A little short for a starship, isn’t he?
I know we only ever see a handful of rooms, that’s fine, but with over 100 crew they always all have personal quarters that are probably the square footage of 3/4’ish containers.
150m in diameter is one way to think about it. But then it’s also 8 containers long, or 25 containers circumference at the largest point down to no more than a few in circumference at the bridge.
You know, that seems tiny, it’s like there’s no volume left for the hardware that needs to be between every room and all over the hull
More context, Empire State Building is 380m without the spire, 443m with spire and antenna.
I grew up near the coast, so this actually helped me conceptualize the size of the starship more XD
This made me realise you could probably fit an entire small town including all it’s drama on a container ship.
Should’ve done that with Flint
Flnt is NOT a small town
How many people can stand in one container?
1 TEU ≈ 13.6m², so 27 @ ~0.5m² per person to not be too dense?
The Ever Given has a 20,124 TEU capacity, so that’s 543,348 people. With fewer people you get more space, including space for food stocks, sleeping quarters, kitchen area, etc.
Star Trek: Evergreen
Stuck sideways in a hyperplane!
I used to work at a port and would see those ships out at sea. They look like they are just offshore.
Then you see the fishing boats go out and all but disappear against the massive backdrop. You realize they’re many many miles out.
Per kilogram-meter of cargo transported, container ships actually have some of the lowest emissions of any form of transportation!*
Other than electric vehicles that were charged by zero-emission sources of electricity
I’d wager that just accounting for emissions in the production of said electric vehicle will make it entirely unable to compete with container ships. Boats are crazy efficient.
What kind of emissions are we producing to build the ships?
How long are the cargo ships gonna be in service compared to that smartphone of an electric car?
Most of its steel and other metals, so assuming that theyre using electrically pwered smelters most of the emmissions would be in transport and mining equiptment. So probably somewhat comparable, depends on how much rail was used or if it was transportes exclusively via semi.
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Im aware, I was giving a best possible circumstances type situation. Still the steel for both is probably sourced from the same factory.
And all steel is made using coal regardless of where it’s produced, except in experimental processes like HYBRIT.
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Good point, I wasn’t considering production.
But don’t worry. The cargo ship sprang into being from nothingness and there were utterly no environmental impacts related to drilling, refining, and transportation of the fuel used to power the ship. So clearly EVs are so much worse for the environment /s
What’s the Enterprise-E look like in comparison?
Enterprise-E is 685ish meters if I remember correctly (previously my favorite Enterprise/Starship). So its not that much longer than the cargo ship.
Yeah I’m not seeing how there’s several dozen people moving, working, and living in that.
If we check this image, use the 947’ total size, we can estimate the rest of the dimensions. That would put the deck heigh at about 8’. The saucer widest deck lengths at around 450’. Definitely cramped but doable. There’s only about 100-150 crew on this version as well. It’s essentially a weirdly shaped cruise ship and nearly the size of our world’s largest.
This one goes in detail. They’re are a few floors that are just sleeping quarters.
I thought in NG 1000 people lived on it?
In Strange New Worlds everyone above Ensign apparently has their own studio apartment.
Speaking of which, something funny I noticed about Discovery recently is that Burnham and Tilly continue to be roommates even after
spoiler
Burnham gets her commander rank reinstated
. What’s up with that?
Who wouldn’t want to room with Tilly though?
Me, but for all the wrong reasons
In TNG and Voyager they all did.
They sleep in hallways…
Maybe if they narrowed that hallway a little, they could all have their own quarters.
AS much as I enjoy some aspects of Lower Decks, that was one of the most phenomenally stupid decisions that they could possibly have made.
The crew sizes for Federation starships are TINY compared to the actual size of the ships. SNW giving every crew member their own studio apartment is something that reflects the ludicrous amount of empty space that a Federation starship has availalbe to it.
If you ever look at the deck plans, there’s just a crazy amount of space that’s unused.
That’s a different class sof ship, though. It’s also pretty weird knowing how huge these ships are, but I’m pretty sure the writers just wanted to get the “shitty dorm” atmosphere down.
I don’t know what the hell they’re doing with all that space, but 300 people on a ship the size of a California class is definitely not “sleeping in bunk bed in the hallways” crowded.
I don’t know what the hell they’re doing with all that space
After watching discovery I assume it’s all turbolift shafts.
The amount of empty space in Discovery was just weird.
Don’t forget the Jeffreys tubes
You’d be stacking people on one another for sure. However the tight quarters then gives creedence to stuff like Cerritos and Voyager not having thick enough walls/doors to dampen sound. Then Enterprise-D is a whole different beast and it makes no sense for the opposite reason. It’s too damn big with not enough crew. You’d have people working in their own section never meeting another soul during their whole day.
But that brings me to something else (because I have severely unmedicated ADHD and I apologize). Picard Season 3 got rapped for having the Titans bridge be really dark all the time. The lighting of the whole ship was way darker. Surprisingly I actually liked that. It felt like they were on a submarine or some small contained vessel, just then against the harshness of what was outside. That submarine quality really should be used in more shows. I know TOS had random people walking around the corridors (like the famous example of a dude who was turning an invisible valve on a wall) but I like those tight spaces.
Oh and to prove the ADHD? The Crossfield class is 900m long. Roughly. I mean she’s 2/3rds nacelle but still.
This video has a rendering of the Enterprise D’s crew standing in a group on top of the saucer section, to give an intuitive understanding of how ridiculously huge the ship is in comparison.
That was a fascinating video!
Here’s some more perspective. The aircraft carrier pictured apparently carries almost 2000 people.
