six hour shifts. Duty stations must be manned at all times. I have to assume Starfleet does the same. So Kirks Enterprise with a crew of 440 only had 110 on duty at any given time.
@@elricdotah another good point, but one must assume that the stations concerned with ship operations (navigation, engines/engineering, bridge, etc) would be manned 24/7 and the other non-critical systems (labs and the like) would have normal "9-5" type hours.
A perfect episode for TNG would be the discovery of an entire tribe of 'primitive' aliens that had been living on the Enterprise for a few years already.
The show does explain that this ship was designed to house refugees leaving a planet. So it has to be quite empty to do this. Remember the episode with the aliens that wanted to "remove" the human infestation on their planet, Picard and Data came up with a logical number of trips to another Class M planet to actually achieve this migration. To migrate a WHOLE PLANET! Yeah, the Enterprise D is big! 😆
Perhaps you could think of this ship as a “city in space.” Just as most cities in the western world have a density of about 55 people per mile, so a ship that people live in would have to be spacious enough to provide the same kind of feel. This is not an airliner with seats, this is a community.
Meanwhile, the Enterprise-J's purported to have a complement of 1 million people, and equipped with parks, a freeway, and university, with a total length of ~2 miles.
55 people per square mile is almost rural. Cleveland has a population density of 5,107 people per square mile. So you're off by a few orders of magnitude there.
I'd like to see a Start Trek show about the life of a family on the Enterprise D who carry on normal family life, sort of like a Situation Comedy. You see life-or-death adventures going on in the background that they barely acknowledge because for them the Enterprise is just where they live.
Holy moly! I have been looking for this video for about a year! I saw this video about two years ago and loved it. I always think about this video and how we will eventually make it out to space. I always think about how they would live on a ship and how much room they would have. I also think, could I do a lifetime on a shop like that. I love to think about the example where they show the space between each person on the ship. This video is so thought provoking! Yes, I am so happy!
@@atticstattic My point is that he took the least amount of people possible and then made it seem like the standard when in reality the number of people on the ship can vary up to 5 times as much and fluctuates. Then on top of it he only put 900 lol
Also think about all the space that you need for off duty activities when you spend your life inside a ship (sport and recreation facilities take a lot of room) Plus storage for all the crew needs (think about how much space you would need for food and water for a whole year and then multiply that by the crew and civilians aboard the ship) and other supplies for maintenance etc.
That's what I was thinking. If they still use money or something similar, there could be shops, restaurants, bars etc. Like they have on cruise ships. There would likely be areas that are done up like an outdoor park, with loads of plants and artificial sky, too.
@@shinobi-no-bueno it's not all the same corridor but from different angles? This is why if I'm ever in charge of a star Trek series, I'm getting a blocked out 3d model of the ship internals made before we start making sets and filming.
@Maintenance Renegade The turbo-lifts in star trek (why they can't just call them "lifts" like normal people is beyond me) always seem to be able to translate fore and aft to get from the bridge (top centre of the saucer section) to engineering (in the middle of the secondary hull), about 300m behind the bridge.
@Maintenance Renegade That's awesome. Designing game maps (both in pen-and-paper RPGs and computer games) functionality first is super important for immersion. Wish I'd had the chance to play in your games!
In the TNG episode "Lower Decks" one of the ensigns complains that he has to share quarters with another ensign, and if he gets promoted to lieutenant, he will get his own quarters.
So maybe the policy is that lower decks crew are distributed relatively close together for productivity (improve cooperation and communication)... Although, you do make a valid point.
@Axemantitan,I think it is standard Starfleet policy that ensign rank share crew quarters be it starship or starbase. I also remember reading some where that crew quarters come standard, specialized( for alien crew or guests) and custom Deanna Troi has a bathtub and not the standard sonic shower, most families with small children would have the same thing, When a small children are out of the bath stage they get different quarters and the old ones are changed back to standard quarters. My guess is crew quarters on Galaxy Class could be made any way the person wanted, say you had a Lt. Commander that was a minimalist room for a bed small work space, but he or she just love a huge bathroom, Tub and shower things like that, as long as those things were approved by the powers that be it would done
Nope they just love making their ensigns suffer for no apparent reason..good discipline..only to have commander riker breathing down your neck in 10 forward
Those ensigns are stationed on the aforementioned lower decks, specifically in the engineering section of the ship, where things aren't quite as spacious and pretty much all of the ship's engines, weaponry, sensor equipment, etc. are housed. It's expected that things would be a bit more cramped there. Sure, they could just as easily house those crewmembers in the saucer section, but it makes sense to want the rank-and-file engineering staff close to their job site, because you never know when a red alert is going to be sounded, the turbolifts are going to be out and/or you have to perform an emergency saucer-separation at a moment's notice.
I find it comforting that someone has taken the trouble to calculate the size of the ship, indicate how little of the ship would be taken up by the crew, work out the size of their quarters, and do a comparison with modern day warships.Oh, and the comforting part, ...I am not the only weirdo in town !
I skip most Star Trek content on youtube because it just isn't nerdy enough. This, however, is proper :) EDIT: and as I'm reading through the comments, the commentators are proper as well!
Well size that large would be quite useful in cases such as: Mass evacuations from a planet, station, or another ship; Compartmentalization of decks incase of a hull breach; Large storage areas for non-replicable (or difficult to do so) supplies, spare components, and fuel; comfortable space for larger than average life-forms; areas far enough away from people or critical sections of the ship for more dangerous experiments; etc.
Seemed that every time they evacuated mass people they just stuffed them in the cargo bay or shuttle bay. I know they did that one extremely dangerous transportation and simply constructed a force field around the container in the cargo bay.
Dude, that was an AWESOME video! I started it and all of a sudden it was over. "That was 8 minutes?! Noooooo. I want to hear more!!!" ^That's a huge compliment.^
Effectively the ship is part of a 'social experiment' where fleet members, family and civilians can live without want or need for anything and can effectively maximize their productivity or conversely create opportunities for decadence.
@@theindooroutdoorsman Well, 1000/16=62,5, so if everyone wants one hour sessions for single user, it is every two and a half day, or daily 20 minutes, if we add multiple users, which only limited by the emptiness of the ship, we could easily get hour per day with friends, and that is only for the full walk around version, personal holoVR headsets are probably at everyones desk.
As far as living quarters - the Enterprise-D had a significant amount of available quarters. Some quarters were designated as "special accomodation" for aliens who needed special atmospheres, gravity settings, etc. and not available for general use. A large number were also near sickbay and able to be converted to medical use, and were generally kept unoccupied unless they needed them.
Guys, it's the flagship of the Federation. It's supposed to be enormous and extravagant, both as a symbol of power projection, and as a means of providing the wide array of capabilities and roles that we see the Enterprise D play in the show. It's a science/exploration/diplomatic/tactical ship. It's literally two ships that can separate and operate independent of each other. Basically, it's a giant war ship with a giant non-military module attached to it.
I realized how insanely huge the Ent-D was last year, exploring its decks on the Minetrek server in Minecraft. The team there has been building ships for 10 years, and they're on their 3rd iteration of the D now, which is built roughly 1:1 (slightly larger, due to the 1-meter block size - actual size is really hard to implement - 2 blocks = too short hallways, 3 blocks = too tall, but fudging the scale a few percentage points makes it work out). It's complete, with turbolifts and Jefferies tubes connecting pretty much everything. They had to invent a ton to fill in the decks, so there are large theaters, tons of astrometrics rooms of varying sizes, security and medical bays all over, lots of escape pods that map to the escape pods on the outside of the hull, gardens, and the massive main shuttle bay, never seen on the show, because it fills much of the deck, and has dozens of shuttlecraft, and worker bees (like forklifts of varying sizes, some huge), and spans 3 decks in height, with 3 huge structures like office buildings (full of offices) that each take a while to explore. The huge, in-floor, shuttlecraft elevators by the exit descend into another huge, multi-story deck, full of more shuttlecraft, and a really clever, pod-based design on many, where the payload area can be swapped out, with a long line of example pods on display. They have the dolphin tanks and observation decks around them under the front, as described in the original plans. The captain's shuttle is very roomy. There's a 5-story, massive room, with outdoor restaurants, bridges, walkways, a whole, indoor forest, with waterfall(s?), a cave bar, and the whole thing reminds me of the lobby in the Grand Old Opry hotel (look it up - it's gorgeous). I've spent so many hours wandering now and then over the last year, and really haven't made it much past the upper decks. Everything is so much larger. Beverly's office exists, but that deck is loaded with sprawling medical areas that amount to a floor or two of a large hospital. There aren't just a few holodecks, but like 1-2 dozen, and some are like warehouses in size. There isn't just an aeroponics bay, but a huge section with parts spanning a few decks in height, full of towers of plants, and catwalks. There are huge elevators that go through the decks, to bring things from the main shuttle bay, and the huge cargo sections below the saucer up to all the other floors. The computer cores are huge, and go through a lot of floors. I've barely visited the stardrive section, but main engineering as seen on the show is just a little blip in a sea of engineering areas. The nacelles have stairways, catwalks, offices (probably for repair crews), etc., in their bases, because they're enormous inside. You can walk (or take a turbolift tunnel) from the main areas up to the nacelles. A few hours of wandering just a tiny little nothing section of the ship, constantly getting completely lost, I said "This is not the ship from the show." The show presented such a cozy place, with one sick bay, a few holodecks, a few crew quarters, 2 small shuttle bays, and a few other small rooms. The actual ship is thousands of times what we saw. They would sometimes work out in that little gym on the show. There are a few dozen courts all laid out for various sports in one large area of one of the decks, which is still a tiny little part of that deck. There are surprises all over the place, like huge, multifloor restaurants, and we saw 10-Forward, but there's a -Forward for every deck, and then dozens more little lounges like that dotting the outer ring of decks all over the place. You realize it wasn't just everyone in 10-Forward, but hundreds and hundreds of people (potentially) in dozens of these little lounges all over the ship, and they don't even take up any space - they're like little breadcrumbs around the edges.
