The Enterprise-D Size Question: was the TNG Enterprise too big?

The original starship Enterprise was big. The Enterprise of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' was bigger. But, was it too big? In this video, we consider the Enterprise-D's dimensions and why they might be a problem in relation to her design features.
Images from Pixabay: Andreas Glöckner; Petra Hegenbart; David Mark; Yezro.
Music: ‘Zodiac Structures’, by NoMBe (KZbin Music Library); ‘To Pass Time’, by Godmode (KZbin Music Library).
#startrekthenextgeneration #culture #starshipenterprise

[@MTLMedia]

I think a large part of the issue is that people forget that TNG was meant to showcase progression from TOS. Roddenberry wanted his own version of progress for Star Trek, moving away from militarized views of TMP era movies (that he personally opposed). This meant a ship that was larger , not just larger than the TOS/TMP Enterprise but also the Excelsior. The ship was not just meant to be more powerful than those ships, but also a lot more comfortable and secure. If the Star Trek universe was a post-scarcity utopia - then its flagship should reflect that. Officers had their families with them, activities and what we consider luxuries would be normal to all of them. This isn't a flaw, its part of the aspirational aspect of this future vision. The vision was so different that Captains had councelors on the bridge, to help them think emotionally and empathically.. not just tactically. This was Gene's vision, however inconsistent it may seem. However when Gene asked what the crew compliment of the new enterprise was going to be according to the designer, they stated it was around 5k.. but Gene then insisted they should say it was somewhere around 1.2k , because they could never fund the number extras needed to convey the 5k number. From this much backwards justification came into place. (Additional rooms for guests, diplomatic missions, crew could now have their own individual rooms and not the barracks seen in TMP.. ). From an in universe perspective the Galaxy class was meant to be an awe inspiring sight, demonstrating the acheivements of the federation.. the ship itself was a massive flex. In TNG you never get a sense that it was all too common, most of the ships we see are infact still from the TMP era.. aside from the few Nebulas. It's not until DS9 that because of their wartime storyline, that we see huge number of Galaxies, used as battleships or command ships. But that was never the idea behind the creation of the Enterprise and its class. This is why things seem inconsistent at times, TNG and later Trek would be different animals.. and no amount of in universe explanations will ever explain the choices made by producers with different views of the franchise. Still happens to this day, with the latest trek.

[@theodoremccarthy4438]

I always had the impression that the Galaxy class was an effort to begin moving the Federation towards being a fully space based civilization. Its was more of a flying colony than simply a space craft, which is why the presence of civilians made sense.

[@3mpt7]

Encounter at Farpoint made it very clear: that saucer section? Entirely civilians. The Enterprise does not in fact, need it for any reason at all. Any time it's using its forward phaser arrays? It's holding back and providing a soft touch. So perhaps this video ought to be examining the Enterprise as it is without the saucer section.

[@MATTY110981]

I remember seeing a clip of fan 3D recreation of the interior of the Enterprise D. It’s in a first person perspective and starts off in Shuttle Bay 1 before making its way to the bridge. While on the a small part of the Enterprise D had been completed it showed how huge the ship really was that the TV series never really did. Unfortunately Paramount got their lawyers involved and shutdown the project

[@kronos6948]

It was actually a game called Stage 9. It was playable as VR as well as first person perspective. It was shut down due to Paramount making their own video game based on the Kelvin timeline. I still have a copy on my computer. It was the final playable version (still incomplete) that was released around Christmas time, so all of the NPC's have Santa hats on.

[@compu85]

@@kronos6948you're lucky. I had read about it, seen a video, and thought "oh cool I'll download that tomorrow!" Well, tomorrow was too late..

[@cmj0929]

@@compu85I have a copy if you want it recently found it a few months ago after looking for years like you, it’s absolutely incredible to say the least, they literally have areas in the simulation that weren’t even on the show

[@numberyellow]

I have the latest version archived. CBS may have shut them down, but they can't take away our archives. Stage 9 was truly brilliant. I really wish MDI had gotten to finish it. Also, the C&D order was because of the Galaxy-Class DLC for bridge commander.. It was actually cited, when MDI tried to negotiate with CBS, to keep the project alive.