That’s not even a big carrier either. American supercarriers between the flight crews, the ship crews, the marine contingent and everything else can fit up to SIX THOUSAND people.
There’s no need for anyone on the Cerritos to sleep in the fucking hallways. That’s like “we live on a literal submarine” level of privacy. It’s beyond idiotic. The Cali class are MASSIVE. There’s no need for anyone to be living in the hallways like that.
Yup, I always assumed it was for comedic effect.
The problem is that they want to eat their cake and have it to when it comes to being a comedic show that parodies Trek, but also a serious part of the Trek canon.
Sometimes it works, like with the SNW crossover episode, or the ludicrous gambit to clear the captain’s name when she’s being framed for blowing up Planet Packled. Other times, like with the stupid koala or the people sleeping in the corridors it goes beyond what makes sense in-universe and becomes stupid for an out-of-universe joke.
It might seem like that at first glance, but every Star Trek show has had episodes more absurd than even the silliest Lower Decks one.
Yep, the Enterprise has about the volume of an aircraft carrier, but only a fraction of the crew. By modern standards it is downright roomy.
And it also isn’t carrying 100 fighter planes.
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Voyager was carrying infinite shuttles, so it’s not that out there
Prodigy also showed us that they can replicate a new shuttle in like 30 seconds.
The only canon animated shows are Lower Decks and the original Animated Series.
About that…
Yeah, we were talking about the Connie. Galaxy class is like 20x the volume of a CVN.
Speaking of submarines, SNW s1e4 Memento Mori does a great job with the “flying blind” trope. They even use the “depth charge” trick.
You even get to hear sonar pings. It was amazing as a submarine movie fan.
Picard Season 3 got rapped for having the Titans bridge be really dark all the time.
Have these people not seen The Motion Picture? The bridge was so dark in that movie, it doesn’t even seem like they’re on the Enterprise. At least the Titan is a different ship, AND you still get to see the Enterprise with its bright lighting in the same show.
The largest container ships in the world can carry about 24000 twenty foot shipping containers. People actually rent container apartments that take up about two of those (and those have their own showers), giving you about 30m² or 322ft². That’s 12000 people who can live individually on a container ship. Add a duplicate of their home space for office workspace, and you’ve got 6000 people living there.
Of course you need corridors between those containers, so take off 10ft for every two containers, reducing the capacity to about 4500 people + offices. Subtract a holodeck here and there, and you can easily house 3000 people on that ship.
These things are like floating cities. Their scale is nearly impossible to comprehend if you haven’t seen one up close. Fitting a few hundred people in really isn’t going to be your biggest issue, especially if you have hallway sleeping like Lower Decks shows or bunk beds/shared bedrooms and showers like other shows have.
The Gerald R. Ford is smaller than the container ship depicted here, but houses 4300 people. I wouldn’t be surprised if oxygen supply were a bigger issue than floor space when it comes to cramming in a thousand people into the Enterprise.
Oxygen is an issue, but heat generation is also an issue.
Actually the thing they often get wrong in depictions of life support failure is that the ship would get too hot. The vacuum of space insulates the ship.
But people mainly occupy the saucer portion right? Like they don’t live in the engines.
Looking at OPs pic, that saucer is very small compared to the container ship.
A container ship’s crew is 20-30 people, and that whole thing is mostly containers. I bet they’d fit.
Oh you.
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I remember many years ago seeing a size comparison between an aircraft carrier and the TOS Enterprise. The aircraft carrier was bigger. I didn’t even know how to process that because of how big the Enterprise seemed to me.
305m is 1000 feet. The USS ENTERPRISE was 342m or 1,123 feet.
A modern day FORD class carrier is 1092 ft or 333m.
For personnel comparison, ENTERPRISE held ~5000 people and a FORD class has between 4-5000 people.
The fact that NCC-1701 only had like 1000 people is…a big difference.
I can understand that on a mathematical level, but on a more emotional one, it’s hard to process. Just like I know that the speed of light is 186,000 mps, but I can’t really fathom how fast that actually is.
Well the speed of light is actually faster than you can reasonably comprehend… you can’t see or experience the travel time of something going that fast. 300m is not unreasonable to understand once you’ve experienced it though - that’s a big boat, but you can see one and get a sense of the scale.
I think the scientific term is “very”.
It’s actually “most”
Honestly thought it was way bigger than this.
the Enterprise “D” (632.5m long) held 1000 people IIRC. crazy!
Even crazier, the Galaxy-class has the capacity to evacuate an additional 10,000+ humanoids.
When you watch videos like this, you realize that 1,000 is not that much against the actual size of the ship. The entire crew can comfortably gather in the main shuttlebay at the same time.
Uhm what are you guys talking about?? I don’t quite understand…
That’s what she said.
Going by the caption, it’s the container ship they had a hard time visualizing. Seems weird because I’ve seen container ships IRL but never a starship.
I’ve never seen either. I’ll have to convert this to “cruise ship”
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Ok… the one I am familiar with is Disney Wonder at 294m long
Disney Cruise line is the best! That was the first thing I thought of to compare this to.
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Container ships are fucking massive. The Enterprise only held like 1000 people which is only a small portion of a basketball arena.
Well damn, how tiny was Voyager? It only had like 1-200 people IIRC.
Voyager is just a hair longer than the classic Enterprise, but it’s also chonkier so it has more volume. About 150 people on an Intrepid-class, 200 on a Constitution-class.
The original ship was also packed. Many many packed bunks and crowded halls. Even as noted in DS9 time travel to TOS episode
The ship itself felt huge to me, but even Kirk’s quarters were pretty modest.
This Is the 1701, Kirk’s. It only had 430 people on it.