I actually am confused, as the nacelles are distinct from the main ship due to the antimatter reaction, so it would be unhealthy for ANYBODY to be near them, what documentations are you guys using for creating offices in those areas? Good work on the whole project though. I like the idea of creating stuff for the hell of it, but if you guys want to draw on the enterprise-d, you need to use some form of "techno-babble" for your reasons for doing so. Anything else will just end up as the klingon language and just be bad for the series, which is the foundation (pun intended). As it is I really like that ANYONE would actually count out how much space anyone on enterprise-d has, and as a sailor I am envious (of all that space). On top of all that, I think people forgets the humble replicator. Anything can be changed at any time :). Thanks to Star Trek for fanning our dreams.
I would really liked to have read the interesting information you took the time and effort to provide but without paragraphs it is just impossible for my old eyes to read. I do appreciate your intentions though.
This is where I'm reminded of Space Engineers, and how they recently introduced the MAC cannon. You need a _lot_ of redundant space for ship battles, space debris, and temporal anomalies. Heh. The Enterprise-D was one of the first things people made in Minecraft Classic, back when the world was a small 256x64x256 box. Let's see, there was an Enterprise for each world height limit, wasn't there? 64, 128, 256...384 (2056)...Iteration IV inbound. Makes you wonder, though. Most of the work was done by the computer.
Exactly. While the ship can RUN on a crew of a few hundred, maybe even be run for short term events by a single person who can order the computer to run things, it's designed for 1,000 or so _active crew._ Well, "active" as in "actively serving;" a given shift is probably closer to 300-400 crewmen. The civilians living with starfleet officers would not count as part of the 1000 crew; they'd make it more crowded without occupying more quarters. Civilians (e.g. Guinan, Mott) who are living in their own quarters actually use up MORE quarters, not less. And, yes, the ship is designed to house up to 6,000 people in reasonable comfort (though it probably involves every set of quarters not belonging to the highest-ranking command staff having at least two, maybe 3-5 occupants), and even more if you really cram people in and don't need to worry about long-term facilities to care for them.
It's been said during some of the episodes, specifically the ones dealing with lesser-known crew members, some crewmates share quarters with one another, rather than with family.
The Enterprise was also expected by Starfleet to be used to carry delegations for peace talks and other gatherings, not to mention for emergency evacuations of whole colonies. So a lot of the extra living space was used in those specific situations and was probably kept mainly offline/powered down when not in use.
Nice reference
The evacuation part always seemed strange, a massive amount of space for a rare occasion.
Dedicated transport ships would be much cheaper. They don’t have endless recourses and time.
@@iamagi Yeah but dedicated transports take time to get to locations. They're often dispatched too late to make it in time. Plenty of situations have probably occurred where starfleet had a ship like the Enterprise respond to an emergency at a colony or some other such place that needed an evac within a number a hours that those dedicated ships couldn't reach in time because the emergency was already in progress. Thus, the extra space would be required to be used. So they plan that into ships like the Enterprise, ships that are already in deep space and not being dispatched from places more central within the federation.
Now Starfleet regulations also make OSHA look like a joke with how many redundant/backup systems they have. It would make sense to have an oversized ship because for every system Starfleet builds, they build a backup system to cover it. That alone would at least increase the size of the ship 50%. Also like how large ships used to operate before commercial passenger flight, you're probably not just transporting one delegation/set of cargo at a time to a singular place. Unless a mission is particularly important/time constrained, they probably stop at several space ports along the way to a mission to pick up new crew, drop off people awaiting transfers, collect trade and operational materials needed by their next stop etc. The Enterprise was on five year mission, so you gotta figure that if someone resigns from Starfleet or goes on shore leave they don't have to wait the five years, they just hang out on the ship till the next opportunity to leave.
@@tylerryan713 the main reason though is everything’s probably automated
You forget that every ship is required to be at least 75% Jefferies tubes and 5% Riker's sex palaces.
Citation needed
@@IndigoGollum ST: TNG
"5% Riker's sex palaces"
I'm dead! ROFL...
What about the other 20%
@@cheesebone2818 Actual ship stuff
This makes me think of the episode "Remember Me" where Beverly asks Picard why, if there are only 230 people onboard, why there is so much extra space, and Data says something about transportation of colonists, emergency evacuations. That supports the idea that there are thousands of empty quarters onboard even in normal situations.
picard replies, "nearly 800 missing" as is the plot point of the episode -- then at 44 minutes into the episode Beverly asks how many onboard, Picard says 1,014
@@joshhibschman When the Yamato, the sister ship (if I'm recalling the name correctly) blows up, it has a crew complement stated.
Alas, I don't remember what that number is, but it could be used as a guide. The episode with the iconian gateways.
Kinda weird that the flagship would be equipped so heavily for personnel transport, instead of sending in the 'support' ships with dedicated transports.
One could argue first contact may involve an emergency, but realistically it is a poor use of resources to have such a generalised ship and single point of failure.
@@AndrooUK - The exact count was never announced on the death of the Yamato. On the script itself, "Captain's log, supplemental. The Yamato's entire crew and their families, more than a thousand people, have been lost. Circumstances unfortunately permit us no pause for grief." So it could be the same compliment of 1014 or greater depending on how many were married with children.
Exactly! Even a Nebula class vessel (like U.S.S. Farragut) can carry about 8000 people, and a Galaxy (like Enterprise-D) can carry almost twice as much, about 15000 people. These ships were indeed made to be long-range carriers rather than dedicated explorer ships or battlecruisers.
Early episodes make frequent mention of an "arboretum." Which is a tree garden. The Enterprise D has actual trees growing in it.
Scotty is ushered into unoccupied guest quarters, and marvels at the size of them.
There are multiple shuttle bays and multiple cargo bays.
They actually showed the arboretum, it's not that big
@@ortzinator it's bigger than all the other arboretums on all the other spacecraft known to humans throughout all of history, combined, to put that in perspective.
The arboretum is probably bigger than the TV show budget would allow. The shuttle bays are examples of areas that would be larger on a real ship than they're depicted on the show.
And multiple transporter rooms (at least 3 of them, because they're always calling Transporter Room 3!)
"Back in my day, not even an admiral could ask for a room like this."
-Montgomery Scott, TNG: *Relics*
You forgot that at least 1/4 of that space is for camera crews and directors.
And let's not forget the orchestra members.
Tribbles take up a lot of room too
yeah and equipments
Don't forget the guys that open and close the "automatic doors".
@@hannabaal150 are they the guys that also go "Shhhhhhd" when the doors open and close or is there a separate guy that does the "Shhhhhhd"?
"How do you explain all the empty rooms!?"
"..........Transportation of colonists... diplomatic missions... emergency evacuations..."
"Thank you, mister Data...."
Lol, I just watched that episode the other night.
When the captain goes to the head to make an emergency evacuation, everyone's glad they can give it a wide breadth
I imagine that most of the ship is cordoned off most of the time empty for just such events.
season 4 episode 5 "remember me" 20 minute mark
@M 40 Think about the infirmary ... 800k sm and and infirmary as big as 35 square meters...
Once upon a time, I made a scaled representation of the enterprise D for google maps, and then placed it in my home town where my house was. When I saw how many blocks were being covered, I truly understood the magnitude of this ship. I even planned out a walk around the neighborhood to further illustrate the size in my mind.
neat!
I did the same thing with NCC 1701 and discovered how small it really would be.
Dam.. you’re dedicated
That's awesome!
@@josephnebeker7976 still pretty big, compared to modern aircraft and space craft. Especially when you consider that it has like 20 decks. Means it's taller than my apartment building.
I'm not sure the "crew" count listed to the Enterprise "D" includes family members...
When they say "crew" I believe they are referring to actual crew members only...
Tagging along with other good comments about evacuation assistance and other things, the ship being so large makes perfect sense...
I could see civilians being counted as crew. Picard often mentions the 100 crew when concerned for the safety of the enterprise. Surely he is equally concerned for every individual not just those in uniform.
they are often referring to the 1000 lives on board so i am pretty sure crew=humanoid lifeforms of human size
I actually don't find the empty corridors odd at all, especially the levels with living quarters. If you compare them to apartments or hotels, including massive apartment buildings like in NYC, or giant hotels like Las Vegas, outside of the areas you expect to have people, the average corridor is usually quite empty. You may run into a neighbor from time to time, but they aren't packed with people.
Well, that's true. But you're comparing hotels and apartments, which are almost entirely living spaces. The enterprise is a small, but complete, piece of a city. If we compared it only with a warship, then a similar problem emerges where the warship has A LOT of personnel going place to place. The Enterprise starship is kinda in the middle.
A better comparison might be a cruise ship. If you look at the halls and decks where there are just cabins, during the day, they are pretty empty (disregarding the housekeeping staff). While the areas for entertainment and food are packed.
Exactly
Actually, on a smaller scale, there is a "shortage" of housing where I live. Yet so many empty residential buildings.
Consider also that a MASSIVE portion of the interior is, realistically, taken up by storage for things like the massive amount of matter used to operate the replicators, transporters, etc.
It's the Federation's flagship, they want to impress people.
And other races.
Imagine youre in a little Klingon bird of prey (not particularly tiny, mind you), and this absolutely massive structure appears out your window.
Now think about how large the borg ship is.
@@kip258 I was including other races in the group of people since they are people, just not human people. :P
It’s a flag ship that operates solo, without any support/accompaniment?
Star wars is better
@@captainhakob814 Than what?
If you remember from the episode which I believe is called *Yesterday's Enterprise* The enterprise is described as carrying some 3,000 troops or personnel. The ship is built for comfort in the canonical setting, and everybody's quarters are very spacious from a military vessel's point of view. If crewman had bunks instead of quarters, say four crewmen to a unit, you could pack a lot more people in that ship for relatively little change in energy cost. The rest of that ship can easily be assumed to contain equipment, power conduits, bulkheads, weapon subsystems, etc. For example, corridors have multiple security force fields that can be put into place. Without knowing the size of a force field generator, it's difficult to know how much of the invisible space behind the walls is taken up by the machinery necessary to power and control that system, and that's for each independent field generator. They also use force fields to fill hull breaches, which means they're going to have field generators literally crisscrossing the entire hull. That's in addition to the standard issue structural integrity fields, which I imagine are a dedicated subsystem of force fields that have the sole job of protecting the physical hull of the ship from damage. You need space for all of those force field emitters, power systems, back up power systems, batteries and capacitors, etc. And that's just force fields. Grav plating similarly takes up an unidentified amount of space underneath the flooring of any given square foot of ship deck. It could be a meter thick for all I know.