[@ludbud57]

@@compu85You can easily find copies of the game available online still. Something to note is that the developers have all gone to some really cool projects - starship simulator and the Roddenberry archive. I recommend checking them out!

[@mikedicenso2778]

The main shuttle bay was first shown in "The Best of Both Worlds" when Worf and Data leave the separated saucer in a shuttlecraft to rescue Captain Picard from the Borg cube. The second time was in "Cause and Effect" which showed the main bay in great detail looking from outside looking in since the bay doors are opened to release the air inside it, and move the Enterprise out of the way of the USS Bozeman.

[@MatthewCaunsfield]

I think TNG missed a trick when depicting the massive inner size of the Enterprise-D. All it would have taken was a few stock shots of suitably futuristic interior spaces to depict the malls, public spaces, theatres etc, similar to what was done in Voyager to depict the Ocampan city. Then splice those shots into the episodes alongside the smaller, more budget friendly sets. That way "ten forward" can be just a small section of a larger recreation area, instead of a modest lounge on a massive ship.

[@radioflyer68911]

I guess the stage where the Promenade stood for DSN wasn't available at the time.

[@avenuePad]

​@@radioflyer68911The DS9 promenade really was fantastic.

[@mallios13]

It's funny how I've long heard of the Ent-D being described as "city sized." But these comparisons definitely showcase that it would be closer to a village ship. Ultimately, the answer is: The Ent-D was too big compared to the sets we had.

[@enermaxstephens1051]

Depends on the size of the city. A large city, no. Medium or smaller, yes.

[@kasterborous1701]

The Enterprise-D is 2,108 feet long, according to Probert's own design drawings. They were supposed to use the Captain's Yacht in "Samaritan Snare", but it was outside the episode's budget. The main shuttlebay was used in "Cause and Effect" (and visible as a model shot), and it was also used in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" (it's where Worf and Data launch their rescue mission from, and we see its wall move past the shuttle window as it takes flight).

[@eramires]

The masterpiece ship for me is the Sovereign, feels bad that we didn't get to see her in full detail 😞 She deserved a show just for her.

[@jaybodner4189]

My absolute favorite is the Excelsior Class!! 😃

[@entropy11]

Unrelated, I think the original enterprise was actually a little too small to be capable of everything it was shown to do. I'm going to put out a dangerous opinion here that the rescaled Strange New Worlds Enterprise is (discounting the interior views of the cavernous main engineering because what the hell) just the right size. I don't mind the appearance of the D's main engineering, as it actually implies efficient use of space, as cavernous voids within a starship are never good.

[@MasterofSpiders]

Pretty much any Starfleet ship, maybe except the Defiant, is massively over-sized for their crew compliment relative to anything real life. For the Enterprise D specifically, a cruise ship of half the length and 20 decks (albeit more regular in shape) would accommodate 7,000 crew and passengers. EC Henry took the unofficial-but-they-fit deck blueprints for the Ent-D and worked out it had a total floor area of over 8.9 million square feet (excluding bulkheads, outer hull, other obviously uninhabitable areas), which is a lot for 1000 people to live and work in. Therefore one assumes that storage of things like anti-matter and other un-replicatable fuels take up a lot of space.

[@andytol1976]

Original Enterprise being a "tight squeeze" tracks in my opinion. The reality is the Constitution Class was designed at the height of hostilities with the Klingons, as well as the potential of increased tension with the Romulans and Tholians. As much as Star Trek didn't like the idea of warships, Enterprise and her sisters would have been their version of the "State" classes of battleships like New Jersey or Iowa. It'd probably take a LOT of effort to refit to a deep space exploration mission, not to mention finding quarters for the extra staffing like scientific and diplomatic personnel.

[@RegClintonBrown]

💯I agree the original Enterprise was tiny with a ridiculously paper-thin narrow neck.

[@M167A1]

Speak not of the heresy!