Everything is crazy miniature by the time of Enterprise D. Projecting the field where you want it appears to be the difficulty as they've shown field emitters that fit into the palm of the hand several times but when they need it to cover a specific area they have to set up equipment to change the size and shape of the bubble almost independent of actually generating it.
3:08 - not actually that strange. The internal arrangement of active-duty warships tends to be classified, to prevent enemies from knowing exactly where to hit them for massive damage. We have deck plans viewable of certain internal spaces (like the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer CIC and bridge), but the locations of those spaces, while they can be guesstimated from knowledge of where the same spaces are on previously-decommissioned ships of the same type, are not specifically known.
You'd be surprised how much of the inside of a Nimitz class is just empty space. Lots of fan rooms, bilges, stores, etc
@@telesniper2 And the hangar deck, which is 3 decks tall through 2/3 of the ship's length.
Thanks for bringing this up. I had the same thought. As much as I'd love to have the deck plans for the Nimitz class, I don't want that information available to those who would use it with ill intent. I'm curious if Starfleet would want the Romulans to have the deck plans for the Enterprise, but they would probably have it anyway.
It is strange because tourists can take pictures inside floating aircraft carrier museums. Modern systems may be different but the overall layout in basic ship design is not top secret.
@@toolbaggers I wonder if satellite photography can find the "warm patch" in the ship where the reactors are located.
This much space is likely why there are scenes where some decks are compromised, but no one is injured.
"All of deck 8 has been rendered uninhabitable"
"Casualty report?"
"None, we just use that to hold all the junk souveniers our away teams collect"
It's probably safe to assume they may have emergency forcefields that engage when hull integrity is compromised.
@@t.c.b4722 They probably do, but the initial blast that compromised the deck in the first place probably failed to kill anyone because there's so much unoccupied space on the ship. Everyone else on the deck probably got sucked 50 feet down the hallway before the force fields went up and then went back to what they were doing lol
@@Kurayamiblack - Except t hey would only be affected if they were rather close to the area. Decompression like that works on a pressure gradient. So if the port side gets blasted open, and you were on the starboard side, you wouldn't even notice. Your ears might pop/change pressure after the containmentfield snaps into place and the pressure equalizes.
But when the Borg bore out a cylindrical section, that caused the death of 19 people, or almost 2% of the people aboard.
This explains how the senior officers can always do these walk-and-talks over miles and miles of corridor and only encounter like one random technician at a console. I always wondered why the halls were so empty on a busy ship. Thanks! :D
bcs actors and costumes cost money, is my guess.
Currently I work at IKEA but we've closed the store for the 2nd UK covid lockdown, but we're still doing online orders, so my work days consist of shopping in an empty store, kind of feels like I'm walking about empty corridors passing the occasional person until I get to the warehouse where more of us are gathered at the area we confirm the orders and send them out.
Ever heard of SCP-3008?
@@G1NZOU Thanks for sharing.
The halls in TNG were BUSTLING idk what show you watched.
note, they also need to be able to house everyone in either saucer OR stardrive sections so technically there would be twice as much space as required right off the bat. They also transport and hold large numbers of delegates and their entourages for various reasons throughout the series.
As well as purposely built to house hundreds of scores of refugees if needed in an evacuation. Or in wartime as an afterthought many numbers of troops and equipment.
Stardrive section's crew accommodations could largely look like _Defiant's_ did in _DS9._ Minimal, just adequate to give the crew and passengers somewhere to sleep and eat.
Those old blueprints and other technical manual diagrams indicated that junior crew would share quarters, two personnel to a cabin, or shared bedroomlets with a small common room. Unlike the video I have not bothered to count, but it would not surprise me if there was considerably more bunk space in those drawings than the stated crew complement on the show. As for descriptions of how many could be accommodated for troop-transport missions, likewise the numbers seem really, really off.
Additionally on reflection with the _Generations_ bridge revamp,, there should realistically have been considerably more personnel on the bridge. There should have been those side-stations with probably two crew each side, and the _Voyager_ Astrophysics add-on should well have been a division in one of those side-stations, directly linked to the officer at the Helm station. The Ops station should have been a sensor officer's station, and Ops should have migrated to one of the side stations. Two other side stations could well have been interfaces to crews serving the two major weapons systems, or to small-craft operations and shuttlebays, or to general communications along the lines of what Uhura's role was. Sciences and Engineering along the back wall would probably be reconfigurable for whatever task was at hand. The Battle Bridge should have replicated most of these positions, with the exception of perhaps the sciences, and possibly had more extensive positions for various weapons systems to take some of the load off of the main weapons officer.
The captain's ready-room off of the main bridge should have been a bit more extensive, basically a second cabin for his use while underway, so that he remains accessible to the bridge at a moment's notice. His main cabin should have been in the stardrive section, and perhaps could have been located off the Battle Bridge in the same fashion. The Battle Bridge should have been manned as auxiliary control at all times, probably with a rotation of junior officers, with many roles reversing when the Captain transfers command to the Battle bridge.
Saucer section is for civies
Housing and "be comfortable" is a stark difference. On 30m² you can stack a lot of bunk beds ;)
They could cram everyone into a couple of cargo bays if they really wanted to.
I mean, I can imagine them being so spoilt that even in a crisis they want an ensuite bathroom each, but still... 😅
The Galaxy Class was designed to fulfil multiple roles, but the main one would have been deep space, long term exploration. To go off on 5 or 10 or longer year missions into unknown regions to explore. The Enterprise-D never got to do that, being the Flagship. But that's why it's so big. It's a floating city in space, capable of a wide array of functions. You could evacuate a small colony comfortably, or a large colony with everyone being cramped as you got them to safety.
Which begs the question as to why they weren't used or built for Picard when they were trying to relocate the Romans
It was budgetary restraints that got us the teleporter and space combat that resembles slow motion sail and oar sea battles as opposed to fighter swarms. The bottom line is that we would have had a very different show if budget was not an issue.
Or even if the computers we had at the time were as powerful as they are now. Which would have requested to less cost because more was able to be done. Though DS9 last couple seasons had hundreds of ships but I imagine they budgeted for that
@@heathbruce9928 Simple answer: "Picard" is a travesty of a show "written" by people without talent nor skill, and especially not any respect for the lore that came before.
The Galaxy Class was designed for at least 100 years worth of service, and by the point of "the Romulan incident that shall remain nameless as it allows idiots to fudge up the entire franchise" still well within their service lifetime. There were a fair number of them at the end of the Dominion War, and more still being built. Other ships and designs had improved, or were simply for different roles (more for war, especially anti-Borg), but the Galaxys were still being made.
The proper answer to anything that came up with Jar Jar Abrams and his alternate nightmare of mystery boxes, as well as anything span off for "Picard" is: send in all the Galaxy Class ships to evacuate. Each can hold upwards of 10000 at a push. Maybe more.
But that takes respect for the Lore, and some talent to write. Neither of which is present in anything produced since Star Trek Enterprise, and that was showing some flaws.
@@Iluvantir I see we think alike. I care not for the jar jar Abrams crap. Not really caring for Picard either for the reasons you stipulated.
"We have data for single quarters."
We also have single quarters for Data. *Ba Dum Tiss*
I wish TH-cam had picture comments. I'd post a Picard Double Facepalm gif now.
Fun fact: his are the only headless quarters.
@@davincent98 Does a litterbox count as a head?
@@RRW359 I don't think so
😆
If I remember correctly, no one told the artist how big the Ent-D was supposed to be. So he drew it for a crew of 6,000. When Gene Roddenberry found out, he said they didnt have the budget for that many extras, so they would claim it had 1,400 or so crew. But it was designed to be spacious living for a crew of 6,000+
It was also classed as a sort of embassy in space too given it's mission as a first contact or for representing the Federation given it was the flag ship. Kind of ironic given it's predecessor was the Ambassador class lol.
6,000 is 27% of habitable space. Sounds right.
and another explanation they came up with is that the capacity could be used for evacuations
@@prismaticmarcus This makes the most sense. Even in DS9 (struggling to remember which race) supposedly saved around 3 million individuals of a species, that's a lot of 'energize'
@@TalesOfWar Not to mention exploration and research.
i'll never forget walking up to the 1701-D in minecraft at a 1:1 scale for the first time. i had never seen a proper scale model that really shows how insanely massive the ship design is. and then just wandering around the inside, without turbolifts because its minecraft, takes FOREVER. Even with flying, it still took ages to move around.
It does help explain why future tech elevators take long enough for dialogue to take place:)
That sounds AMAZING
The fifth starship to be named Enterprise, she was commanded by Captain Jean-Luc Picard. With a total of 42 decks, the Enterprise-D was twice the length and had eight times the interior space of the Constitution-class ships of over a century earlier. She carried a combined crew and passenger load of 1,012.
Scott: "Good lord, man, where have you put me?"
Kane: "These are standard guest quarters, sir. I can try and find something bigger if you want."
Scott: "'Bigger'? In my day, even an admiral wouldn't have had such quarters in a starship!"
haha good one! Ole Scotty! Break out the gin.
Russell Hewett Now we know why he said that.
Just watched this episode two nights ago 😅
I bet you have small ballbag
That's because when Scotty was still in Starfleet the largest ship might have been 400 m long.
Probably why the most common thing said on board is "on my way"
Cut to guy sitting on couch watching tv staring at his uniform saying, "I hate this job"
@@GunbusterDX probably take them a whole 3 hours to get to that side
They need to give them Segway's or golf carts or something.
@@Bulls3ye86 maybe skateboards?
@@generalkenobi5173LoL! Picard on a skateboard.
I spent 4 years as a crewmember on the USS Ohio. My estimate on the 9 man bunkrooms would be about 76 square feet for all 9.
Submarine life sounds brutal
Honestly the most bewildering thing I found hard to believe in this video was the amount of people that could actually staff that Aircraft carrier ship.