[@nonarKitten]

I think most sci-fi people have at best a vague grasp of scale and engineering problems mindless upscaling presents. No body seems to get how stupidly big the original 1701 was. The who sizing issue isn't about "enough space" it's the alignment of exterior windows with the proposed deck height (which the studio made to fit the huge 1960's cameras -- not because Enterprise was supposed to have 10' high ceilings). Unscaled, the 1701 has about 800,000 sq.ft. That's about a match for the CVN-65 Enterprise which holds (normally) 60 planes, 5000 crew, fuel, food, water and a nuclear reactor. They don't have fusion, food replicators and duraluminum (wtf that's supposed to be), which would make space so much more efficient. Yes, real carriers and subs are cramped, but we're not talking "about the same" because the 1701 has 1/12th the crew, 1/12th the spacecraft/airplanes, a fraction of the fuel and food needs, no water storage. But the D is easily 30 TIMES that volume with only 1,000 crew. Imagine a full theme park like Disneyland with all the rides, shops and ... yes ... parking and hotels, with only 1000 people. It would be liminal Disneyland. Fans will justify it with technobabble and handwavium, as if 300-ish years could resolve what are borderline limits of physics (not just structural engineering). And honestly I'm tired of Geek Apologetics.

[@matthewknobel6954]

the main difference is that TOS is a military ship while the TNG is a cruise liner with families and support structures for those families that TOS ships did not have or need.

[@Graviton1066]

TNG Enterprise is not a cruise liner.

[@glennac]

@@Graviton1066The Enterprise D was a Hotel that happened to be able to move from planet to planet. Granted, it was 1980’s hotel stylings. But it was that faux luxury padding that was popular in the 80’s and early 90’s. Hardly a military vessel like might be found among the Klingons.

[@zigadabooga]

​@@glennac it was a scientific exploration vessel with civilians. It was neither a hotel nor cruiseliner. The weapons were for defense, but clearly outmatched many warships.

[@kevinschram7667]

​@@zigadabooga For a "scientific exploration vessel" they sure spent a lot of time hosting diplomatic conferences and shuttling ambassadors around from here and there. Why would you bring children and families onboard a ship exploring the unknown reaches of space when they could get instantly killed by some random anomaly. Face it, they were the flagship and basically a moving Starbase. This was even addressed in Insurrection, when the Enterprise-E is acknowledged as running around tending to diplomatic bushfires during the Dominion War. The fact is, kids and families onboard was stupid, Gene was a bit of a nut. Whether it's patrolling the neutral zone or exploring unknown space, there's no reason for children or civilians to be onboard. I guess this was supposed to be some commentary on how genteel and advanced humanity had become.

[@zigadabooga]

@@kevinschram7667 it was a galaxy class, it had many functions, of those was space exploration. The Federation's "coast guard" and "diplomacy" was a necessary part of their duties.

[@tony.mccall]

I always thought that the Galaxy Class was designed and built for long range missions on it's own, something they never seemed to use it for in actual service

[@rubaiyat300]

I think that there must have been differing ideas on what the show was going to be that changed along the way. A giant and luxurious ship with civilians and even children kinda only makes sense as a very long term colony ship, where people would be born, live, and die never touching ground so spaces needed to be scaled way bigger than aircraft carriers or cruise ships where folks can be expected to get off once in a while and certainly can walk the deck for air. And there it's sheer size is needed for facilities and well just raw population to go colonize worlds. And it's kinda in the name. Galaxy class. I think before Gene got cold feet about shrinking the size of the Milky Way (by making warp too fast as if there wasn't already understanding in the 80's the universe might very well be infinite), there must have been some idea for a generation ship (the next generation even) on a "continuing mission" and the adventure starts at a place called Farpoint station. Which is a grandiose name if that place is so close the Enterprise can return to Earth in a few months if not weeks after visiting it. Heck starting this colonization effort might be why the Q would suddenly reveal themselves. Going to other galaxies makes you a bigger problem sufficient to have to smack if needed. I think a lot of the weird bits that some fans dislike on the Ent-D simply made sense for a show that never got made.

[@RotalHenricsson]

A side effect of making the Enterprise the flagship, i think, the Federation wouldn't want it to go too far out of the way.