People do insult the Galaxy class nowadays but honestly it was a perfect ship for the time in which it was built: the Klingons were allies, the Romulans were in hiding, the Cardassians were at peace. No one else was anywhere near the Federation's weight class. Cruising the galaxy in a flying mall isn't all that silly a concept during peacetime and people overlook that it was capable of taking on any conventional threat and coming out on top. The problem was that once the Borg and especially the Dominion appeared the Galaxy class became a huge, lumbering target; which is why we suddenly started to see the Sovereign, Intrepid and Defiant classes appear that did away with many of the Galaxy class's design flaws.
''The Galaxy class is an elegant ship, for a more civilised age'' - Obi Wan Kenobi (probably).
So basically Starfleet went from this
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Scharnhorst_(1934)
to this
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Scharnhorst
after the Borg and Dominion War.
Very good analysis. I've brought up similar in the past.
Although even after new threats emerged, the Galaxy class could more often than not hold her own and then some.
Performance against the Dominion was excellent once the advantage of being able to shoot through Federation shields was eliminated and a single Romulan Warbird does not appear to have a major advantage given that in most cases the the Romulans would use more than one Warbird against the D if they intended to stand and fight.
The Borg... well that's the Borg. Beating them conventionally is like trying to stop a hurricane with bullets.
Plus the space frames are rather adaptable. Some of the noncanon content indicates that the Galaxy class was often launched with a lot of empty space for future mission modules and within canon that we see the D report in for upgrades regularly.
As for the Defiant, Intrepid, and Sovereign. They're less accounting for weaknesses than they are fulfilling different mission profiles. The Intrepid is a long range explorer like the D, but she's also got a much lower duration with a planned mission time of three to four years.
The Defiant is a space version of a coastal defense ship. Slow warp for her era (9.5 can only be reached by putting everything into the engines and compromising other systems), minimal crew supports, only basic medical facilities, etc. The _Defiant_ herself pre-war was probably a good example of what the class was meant to do. System patrol and guard duty.
The Sovereign... well we hardly knew her. We really need more information there.
But if I were to guess, I'd say that the class was designed around new warp principles to get a faster warp speed at the cost of having as much space for future upgrades or the ability to carry as many civilians for potentially decade+ missions.
Mind if I steal 'quote'? It's pure gold.
@@redshirt0479 hey man been a while and I always saw the soverign as the combat focused version of the galaxy class
The Federation took civilians off of the ships once the Borg & Dominion showed up.
I think the Cardassian war was still going strong when the Enterprise was being constructed, let alone when it was being designed. So they'd certainly have had that in mind, though they likely wouldn't have envisioned using it on the front line. Additionally, it was a multi-purpose ship so they needed a significant amount of extra quarters and workspace even if a large majority of it wasn't in use at any given time. At times it was used to ferry large portions of a new colony's initial population, for example. And then when they'd go on major charting or research missions the overall crew might triple or quadruple, and the civilian population would likely increase as well. And, finally, we see on a number of occasions that the ship is also used as a general-purpose ferry, non-starfleet personnel booking passage along the ship's already scheduled route (the miners seen in Ten Forward in The Perfect Mate).
"Geordi LaForge living *very* alone..."
Ouch. Even thirty years later, that's a sick burn.
He was the smartest man on the ship, after all...
That’s not a sick burn. This is a sick burn.
Geordi gets less pussy then Harry Kim.
No ranking officer on the Federation flagship is going unlaid, Barclay included; it could not happen. The most fictional part of the show; an impossibility.
His name is Toby.
so gratuitous of him to say that given the nature of the video lol; poor geordi
I read once that 30% of the ship is intentionally unused volume/space to use it as buffer zones during battles, so that the ship can take a large amount of destruction and still be not seriously damaged or having loss of crew lifes…
That's in the TNG Technical Manual.
This explains why the crew was always shown walking around the corridors and only running into one or two or sometimes zero people along the way. But yeah, the Enterprise is basically a flying city in space.
With shift rotations, a good number of people are sleeping at any one time.
Don't forget about the 3 shift system. A third of the crew are asleep at any one time, a third are working so will be with Colleague in designated areas and the rest are either in ten forward or on a holodeck. The ship is a ghost town.
How come the shifts of the main characters always synchronize? We only ever see Picard, Riker, Worf and Data on the bridge together
@@Hewkll It's like how Springfield Nuclear Power Plant magically knows to not have any problems after 17:00, and wait for the 'day shift' on a weekday (not a bank holiday) before needing staffing again or having any meltdowns.
@@Hewkll You should check out Robot Chicken's "Star Trek Night Crew" Episodes 🙂
@@Hewkll because the 2nd shift and 3rd shift characters aren't main characters. With the exception of Data who seems to be on 2 shifts since he doesn't need to sleep.
@Hewkll even on factories, managers and leadership position are working on non shift schedules. The staffs are shifted schedules.
As someone who served on a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
The living areas are minimal. Sure the galley is big, but as far as sleeping areas are concerned, you have bay-berthing (think a really big hall lined top to bottom with three-high bunks and a small lounge with a TV. The bunks themselves double as lockers. You are sleeping on a glorified locker with your personal effects in it that has a mattress on top.
All enlisted.
Chiefs live the same way, but their bunks are made of fake-wood and their sleeping area has a gaudy carpet.
Junior Officers are two-to-a-room, and actually get enough room for a desk or two.
Senior officers might actually get rooms to themselves.
Admirals and Captains actually get suites, complete with a secretary who is usually a yeoman of one pay grade or another.
Yup. Whereas the Galaxy class is luxurious by comparison even to the enlisted crewmen. Im reminded of scoty's comment when he was place din "Guest" quarters. He was shocked at the size.
Yes, but even the NCC 1701 quarters consisted of fairly generous sized 2 room suites (at least for senior officers and guests, which is all we ever saw.)
They did have Bunk Bed style housing in the movies, but that was largely as a result of the creative direction spearheaded by pushing the designs into a more realistic military direction (which I actually kind of like personally).
@@timf7413 On a spaceship where you can't go above decks to get some air, your private space matters. Navy ships make routine ports of call where personnel get shore leave. Spaceships, you might get off the ship once or twice a year if you don't get an away mission. In space, space really IS the final frontier. Also, recall that in the Navy, the majority of people on board are enlisted men and women. In Star Fleet, the overwhelming majority of personnel, like 7/8 are commissioned officers with a 4 to 6 year academy education on their first assignment. So, the majority of quarters are junior officers quarters.
To be fair Star Trek has been incredibly inconsistent when it comes to the amount of enlisted personnel to officers, at times implying that they didn't exist at all and other times implying that they might make up a substantial portion of the crew. I don't think we can really make a definitive in universe statement on that account given how inconsistent the franchise has been.
"crewman" was also used as a presumably enlisted rank in TOS and it was especially implied in the TOS movies that a lot of the crew was enlisted. Voyager also had enlisted crew referenced from time to time.
As I understand it, the original conception of TNG was that there were no enlisted crew which lasted until they eventually decided to make O'Brien a non commissioned officer.
I believe the galaxy class was a primary design as mini mobile star base. It had a huge hanger bay, lots of storage and living space. Which could adapt to many different mission profiles, such as - pre plan mission profile, such as a science mission to a new planet to act like a hub, from which many different task could be done. These required long term planning and additional personal.
- reactionary mission profile, such as providing emergency assistance to a colony. These require short lead time, specialist crew, lots of cargo space and shuttles / transport
- action profile, such as a escort to a diplomatic meeting or blowing things up or getting somewhere really quickly.
In todays terms it would be if we mashed a ice breaker with a destroyer and add more helicopter pads
Indeed, from the ships profile it's like a mobile starbase. Unfortunatly the tv series wouldn't be that fascinating if we had 200 episodes for a 6 month scientific evaluation of a murloc-like pre-warp civilization, which comes up with art and philosophy in their early cultural development.
But also we find out in DS9 the federation uses a double redundancy building protocol. So you’ve effectively 3 ships worth of ship in one ship aside from the warp core.
I think it's in the Trekyards special where Andrew Probert stated that he intended for their to be about 3000 people on board, but one of the producers said "we can't afford the extras". So those empty corridors were intentional in one way.
That's so weird because I don't see why they would have to change anything if they just said it crewed 3000. It not like we ever see more than one room of people at a time onscreen.
@@JanglesPrime999 Because, as we saw in the video, the number of crewmen we see wandering the corridors is consistent with the 1000 figure.
@@KirkJacobsonHere
yea right
because the producers calculates that with the NON canon blueprints
@@a.l.e.x8118 Nobody said they did. You know most people can estimate stuff, right? Looks like someone knew what they were talking about.
@@KirkJacobsonHere They did an overlay of the Enterprise on top of the Paramount lot so they knew just how big she really was.
IIRC 1000 was the *minimum* crew compliment for a Galaxy Class. They had up to 6,000 persons on board including civilians.
In S1 E8 Justice, Data asks Picard if he will "choose 1 life over 1000", implying that the Enterprise (at least at that time) had about 1000 people on-board. There were likely many more people at times (the colonists planted earlier that episode, planet evacuees, diplomatic groups, etc), but 1000 seems to be its standard complement.
YES!!!
@@MNsLegoChannel Exactly. The Galaxy Class did a lot of ferrying people around and dealing with evacuation emergencies. It was easy to exceed her crew compliment by several times during a mission.
A TNG official guidebook stated that standard complement was 1,012 personell
1,000-6,000 (normal complement depending on assignment)
15,000 (maximum evacuation capacity)
From the way they talked about the Enterprise in the show I always got the feeling it wasn't a warship it was more a heavily armed exploration heavy cruiser that doubled as a diplomatic envoy if they met new races. Certainly a powerful warship in its own right but not nearly as powerful as it could have been if they devoted the entire hull to warship stuff. That one episode where the timeline changes and the federation is at war with the klingons shows what a militarized galaxy class can do.
sometime in ds9 riker gets a juiced-up galaxy class whose saucer is almost all gun I think
They explicitly stated lots of times that the enterprise D was a science, exploration and diplomacy vessel. It was very heavily armed exclusively for self defense, and a lot of its' firepower was due solely to its sheer size; there were many ships in starfleet that were way more heavily armed, but they just weren't anywhere near as big as the enterprise. The weapon to ship ratio is tiny on the enterprise, it's just a massive ship.