[@dh2032]

yes it more of mobile space station, the bit I always (when I had think about ship) when ever there was bit of bother, of the ship it was almost only, the bridge and engineering you got to see, but bumps and bangs must of affected the hole ship, the people falling over on the bridge would been the least of the problems long corridors, soddenly turning lift shafts many, many floors high, everything not bolted down on the move? that was possibly the main reason there was only 1,000 onboard

[@marcneef795]

In principle, the original Enterprise was also on a 5 year mission

[@kingdave31]

Exactly! It was supposed to be on a 10 or 20-year deep-space exploratory mission, but all they ever did was fly back and forth between starbases, with the occasional short-range exploratory mission to go check out a nebula or something.

[@radioflyer68911]

Windows shaped like Ten Forward's go all around the saucer. That means some quarters, labs and classrooms should look a lot like Ten Forward. And sickbay should have a lot more beds. Most of these problems are justified by lack of space and budget.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Probert’s original drawings for a deck-spanning medical complex are a sight to behold.

[@numberyellow]

The thing is that the sickbay/hospital complex is FAR larger than what we see on the show.

[@AdmiralKarelia]

@@numberyellow Yeah, you're seeing one small ward in what is likely a large infirmary. In fact, there may even be multiple infirmaries.

[@numberyellow]

@@AdmiralKarelia According to the blueprints (specifically, the ones used for the Stage 9 project), the hospital complex was only just on that one deck, but it was MASSIVE.

[@chimaican01]

I swear I recall reading at some point there was more than one sickbay on the D, but they only ever showed MAIN sickbay.

[@barryelverson9486]

I enjoyed this video. Yes, we could see that the E-D was a bit smaller as envisioned by Andrew Probert. He had the thought of decks 11 and 12 being a mall, like the promenade in DS9. It’s been described as having 8 times the volume of the Conny E. the length, width and height are important, but the actual volume is what really makes the ship. Technology changes and we saw that on TNG. The ship was faster, with powerful computers on board and included new types of sensors as well as more powerful versions of the ones we saw in TOS. Phasers had also changed. For me, the ship was made to be comfortable for ambassadors and other contact missions. Diplomatic missions, science missions of all sorts, exploration of dangerous regions and tactical missions. Long term missions and yup, transport missions and rescue missions. In a sense, the Conny E with 7 additional mission type ships plus carrying families. She was a big ship with a big series of mission profiles. Reality, it was a limited set with a limited budget that needed something big enough for it all to fit. Sadly that did not have the budget or ability to alter the sets for the different arcs of the corridors on the ship. Also, the heavy reuse of movie sets. Sigh.

[@bjorn00000]

The arboretum was the biggest missed opportunity. It was so big you could see it from the rear shots, but all you got was a little tiny room!

[@history8192]

It also would have worked really well as a matte shot, like when we see 24th Century San-Francisco and cut to a park. You could even have a mesh tent while on location to make it look like the sky is fake.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I’ve always thought it was funny how much larger and easier to shoot in the Voyager engineering set was. They had so many more dynamic angles available to them. Though even TNG rarely shot things on the second level for some reason. Of course it used lessons learned from TNG’s set, but still. Even if we accept that Voyager did have only 2 or 3 decks of engineering space while the D had a dozen or so, I think it makes so much more sense to be able to see everyone working in the zone. It’s nice to be able to see more of the warp core too. I believe we see some dressings of the quarters that have the “saucer underside” slant to the windows to match the ones on top we normally see; but without checking I also may well have imagined that. Could’ve sworn one of the ensigns’ quarters in Lower Decks (the episode) had them flip around the wall for the window though.

[@The_Mighty_Fiction]

Shame the ship itself was butt ugly. 😋

[@marvelboy74]

You are right; Voyager's Engineering had a much better layout.

[@AdmiralKarelia]

I'm not sure TNG's Engineering was a fully enclosed set, but I'm pretty sure Voyager's was.

[@DrummingWriterTrekfan84]

​@@AdmiralKareliayes and no to both. But what's Interesting is that the voyager engineering was exactly where the TNG engineering was. Same with the rest of the voyager sets. You could say they expanded the engineering set for voyager. In fact most of the TNG sets were just redressed for voyager like the hallways just for example.