@@xXFluffers Well i always thought the "USS" stands for "Universal Space Ship"
@@user-xz3pb3dt2u USS in star trek stands for United Space Ship. Kind of an uninspired phrase, but the USS acronym is nice and fits perfectly fine.
I'm much more a fan of acronyms from stuff like Halo, where their ships are classed as UNSC, standing for United Nations Space Command, I feel like that's way more realistic to how we would do it if we got to that point.
Considering how many fatal and near fatal disasters they face, it seems insane to pack it with family members
Something they realized as well after Wolf359 and the Dominion War. The Galaxy Class was designed the way it was because it was meant to go into the void for a decade. 10 years in deep space you'll probably need daycare and school facilities eventually.
The ferengi made a similar point with Riker in the Picard Jr episode. 👶🏻
@@Vipre- not if you leave the civilians at home. From the perspective of the real Navy it just seems weird. I know she's not TECHNICALLY a ship of war, but when you have all that armament, it implies that war is one of the purposes of your vessel. Hence the Navy would never families with them.
The longest time I've been underwater (I served on submarines) is 87 days....some surface ships go for a year at sea...in neither case do we take our families. 🙂
@@neutrino78x Now imagine leaving on deployment at 23 and not returning at all or even seeing a home port until 34-35. That was the original plan for the class, big difference.
@@Vipre-
"Now imagine leaving on deployment at 23 and not returning at all or even seeing a home port until 34-35. That was the original plan for the class, big difference."
You still can't bring civilians when it's expected that you're going to be in combat situations, come on. It's a suspension of disbelief thing. 🙂
"Strange that we have more information about a fictional ship than a real one."
It's not strange at all, because the information about the real ship is highly classified for what I think are obvious reasons.
You would think it would be obvious.
@Ahri Ayumei Just because there are "spies everywhere" doesn't mean that it's pointless to try to maintain national security through the keeping of secrets.
@Red Arrow There are spies everywhere because material is classified... if information were public and easy to access spies would be unnecessary. You would think you would know that.
@@Wicked_Trojan not everyone can access spies russia an China may know the layout of the ship? Sure,, don't doubt that. But does a random crazy Jhon doe knows it? No, the point is not to keep 100% secret it's just to make it harder. Same logic as leaving your house open wide because an experienced thief would know how to bust a lock.
@Katarina Love ah the rothschild thing. Just say you hate Jewish people and leave.
Having served in the Navy, I feel the blueprint floor plans are fanciful and interesting but lack actual substance.
A ship isn't built like a skyscraper where every inch of space is utilised for the crew, large chunks are taken up with anything from plumbing, ventilation, conduits and even small stores (mundane things like paint, tools, cleaning, firefighting equipment all need their lockers spread through the ship a single fire-hose and extinguisher every deck doesn't cut it) which all take up space).
Older ships which relied on armour more than modern ships also had sizeable chunks of ship taken up with internal structure and armour.
All these things are supported by the series and films where accessing some systems required crawling through access conduits etc.
In short I suggest far more of the deck space is taken up with systems locked behind bulkheads than is available for crew to walk around.
Yeah I always felt the same about Star Trek blueprints. They don't leave any room for the actual guts of the ship and act more like they're flying buildings. We see the "jefferies tubes" with access to all of that stuff on screen but there never seems to be any room for them in the blueprints.
I think you're taking this way too seriously...it's just a fictional craft on a fictional TV show
It's a starship. Did you serve on one of those?
@@grantmullenbusinessbreakth6295 Ah yes, which makes it much simpler and require less systems...
Wait...
Magnus Anderson it’s fiction. I feel sad for you that I had to point that out.
The ship was originally launched with much of its internal volume left empty to be filled with mission specific modules as needed.
This doesn't take into account the extremely massive front to back hangar deck for shuttlecraft that the saucer section had integrated into it that many have said is there, but that the viewers never saw on-screen in the TNG series.
We saw it once, albeit briefly, in “Cause and Effect” when they depressurized it to avoid colliding with the USS Bozeman.
One thing I think you forgot, is that the 1000 standard complement you list there, is the Starfleet crew of the ship. My understanding is the Galaxy normally had a civilian occupancy of several thousand in addition to that, making up the crews family's, non Starfleet research teams, colonists, and the likes, which is why its maximum occupancy is so much higher than the crew complement comprises of. In episodes where the Galaxy class is expecting a fight, and they unload said civilians, references are made to how empty the ship feels without them.
This. I remember reading that the Enterprise-D typically had about 4000 civilians aboard.
In the TNG episode Remember Me, Picard says that there are 1014 people on board, including Dr Crusher's guest.
The total number of people is never mentioned as being above 1014, and most background sources say 1012 is the normal full complement, including civilian population. It would be nice if there were more people, as I think a crew of several thousand would fit better, but we only have what we have.
Very good point
@@MrBulshoy There is a debate of what the wording of "people on board" meant for decades. Those "people on board" may have been referring to the registered crew as crew who also brought their family as registered "steerage" in official logs. So, the actual people on board may be 3-7x the actual crew estimate... because most of those are not crew. They are steerage (passengers, civilians). Think of it from a mariner point of view.
I think I remember Troi mentioning that at least one deck in particular, while giving a tour, was intentionally incomplete (or some terminology to that intent) to give the Enterprise the ability to repurpose it as necessary. Plus, considering the saucer is practically a giant escape pod, you practically want all that extra space for the crew who would otherwise be occupying the other half of the ship and vice versa.
You also have to think about how many decs could have been breached before separation occurred. The more redundant your living space is, the less likely you'll be that most/all is destroyed
You also have to think about how many decs could have been breached before separation occurred. The more redundant your living space is, the less likely you'll be that most/all is destroyed
@@novaiscool1 You only put in redundant space for future proofing purposes, to give the ship room for new equipment, sensors, or weapons that haven't been thought of yet. You don't build in large amounts of extra space simply for redundancy, that's a waste of space. It results in the ship being larger than it absolutely needs to be and although weight isn't an issue in space, mass still is and the more mass you have the more power it takes to move that mass.So you'll want to reduce that mass as much as possible in order to make your engines have to work less.
There was a hollow deck.
@@Riceball01 That's not exactly how warp engines work though. At least not with how we're lead to believe.
I just got off the Wonder of the Seas ship with 6300 passengers and about 2000 crew. It was so incredibly cramped in every bar and restaurant and pool and activity. But room hallways were empty 90% of the time.
Btw my room was in 10 forward 😎
Couple things to keep in mind. First, one of the missions of the Galaxy Class is diplomatic missions, and they actually host large diplomatic gatherings on several occasions, including peace negotiations where you might want to keep the delegates apart.
Also, it’s a multicultural crew, including aliens who might have different life support requirements so the crew quarters decks need to have space to accommodate the equipment needed for maintaining a different atmosphere inside.
Another of it’s missions is science, which means laboratories, observatories and other scientific spaces, not all of which are in use all the time.
Some relevant excerpts from the ST:TNG Technical Manual:
Page 2: "Space allocation for mission-specific facilities: Habitable area to include 800,000 m² for mission-adaptable facilities including living quarters for mission-specific attached personnel."
P3: "- Ability to support up to 5,000 non-crew personnel for mission-related operations. - Facilities to support Class M environmental range in all individual living quarters, provisions for 10% of quarters to support Class H, K, and L environmental conditions. Additional 2% of living quarters volume to be equipped for Class N and N(2) environmental adaptation."
P6: "As the Enterprise left the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards, approximately 35% of the internal volumne was not yet filled with room modules and remained as empty spaceframe for future expansion and mission-specific applications."
P7: "The Enterprise allows for some 110 square meters of living space per person, in addition to community space and the areas allocated to purely working functions."
P152: "Each person aboard the Enterprise is assigned approximately 110 square meters of personal living quarters space. These accommodations typically include a bedroom, living/work area, and a small bathroom. Families may request that their living quarters be combined to create a single larger dwelling. Living quarters decks are designed to be modular with movable walls to permit reconfiguration for such requests as crew load and structure change. .... The Enterprise in extended mission mode includes several large areas on Decks 9, 11, 33, and 35 that are configured and maintained as living quarters, but are normally unoccupied. These areas are held in reserve to allow the Enterprise to absorb large numbers of mission specialists or other guest and attached personnel (in various short-term mission configurations, use of these quarters can increase the ship's complement to as many as 6,500 individuals). These accommodations are in addition to normal guest and VIP accommodations."
P168: "During Red Alert situations, crew and attached personnel from all three duty shifts..." Note: There are 3x 8-hour duty shifts, so at any given moment, ⅓ of the crew would be sleeping.
P176: "Capacity to support up to 15,000 evacuees with conversion of shuttlebays and cargo bays to emergency living accommodations."
Great🖖🙂
+1
That's a really interesting point that I've never considered. The internal space of a ship can be modular, with sections being created by replication and transportation. But with large unpopulated space under a hull looking like the space inside a zeppelin.
Don't forget the Cetacean and Dolphin tanks taking up a large portion of deck 13, though a single deck to house those tanks seems a bit shallow.
Sounds like a real headache to operate those sections. The series always made aquatic races out to be some ultra rare thing that barely anyone ever encounters. I know there's that one bizarre 1986 movie but were there ever any other sources that mentioned it? The idea there's intelligent dolphins in star trek sounds like the kind of fan theory a guy like Joe Rogan would come up with lol.
Initially the Enterprise D was to have a crew of 10,000 but Gene Roddenberry had to cut the number to a crew of 1,000 because they could not hire enough extras to make the 10k number believable and the CGI tech did not exist to duplicate background actors. Source "Trekyards"
Surf TrekTonics Makes sense.
Similar reason for how they came up with the idea of teleporters: They didn't have the money or tech to make believable small ships fly down into planets, so they just beamed them down and up again!
10,000? Imagine trying to get all the crew and civilians into the saucer section during Generations!
@@sel3735 It's weird. Every bit if info about it, seems to indicate the majority of the ship's population stays inside the saucer section, and that the secondary hull is more or less, just a machinery section, so only on duty engineering crew would really be there (maybe some scientists as well), but then Generations shows Geordie marshaling families out of it.