[@anthonylosego]

"It's a long way down to the bottom of the warp core." Or so I have heard.

[@thanqualthehighseer]

The size of the Enterprise-D falls into the ' What if ? ' senario what if a colony has a disaster and needs large scale medical assistance for tens of thousands of people?, a total evacuation? or large scale transport to a new planet?

[@AdmiralKarelia]

The Galaxy Class was meant to be a one (very large) size fits all ship, capable of excelling at any mission it was given. To do so, it needed a lot of facilities, and a lot of room to adapt as needed.

[@kingdave31]

Imagine a Battlestar Galactica-type scenario where the Federation is destroyed and the Enterprise is fleeing through space packed to the gills with 10,000-plus refugees.

[@thanqualthehighseer]

@@kingdave31 given that some Starfleet intelligence officers might have thought war with the Klingons or Romulan empires or a new threat could come about. That plan was probably considered and planned for.

[@spockboy]

Then THAT would have been its function as a Transport/Evacuation vessel. No sane institution would waste that much underutilized space "just in case" they needed to do that while exploring, which was its INTENDED function. That's why Coast Guard ships aren't the size of the Titanic. : )

[@AdmiralKarelia]

@@spockboy Don't forget the era that the Galaxy class was designed in. Starfleet was in an era of unchallenged expansion, discovery, and development. They'd made peace with their biggest rival (the Klingons) and the Romulans hadn't been seen in decades. Starfleet had the resources and opportunity to build a "does everything" ship that was bigger, more powerful, and more capable than anything that had been seen before.

[@rpgarchaeology6049]

The size of the D was to accommodate the amenities that would come with a deep-range exploration ship. Since the families of the crew were coming along as well, it had to essentially be an entire city with all the services and provisions needed by a civilian population that was larger than the crew complement itself.

[@CCJ1998]

You know while TNG did have a small engineering set to me it looks far more futuristic than using a Brewery in the New Trek movies. I always thought why we didn't see the mechanics of the ship as much because it's the 24th century and surely they would have simplified and automated more of the ships functions by then. I like the industrial look sometimes but looking at our current tech and how humanity is we strive to make things sleek, elegant and more simple and I don't see that changing in the future. Another thing I think the idea behind making the ship so big was to be able to keep more of the stories on the ship in the long run to save money. Roddenberry's thoughts was since the ship is so big if we need a special place on the ship just make a new set. Though I think the 10 forward set was way overused sometimes. If anything change the doors and those tiles on the wall to make it look more different.

[@user-dh2qf5kd8c]

The brewery-engine room was bad enough; but they left the caps on the vat-spigots, complete with brass chains. Oh, and plastic sheets on the doorways instead of doors... perhaps the clear plastic welds itself together at the nano-scale in case of loss of pressure... ;)

[@mallios13]

Yeah, the brewery was a weird choice because we're not given any real sense of what the vats and whatnot were meant to indicate. Main engineering doesn't need to be vast because it's mostly just around the warp core. You're not going to see massive machinery associated with warp travel beyond that because that's all in the nacelles, which clearly are not in engineering. And obviously the show budget wouldn't typically permit us to see engineers doing spacewalks to fix the nacelles when they were damaged. So all you really need for that area is the warp core so the engineers can maintain it, and work stations that give readouts of the ship systems and allow one to remotely operate whatever they need to assuming those systems aren't too damaged to necessitate crawling through Jeffries tubes.

[@Daimo83]

I thought a brewery with a particle accelerator wasn't too far off. Air, water and waste require a lot of pipes and processing.

[@user-dh2qf5kd8c]

Yep; it's all engineering, and no engine! Like the engine compartment of an old car... ;)

[@user-dh2qf5kd8c]

Yeah... I think that for the INTO DARKNESS engineering they shot two scenes at Lawrence Livermore labs; it was a bit better.... but you still just can't beat a F!!!ING warp core. But hey, they apparently build starship in Iowa now, and not in orbit, so why not just make it HUGE-ER?

[@OrcaBoat3]

The Galaxy Class was perfect!

[@RotalHenricsson]

truth be told as much as she's my favorite starship period - the empty space behind the Saucer and above the Nacelles does bother me a bit, visually. It's part of why i enjoy the dreadnought-variant so much - i love nacelles, they add a nacelle, it fills a void, mama's happy.

[@mdsx01]

It makes sense to me as a Navy vet. Ships need a lot of internal volume.

[@rubaiyat300]

Especially for most of the crew and almost all the civilians never being able to go topside. There is no option for walking around the deck so spaces can't reasonably be as cramped for people on months if not years long missions.

[@gawainethefirst]

According to most sources, the interior of the the ship is modular, and is only 1/3 to 2/3 finished at any given time, depending on mission requirements.

[@wolfmaster0579]

@@gawainethefirst Much of the ship is modular, but the only specific numbers I know of is that during the dominion war, galaxy classes were being completed with 65% of their spaceframes empty. This means that a galaxy class in terms of crew, basic amenities, support systems, engines, shuttlebays, sensors, weapons, bulkheads, and more only account for 35% of the spacecraft. It should be noted that the ship could carry around 4500-6000 people comfortably but usually operated with around 1000.

[@chazsutherland]

Surface ships reside in two environments simultaneously; obviously, there's the water env it displaces to create buoyancy, then there's the atmosphere it projects up into where the habitat of the crew exists. Spaceships don't have this luxury and more closely resemble submarines that are designed to operate within a single environment and must create an artificial one within it to keep its crew alive. This undoubtedly requires a variety of resources that occupy space, which Trek largely ignores.

[@jeffery7281]

EC Henry once have a video, saying the crew living space will only take around 85,000㎡, but the total internal deck area of the Galaxy-Class, according to the blueprint, will be about 800,000㎡. Only 10% of the ship's internal volume was taken by the crew. Apperantly, the rest 90% was for equipments.

[@eddieschwab864]

Well don't forget in the episode yesterday's Enterprise They said she's capable of transporting over 5,000 troops, Plus in the episode remember me where the crew was diminishing in the warp bubble and nobody remembered them, they said that it had a carrying capacity up to 3000 to 4,000 total people aboard and since it's practically a flying Embassy / Marriott Convention Center, it would stand a reason outside of crew complement that it would frequently have guests well in excess of its standard crew rotation plus depending on shift rotations based on the time with Captain Jellico, a three shift rotation might require more crew to manage all the positions especially in a crunch situation going into battle and of course everyone knows that during the Dominion War newer Galaxy class starships were considerably upgraded in terms of armament shielding and propulsion over the first generation glass cannons

[@DanBen07]

I sew a KZbin video once by ec henry "The Enterprise is insanely huge" He showed you could fit a lot more rooms in there.

[@entropy11]

EC Henry did a quick vid on just how easily 1000 crew fits into the D and how empty the hallways would be, if she wasn't constantly ferrying guests, passengers, and specialists. The Galaxy class really is a convention center in space. Also keep in mind the 1000 crew statistic doesn't include families (which explicitly were carried) of said crew, along with the passengers and mission specialists I mentioned. If I had to guess, the typical occupancy of the Enterprise would have been between 4000 and 5000 people. Still FAR below its capacity.

[@okankyoto]

Early blueprints imagined malls and other massive spaces to help take up the space. Not to mention the cetacean ops whale tanks and their associated lifeboats!

[@kaitlyn__L]

The Starfleet crew count is actually 650-700, the 1000-1050 numbers given is indeed the total population. (Both families, and civilian workers like in Ten Forward.)

[@DrewLSsix]

On screen it's only ever mentioned having about a thousand people total, except for that one alternate timeline where it carries iirc about 3000 soldiers. This creates an even worse problem, especially when you consider shifts. If they run a 3 shift rotating schedule, and give them the benefit of assuming 90% of the occupancy is crew, then the whole ship is at any given time being run by just 300 people. We see a few locations on screen that are fully staffed at nearly all times but we have to assume there are others. And it wouldn't take long to exhaust those 300 bodies. The 400ish crew on the TOS ship have a similar problem, but not nearly as bad as post jump Discovery! With well under a hundred people total (iirc like 84 people total) on a ship about the volume of the Enterprise and with the compounding issue of having two independent types of star drive to maintain. In short, people in star trek are likely to be very busy.