I remember reading or hearing somewhere that the “war version” couple carry a crew & 5,000 soldiers
Might have been a mirror universe episode
this actually helps me rationalize the canon of the enterprise being able to evacuate entire colonies, which I wasn't sure it could do before. now I'm pretty sure it could. also, I love the shining-esque horror element this adds to the show.
In the TNG technical manual (which was created by and used by the writers of the show, and several plot devices such as the crash landing in Generations were first introduced there) the Enterprise is stated to have entire sections of certain decks left empty for specific mission profiles that the Galaxy class would be used for periodically, such as hosting up to 5,000+ scientists or other passengers on short-term missions, or thousands more during evacuations of colonies.
It seems to me that the size of the ship may also contribute to a relatively low casualty rate. If the crew are spread out when portions of the hull are destroyed few people are caught in it. Also there's a ton of redundant space for survivor occupation.
Survivor occupation. That's a fascinating idea. Imagine a crashed saucer section on some distant planet with no way to leave or contact home. Just stranded there for 30 years. Imagine the society it would become! Would make for a cool episode!
@@LtFoodstamp That could make for a unique (for Star Trek) series premise wonder how it would be received.
I'd like it more than most series and movies they've come out with since TNG/DS9 ended.
@@LtFoodstamp USS Robinson on Gilligan's Planet?
But seriously: Fascinating idea!
Instead of enormous amounts of empty space they could use that space for more weapons and shield generators (for warships), or since most Enterprises are more science/exploration ship maybe massive sensor arrays or something. Although the idea of lots of empty rooms for evacuations, diplomatic missions and the like- maybe they can be converted from those luxurious suites the crew have to bunkbeds as packed as military ships- would make a lot of sense for a certain type of ship.
I suppose maybe if the warp engine efficiency is insensitive to how massive the ship is (although impulse engines still use rocket-style propulsion I think), but useful high tech stuff like weapons and shield generators are super expensive and thus the main limit on how many warships you can build, for a hybrid warship/mixed use ship just throwing on a bunch of mostly unused metal for survivor occupation and maybe to make it less clear to enemies where to shoot wouldn't hurt much, since making metal walls hardly costs them anything.
When the Enterprise was attacked we only ever saw the reaction of the Bridge or Engineering crew.
I wonder how parents and their children reacted when the Enterprise was being hit by alien weapons
ewaf88 yea omg I totes think this whenever I watch reruns😂 “Oh goddamnit George I dropped the meatloaf when that phaser blast hit the ship! Can’t we even have a meal in peace?!”😂 I always wondered too, when main power gets hit and goes offline, did people get pissed bc their lights went out and all their stuff quit working? What if u were in the middle of a holodeck thing?
@@deniseherud And what happened to those halfway through their constitution on the John?
I think the first and second time they get scared, the third time they get anxious, the fourth time they get annoyed, the fifth time it becomes like Earthquakes in California, the sixth time they barely notice. By the seventh time the ship is fired on they're basically playing Uno in the battle stations shelter.
They were usually moved into the saucer during a crisis. Depending on how serious the situation is, the Bridge crew were always ready to separate the saucer form the star drive.
@@WaveForceful I saw that a few times but normally when the Enterprise was being attacked there were no shipwide emergency announcements from the bridge to move to the Saucer section let alone take cover.
Typical scene post attack.
Hi dear is my supper ready?
Sorry but all the eggs ended up in the floor during the attack - I did complain to the bridge who have forwarded it on to the Romulon high command.
According to the game before it was destroyed, the Galaxy class ships usually held around 1,500 crew members and can comfortably house up to 5,000 refugees if necessary. The cargo areas are also massive. There are 2 mess halls, and also a captain lounge. A lot of space is probably taken up by ships components. And apparently the nasals are non-accessible (unlike the older models).
I'd love to see similar size-to-crew comparisons for the other Star Trek lead ships/stations and also things like the Star Destroyer from Star Wars.
"They really packed them in on these old ships" Dax from DS9 "Trials and Tribble-ations" episode.
Jadzia was the worst
@@SquirrelASMR No. Ezri was the worst.
That was the TOS Enterprise she was talking about, which was notably smaller and had a larger crew.
@@noahreson-brown8943 actually the crew was 430 on launch, a bit under half. But the ship is notably smaller in all dimensions, and has more internal space proportionaly dedicated to machinery needed to actually run the ship.
@Alex Friedman yee
probably why they went nuts with all the colorful wall to wall carpeting, to cut down on the echos
Some of the walls were carpeted as well
Also all of the walls contain high resolution screens and communications electronics. I wonder how many of the corridors peripheral electronics [ lights communication screens etc] are actually powered.
@@michaelskywalker3089 Given practical efficiency and internal sensors panels with the combination of processing being in majority handled by the computer cores its quite likely that only primary systems receive constant power and luxury systems like all the information displays are deactivated in the majority of situations such as the yellow and red alert states of the ship, or other situations where you would want your power to be focused on a particular group of systems
But given the theoretical power output of the warp reactor its also possible that they didnt care at all about such minimal power consumption and let them all stay on... If this were a dedicated warship these panels would probably not exist or have a dedicated set of functions to give them a real reason to be there. like being defensive phaser arrays to slow or stop boarding klingons or each of them being able to view or control primary systems given a hull breach could prevent reaching dedicated control stations in places such as main engineering or the two bridges
Yes! Exactly. Anti-matter/matter power systems are an entire class above nuclear fission or weak fusion reactors. They could probably run video station panels, power the lights heat and air circulation whilst blasting music in every corridor without taxing the power supply. These Galaxy class vessels remind me a lot of the engineering choices that were made on the Atlantian ancient city in Stargate Atlantis.
100 out if 1,000 members of the crew were carpet cleaners!
It also has a system of labs that get swapped out and the space they occupy reconfigured. The main shuttle bay that takes up the bulk of the back of the saucer. Machine shops industrial fabricators. The Galaxy is a fleet carrier, scientific institute, Embassy, Hospital Ship, long range explorer, warship, and a family resort (with rec and teaching facilities).
I think a lot of the reason for the galaxy class size to crew ratio is it's multi role profile. Starfleet wanted a design that could do everything.
This is one of my favorite videos on TH-cam. I'm a Star Trek fan, and I first came across this during lockdown, and I just always liked it. It's a good analysis, and very entertaining as well.
Actually it is NOT strange that we have more info for a fictional ship than a real one.
Yeah why would that be even a little strange? They make blueprints for world building where you want to give everyone lots of info. Real world ships have either classified layouts or record keeping isn't as simple as a IP's wikipedia page, you would probably be hard pressed to find layouts of war ships that haven't been used in 75-100 years
@@nick-314 Actually, the newest one I could find easily, were deck plans for the Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer. Granted, it was Flight I, the original ship(commissioned in 1991), but the upgrades were mostly in electronics, the spaces would be pretty much the same.
Why would the Navy publish the blue prints for an aircraft carrier? People forget....its a machine of war. I was stationed on the USS Eisenhower, and it is massive. from the 8th deck (bottom of the ship) to the flight deck 04. Half an aircraft squadron can be housed in the her three hangar bays, plus working, eating, berthing and office spaces. It took me six months to learn how to get around it. Think of the ship as being designed like a cork, thousands of individual spaces.
Anyway, its not strange public information isn't available, and you want it that way.
@@amars7941 don't want any commies to know where to shoot you
@Porco Rosso well let us see, first, it would be a massively idiotic idea to not exempt active military assets when the release of said information could endanger the lives of those onboard. having the plans of an active ship with 6000 people aboard publicly available would mean that people who would want to strike against the owner of that vessel would have access to information on key weak points. like, as a fictional example, a small exhaust port in the polar trench that leads directly to the reactor core of an otherwise impervious moon-sized space station.
Enterprise is like No Man's Sky, you don't see anyone in the open world only in the hub
Imagine the enterprise J which makes the D basically a bridge module
Have you seen the hypothetical Enterprise Y. It is so large that it's vertical aspect is a tiny fraction of It's horizontal aspect.
And, just like in EVE, you panic whenever you see a person in a random hallway but are fine at 10 forward (not Jita)
@@Restilia_ch And they hide in their rooms because someone is in the hallway peaking around corners. (cloacky camper)
@@SuperGamefreak18 But dash-J may have more people. We never hear a crew (or non-crew) population figure for it.
I was on the USS Carl Vincent, CVN 70. 8 can tell you that the majority of the crew don't know the entire layout of the vessel. SECRET CLEARANCES, are real and real for a reason.
The amount of firepower that can be packed onto a Galaxy Class with retrofits, the spinal lance phaser , etc . with multiple shields make it the best thing on the battlefield for a fleet. It is a mobile command center, battle station, and cover/repair/MASH unit. It would piss on the Scimitar and anything the dominion could throw if it was just utilized properly. Imagine 4 photon torpedo launchers or even add several phaser rings. Imagine firing 4 fully powered phasers simultaneously from multiple phaser fire control towers. It would be a MONSTER.
I am officially down the rabbit hole on TH-cam and I can't leave.
Hope you made it out sane.
Just click your heels together 3 times and you won't be in Kansas anymore. 🤦♂️
The aesthetic style of the 80s and 90s was perfect for sci fi. IMO
The brightly lit, colourful, fully carpeted aesthetic was extremely comfy. If real-world navy ships had a similar aesthetic, I'd join the navy tomorrow.
@@EndOfSmallSanctuary97 I feel like carpets and water don’t mix that well
It was extremely controversial of the time though. People called it the Hilton ship.
every decades design visions of the future are different and always biased at the current trends.
@@EndOfSmallSanctuary97 Navy life has lots of grease and dirt though.
Yes, the Enterprise D has more empty living quarters than crew-occupied because the ship is used to transport planetary and other-ship evacuees, as stated in at least one Next Generation episode.
Correct. In fact, 3/4 of the ship is cargo bays, shuttle bays, operational systems and empty rooms and so on that are powered down and not even accessed until needed. Think of it more like a flying conference center. The main entrance areas where day to day stuff happens and most of it is simply big spaces for thousands of people or a year's supplies to a colony or similar. That the crew rarely even goes to.
Considering the types of missions Enterprise D routinely goes on, it actually makes a ton of sense that the ship has so much (generally) empty space. They're always picking up delegations, beaming out entire colonies from some disaster, hosting interplanetary functions, etc.
The Galaxy class seems to be something of a combination of a defensive military vessel, and a diplomatic cruise ship.
BEVERLY: It's all perfectly logical to you, isn't it? The two of us roaming about the galaxy in the flagship of the Federation. No crew at all.
PICARD: We've never needed a crew before.
909sickle lol weird episode
Such a weird espisode🤣
Didn't he say like, "We've never needed anybody else before."
Operator 801 something along those lines, that’s why he didn’t use “ “ in the original comment 🤣
@@colefrick Oh, yeah, I didn't mean it as a correction. I was just wondering if I had a nonsense memory in my head about that exact scene.
Geordi's room being nearly as big as O'brien's makes sense, he's the Chief Engineer and therefore enjoys the perks of Rank. I would assume a single person who's an ensign or crewman has a smaller room.
Not that space is really an issue on the Galaxy
SPACE is generally not an issue on a starship i think 👉🏻👉🏻
Earlier ships had bunks for the lower ranks so I always kind of figured the ensigns and such had dorms or something similar.
In Lower Decks (the episode), they said holding the rank of Lt. j.g. was required to have their own private quarters, while having to share quarters as an Ensign. Presumably on the same lines, enlisted personnel would have to hold the rank of Chief before having their own private quarters as well. I'd guess civilian personnel would have their own quarters since they would be specialists recruited for very specific purposes.
Engineers need woek space as well were a grave digger doesnt
@@needaman66 they have workshops for that, we are talking private quarters here. While some may at times choose do part of their jobs or thinking on it even at home and use the existing computer there for these, it is not mandatory.
Dude I want a detailed brake down of what each floor does, weapon capabilities, shields, speed, and a visual display of all! That would be kick ass!
In the mid 70's they published the Star Fleet Technical Manual for the original Star Trek Enterprise. It is VERY detailed and COOL AS SH*T!
I'm surprised they haven't released the same thing for the TNG Enterprise.
The Enterprise D is also the flagship of Starfleet. Which is a military organization. It is a diplomatic ship, a science ship and on the most powerful military ships in the entire fleet.
It's could be that grandiose for various diplomatic reasons.
Most single purpose ships are much smaller, sized to fit it's role. The Enterprise's role is being a big shining example of Starfleet, so being oversized can have multiple sociological reasons more than other reasons.
But there are also military benefits of having so much space. Every system has more space, it's beam emitters have more potential charge time for more potential damage, or more shots at a quicker pace. It would have more space for munitions like torpedos.
All of it's arrays and emitters need more space to cover a larger ship, but they also have drastically more volume in the ship to put them.
There are literally dozens of examples of having a massive mostly empty ship can convey across and aspect of a flagship.
In fact the weirdest thing about the Enterprise is that it never has an escort.
Less Space Apartment, and more Space Mansion.
That’s a good way to say it
With torpedoes!
And the NX-01 is a storage cupboard.
Knowing what we know now, there would be zero living beings on an exploration/combat vessel.
More like the TNG crew enjoyed comfy large apartments vs TOS who had cabins that where more akin to a submarine bunk which they had to share with roommates.
This Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quote also comes to mind:
“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
I love that part. This is why I'm 99.9% sure there is intelligent life out there and also 99.9% sure they are not visiting us.
@@jayhom5385 i'm 100% possitive there is more intelligent life then us here in our own galaxy, statistically it's genuinely impossible for us to be alone, if even just 1% of all the planets in our galaxy alone had life, and 1% of those planets in turn had intelligent life on them, this would mean there is many millions upon millions of developed alien civilizations out there. people often *seriously* underestimate just how big galaxies is, how many stares there is and how many planets there is in one single galaxy, and there is more galaxies in the known universe then there is grains of sand on earth.
hell, our very own solar system is so big that aliens could with ease hide a armada of several hundred thousand ships somewhere.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
There is a reason they call space "space".
@@theldraspneumonoultramicro405 I'm pretty sure that there are aliens out there in the galaxy, in fact, it's more probable than the opposite. However, who's to say that they're more advanced than we are? If we can't go visit the aliens, they can't come to us either.
Tasha did say in "Yesterday's Enterprise" that the Enterprise-D could transport over six thousand troops.
After all this time i remembered this video and i had to come back to it because of the final episode of Picard where they maneuver this huge beast like a merely starfighter and used it in a Millenium Falcon-Deathstar sequence. oO
I don’t find it strange in the slightest that detailed plans of an active warship are not available, in fact I’d be worried if they were.
@@charlesbaldo the guy said something about classified floorplans for a Warship. Calm down. Lol.
Charles B triggered snowflake alert.
@@charlesbaldo what did that trigger you? To be so easily offended by a picture and a username is.... Unfortunate.
@@charlesbaldo I get that you're anti Trump. Is whining about a username and avatar really worth your time and effort? It accomplishes nothing except needless contention.
@@charlesbaldo wot m8? idk if an avatar should annoy you that much tbh, I mean you can always ignore it? Especially when talking about something completely different.
Just compare it to high rises and cities. The hallways are usually empty, the flats people live in are (mostly) empty during the day, work places are mostly empty during the night, entertainment areas are usually empty during the day, storage area is nearly void of humans, etc.
If you consider that 3% are currently used for crew quarters, the ship can hold 6 times the crew, that's 18%. If you add in work space, entertainment space, storage space and travel space with about the same amounts, you're left with 10% to fill the gaps.
Navy ships run four six hour shifts. Duty stations must be manned at all times. I have to assume Starfleet does the same. So Kirks Enterprise with a crew of 440 only had 110 on duty at any given time.
@@davemorello6017 Navy ships are for battle and don't have any unnecessary stations like research labs, kindergardens, psychotherapists, etc. though.
@@davemorello6017 Those 4 shifts are not separate people, they're two shifts that run on-off-on-off. But you still make a good point.
@@elricdotah another good point, but one must assume that the stations concerned with ship operations (navigation, engines/engineering, bridge, etc) would be manned 24/7 and the other non-critical systems (labs and the like) would have normal "9-5" type hours.
A perfect episode for TNG would be the discovery of an entire tribe of 'primitive' aliens that had been living on the Enterprise for a few years already.
I like when they save baby yoda and how hand solo drives the thing with the hairy guy.
The show does explain that this ship was designed to house refugees leaving a planet. So it has to be quite empty to do this.
Remember the episode with the aliens that wanted to "remove" the human infestation on their planet, Picard and Data came up with a logical number of trips to another Class M planet to actually achieve this migration. To migrate a WHOLE PLANET!
Yeah, the Enterprise D is big! 😆
The Sheliac corporate! S03 ep02!
Perhaps you could think of this ship as a “city in space.” Just as most cities in the western world have a density of about 55 people per mile, so a ship that people live in would have to be spacious enough to provide the same kind of feel. This is not an airliner with seats, this is a community.
Meanwhile, the Enterprise-J's purported to have a complement of 1 million people, and equipped with parks, a freeway, and university, with a total length of ~2 miles.
55 people per square mile is almost rural. Cleveland has a population density of 5,107 people per square mile. So you're off by a few orders of magnitude there.
Paul Frederick Right?! (Maybe they meant 55 people per linear mile? 55x55=3025, which is much closer to reality.)
@@tookitogo I've never heard of linear mile population stats. But maybe?
More like a village in space.
I'd like to see a Start Trek show about the life of a family on the Enterprise D who carry on normal family life, sort of like a Situation Comedy. You see life-or-death adventures going on in the background that they barely acknowledge because for them the Enterprise is just where they live.
Holy moly! I have been looking for this video for about a year! I saw this video about two years ago and loved it. I always think about this video and how we will eventually make it out to space. I always think about how they would live on a ship and how much room they would have. I also think, could I do a lifetime on a shop like that.
I love to think about the example where they show the space between each person on the ship. This video is so thought provoking!
Yes, I am so happy!
"Geordi LaForge, living VERY alone"
Rub it in, why don't you?
Flashbacks of the bitchy engineer who designed the engines.
You only assembled 990 people on the saucer section.
Did you think nobody would count?
And from what I read, the ship carries anywhere from 1,000 to 6,000 people.
@@Potandthekettle
Which isn't what he was referring to...
@@atticstattic My point is that he took the least amount of people possible and then made it seem like the standard when in reality the number of people on the ship can vary up to 5 times as much and fluctuates. Then on top of it he only put 900 lol
@@Potandthekettle
Which again, had nothing to do with Scott Stanley's comment...
@@atticstattic so you're trolling. Got it.
It's cool when the saucer section separates but when Voyager ejects the warp core is even cooler 😉
Also think about all the space that you need for off duty activities when you spend your life inside a ship (sport and recreation facilities take a lot of room) Plus storage for all the crew needs (think about how much space you would need for food and water for a whole year and then multiply that by the crew and civilians aboard the ship) and other supplies for maintenance etc.
That's what I was thinking. If they still use money or something similar, there could be shops, restaurants, bars etc. Like they have on cruise ships. There would likely be areas that are done up like an outdoor park, with loads of plants and artificial sky, too.
According to those plans, the Enterprise is 50% hallways.
According to the episodes, I would have guessed higher
@@shinobi-no-bueno it's not all the same corridor but from different angles?
This is why if I'm ever in charge of a star Trek series, I'm getting a blocked out 3d model of the ship internals made before we start making sets and filming.
@Maintenance Renegade The turbo-lifts in star trek (why they can't just call them "lifts" like normal people is beyond me) always seem to be able to translate fore and aft to get from the bridge (top centre of the saucer section) to engineering (in the middle of the secondary hull), about 300m behind the bridge.
@Maintenance Renegade That's awesome. Designing game maps (both in pen-and-paper RPGs and computer games) functionality first is super important for immersion. Wish I'd had the chance to play in your games!
@@sergarlantyrell7847 heh, I'd use that excuse too and then live there
In the TNG episode "Lower Decks" one of the ensigns complains that he has to share quarters with another ensign, and if he gets promoted to lieutenant, he will get his own quarters.
So maybe the policy is that lower decks crew are distributed relatively close together for productivity (improve cooperation and communication)... Although, you do make a valid point.
@Axemantitan,I think it is standard Starfleet policy that ensign rank share crew quarters be it starship or starbase. I also remember reading some where that crew quarters come standard, specialized( for alien crew or guests) and custom Deanna Troi has a bathtub and not the standard sonic shower, most families with small children would have the same thing, When a small children are out of the bath stage they get different quarters and the old ones are changed back to standard quarters. My guess is crew quarters on Galaxy Class could be made any way the person wanted, say you had a Lt. Commander that was a minimalist room for a bed small work space, but he or she just love a huge bathroom, Tub and shower things like that, as long as those things were approved by the powers that be it would done
... this is exactly the kind of Canon evidence that proves there are not huge cavernous empty decks all over the ship.
Nope they just love making their ensigns suffer for no apparent reason..good discipline..only to have commander riker breathing down your neck in 10 forward
Those ensigns are stationed on the aforementioned lower decks, specifically in the engineering section of the ship, where things aren't quite as spacious and pretty much all of the ship's engines, weaponry, sensor equipment, etc. are housed. It's expected that things would be a bit more cramped there. Sure, they could just as easily house those crewmembers in the saucer section, but it makes sense to want the rank-and-file engineering staff close to their job site, because you never know when a red alert is going to be sounded, the turbolifts are going to be out and/or you have to perform an emergency saucer-separation at a moment's notice.
There are also many spare berthing and accommodation spaces. The ship is meant to host many large groups. Great video
Remember this is GALAXY class ship diplomatic and science research vessel. It was never intended for the abuse picard and riker put it through!
Nerds... Star Trek... Math...
Yeah, I have found my people :-)
I find it comforting that someone has taken the trouble to calculate the size of the ship, indicate how little of the ship would be taken up by the crew, work out the size of their quarters, and do a comparison with modern day warships.Oh, and the comforting part, ...I am not the only weirdo in town !
Live long, and prosper. \\//_
I skip most Star Trek content on youtube because it just isn't nerdy enough. This, however, is proper :)
EDIT: and as I'm reading through the comments, the commentators are proper as well!
🖖🖖🖖🖖
And I have found where all the nerds I beat up hang out.....
Well size that large would be quite useful in cases such as:
Mass evacuations from a planet, station, or another ship; Compartmentalization of decks incase of a hull breach; Large storage areas for non-replicable (or difficult to do so) supplies, spare components, and fuel; comfortable space for larger than average life-forms; areas far enough away from people or critical sections of the ship for more dangerous experiments; etc.
Seemed that every time they evacuated mass people they just stuffed them in the cargo bay or shuttle bay. I know they did that one extremely dangerous transportation and simply constructed a force field around the container in the cargo bay.
Ahh yes, you would definitely need all the extra cargo space to carry the replacement explode-y panels located all through the ship
@@dweez05 also storage lockers for the foam rocks that fly out from behind wall and ceiling panels whenever the ship takes a hit in battle
"George La Forge, living *very* alone..."
Geez man, you don't have to be that savage.
Dude, that was an AWESOME video!
I started it and all of a sudden it was over.
"That was 8 minutes?! Noooooo. I want to hear more!!!"
^That's a huge compliment.^
Holodeck for fun, no kitchen needed for cooking and cleaning, I could be very happy with 345 sq ft.
Wouldn't we all?
Yep, add the other automations like cleaning and such and you probably have more useful areas than a current flat with twice or trice the size.
Effectively the ship is part of a 'social experiment' where fleet members, family and civilians can live without want or need for anything and can effectively maximize their productivity or conversely create opportunities for decadence.
Sixteen holodecks to share with over 1,000 others... You'd probably have a bear of a time trying to get time in one.
@@theindooroutdoorsman Well, 1000/16=62,5, so if everyone wants one hour sessions for single user, it is every two and a half day, or daily 20 minutes, if we add multiple users, which only limited by the emptiness of the ship, we could easily get hour per day with friends, and that is only for the full walk around version, personal holoVR headsets are probably at everyones desk.
As far as living quarters - the Enterprise-D had a significant amount of available quarters. Some quarters were designated as "special accomodation" for aliens who needed special atmospheres, gravity settings, etc. and not available for general use. A large number were also near sickbay and able to be converted to medical use, and were generally kept unoccupied unless they needed them.
Hmp! Wife said something about , "Special accommodation".
@@jthepickle7 the ship had several aquariums.
Jeffery that sounds made up
I once spent a week on that ship. It was spacious but, not overly so. A nice balance.
Guys, it's the flagship of the Federation. It's supposed to be enormous and extravagant, both as a symbol of power projection, and as a means of providing the wide array of capabilities and roles that we see the Enterprise D play in the show.
It's a science/exploration/diplomatic/tactical ship. It's literally two ships that can separate and operate independent of each other.
Basically, it's a giant war ship with a giant non-military module attached to it.
I realized how insanely huge the Ent-D was last year, exploring its decks on the Minetrek server in Minecraft. The team there has been building ships for 10 years, and they're on their 3rd iteration of the D now, which is built roughly 1:1 (slightly larger, due to the 1-meter block size - actual size is really hard to implement - 2 blocks = too short hallways, 3 blocks = too tall, but fudging the scale a few percentage points makes it work out). It's complete, with turbolifts and Jefferies tubes connecting pretty much everything.
They had to invent a ton to fill in the decks, so there are large theaters, tons of astrometrics rooms of varying sizes, security and medical bays all over, lots of escape pods that map to the escape pods on the outside of the hull, gardens, and the massive main shuttle bay, never seen on the show, because it fills much of the deck, and has dozens of shuttlecraft, and worker bees (like forklifts of varying sizes, some huge), and spans 3 decks in height, with 3 huge structures like office buildings (full of offices) that each take a while to explore.
The huge, in-floor, shuttlecraft elevators by the exit descend into another huge, multi-story deck, full of more shuttlecraft, and a really clever, pod-based design on many, where the payload area can be swapped out, with a long line of example pods on display. They have the dolphin tanks and observation decks around them under the front, as described in the original plans. The captain's shuttle is very roomy. There's a 5-story, massive room, with outdoor restaurants, bridges, walkways, a whole, indoor forest, with waterfall(s?), a cave bar, and the whole thing reminds me of the lobby in the Grand Old Opry hotel (look it up - it's gorgeous).
I've spent so many hours wandering now and then over the last year, and really haven't made it much past the upper decks. Everything is so much larger. Beverly's office exists, but that deck is loaded with sprawling medical areas that amount to a floor or two of a large hospital. There aren't just a few holodecks, but like 1-2 dozen, and some are like warehouses in size. There isn't just an aeroponics bay, but a huge section with parts spanning a few decks in height, full of towers of plants, and catwalks.
There are huge elevators that go through the decks, to bring things from the main shuttle bay, and the huge cargo sections below the saucer up to all the other floors. The computer cores are huge, and go through a lot of floors. I've barely visited the stardrive section, but main engineering as seen on the show is just a little blip in a sea of engineering areas.
The nacelles have stairways, catwalks, offices (probably for repair crews), etc., in their bases, because they're enormous inside. You can walk (or take a turbolift tunnel) from the main areas up to the nacelles. A few hours of wandering just a tiny little nothing section of the ship, constantly getting completely lost, I said "This is not the ship from the show."
The show presented such a cozy place, with one sick bay, a few holodecks, a few crew quarters, 2 small shuttle bays, and a few other small rooms. The actual ship is thousands of times what we saw. They would sometimes work out in that little gym on the show. There are a few dozen courts all laid out for various sports in one large area of one of the decks, which is still a tiny little part of that deck.
There are surprises all over the place, like huge, multifloor restaurants, and we saw 10-Forward, but there's a -Forward for every deck, and then dozens more little lounges like that dotting the outer ring of decks all over the place. You realize it wasn't just everyone in 10-Forward, but hundreds and hundreds of people (potentially) in dozens of these little lounges all over the ship, and they don't even take up any space - they're like little breadcrumbs around the edges.
The funny thing is the Enterprise-D can house far more stuff than what is even shown on the Deep Space 9 station.
I actually am confused, as the nacelles are distinct from the main ship due to the antimatter reaction, so it would be unhealthy for ANYBODY to be near them, what documentations are you guys using for creating offices in those areas? Good work on the whole project though.
I like the idea of creating stuff for the hell of it, but if you guys want to draw on the enterprise-d, you need to use some form of "techno-babble" for your reasons for doing so. Anything else will just end up as the klingon language and just be bad for the series, which is the foundation (pun intended).
As it is I really like that ANYONE would actually count out how much space anyone on enterprise-d has, and as a sailor I am envious (of all that space).
On top of all that, I think people forgets the humble replicator. Anything can be changed at any time :).
Thanks to Star Trek for fanning our dreams.
I would really liked to have read the interesting information you took the time and effort to provide but without paragraphs it is just impossible for my old eyes to read. I do appreciate your intentions though.
@@josephking6515 Okay, I broke it up for you. Hope that helps!
This is where I'm reminded of Space Engineers, and how they recently introduced the MAC cannon. You need a _lot_ of redundant space for ship battles, space debris, and temporal anomalies. Heh. The Enterprise-D was one of the first things people made in Minecraft Classic, back when the world was a small 256x64x256 box. Let's see, there was an Enterprise for each world height limit, wasn't there? 64, 128, 256...384 (2056)...Iteration IV inbound.
Makes you wonder, though. Most of the work was done by the computer.
I always thought that the 1000+ ship's compliment was just the crew members. That it did not include any civilians.
Exactly. While the ship can RUN on a crew of a few hundred, maybe even be run for short term events by a single person who can order the computer to run things, it's designed for 1,000 or so _active crew._ Well, "active" as in "actively serving;" a given shift is probably closer to 300-400 crewmen. The civilians living with starfleet officers would not count as part of the 1000 crew; they'd make it more crowded without occupying more quarters. Civilians (e.g. Guinan, Mott) who are living in their own quarters actually use up MORE quarters, not less. And, yes, the ship is designed to house up to 6,000 people in reasonable comfort (though it probably involves every set of quarters not belonging to the highest-ranking command staff having at least two, maybe 3-5 occupants), and even more if you really cram people in and don't need to worry about long-term facilities to care for them.
It explicitly includes civilians
Great research, great editting!
It's been said during some of the episodes, specifically the ones dealing with lesser-known crew members, some crewmates share quarters with one another, rather than with family.