[@Graviton1066]

I'm not sure his renders were accurate in that video.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@DrewLSsix somehow I never thought about that. 120-130 odd people on shift at any time in TOS, and like… 25 people on shift in the 32nd century. I know Jeffries always intended the ships to be highly automated, and it was meant to get even better in TNG, but jeez.

[@gtc9966]

The giant windows on the underside of the saucer drive me mad.

[@whitewolf3051]

Considering that the Galaxy class were flying hotels rather than space born battleships or submarines, the windows are a bit understandable. It’s the number of them that bothers me. The few amount on the Constitution class to Excelsior class had right amount of windows all over, but once we start we the Ambassador class and on, way too many windows.

[@Joshua-oo9hy]

I get you, those windows had to be 40 to 50 feet long. What room need 50 feet of slanted glass windows. Id almost make since if they were glass floors, but they weren't.

[@exoticspeedefy7916]

@@whitewolf3051 How exactly do they work on the underside though? Makes no sense. We don't see how they fit in relation to the rooms and each deck has a floor with no windows on the lower decks..

[@Salty_Balls]

I've seen them labeled before as auxiliary deflector. Which would make sense given the saucer needs to be able to generate a (much less powerful) field of it's own given that it can coat from warp and propel itself at full impulse speeds. Those "windows" are usually portrayed as blue in color as well if you notice, different then ordinary window lighting. No mention was ever made on the show about it, but we also have no evidence it wasn't from the show.

[@marcneef795]

@@Joshua-oo9hy They were made from transparent aluminium

[@shagrat47]

Would you consider a cruise ship too big compared to an Ocean Explorer science vessel? The Enterprise NCC-1701 was an exploration and science ship. The Enterprise NCC-1701D was a home for the scientists, crew, military and their families. Designed to provide amenities and living space to whole families similar to a small city. Quarters for multiple delegations of species in case of negotiations, diplomatic mission, emergency living space for thousands of people in evacuation scenarios and way more equipment the "old" Enterprise ever carried... I think they simply designed her for the tasks they had in mind and added options for flexibility/refits. 😊

[@chadnine3432]

IMO the show should have leaned into the idea that the Galaxy class was a mobile starbase. People coming and going, deploying the battle section for hazardous missions. It probably would have been a nightmare to write an episodic show with that format though.

[@HawkGTboy]

I remember reading somewhere that the initial plan was for the Enterprise D to have a crew of 6,000, but that got revised down to 1,000 because they were worried about hiring so many extras.

[@david_walker_esq]

About a decade ago, when things were quite different from today, I used to wish that Disney would acquire the Star Trek franchise from Paramount. The Gene Roddenberry vision of the future of humanity would fit within Walt Disney's optimistic vision of the future once presented in Tomorrowland in the Disney parks. Imagine a Tomorrowland recreation of Star Fleet Headquarters. From there, guests could visit Romulus, the Klingon Home World and Vulcan. The Star Tours ride system could easily be adapted to a Star Fleet shuttlecraft attraction. For conflict, guests could even engage the Borg or battle the Jem'Hadar. But, the land's signature attraction would have been a recreation of the Enterprise D. It would require a massive, multilevel show building, but the bridge, main engineering, Ten Forward, the main shuttle bay, even Cetacean Ops could have been recreated for guests to explore. The "Star Tours" type of attraction could have even been accessible from within the shuttle bay. While holo-technology might not yet exist, a holodeck could easily be set to any environment alien to the Enterprise D: the wild west, medieval England, a Parisian cafe, DaVinci's workshop...

[@Cauin450]

The In-Universe explanation was that the Galaxy class had 20 years worth of advancements crammed into it, which is why it was so big. That it was designed to go out not for five year, but 20 year missions. So it needed to have all the supplies, comestibles and all the other things on board to keep the ship running for that long. They supposedly even had the ability to mine deuterium and create antimatter, when they run out of fuel. It was to be the ultimate explorer vessel, even though it's designated as a heavy cruiser and yes, they did want to rattle the sabre for the natives. Sadly, the Galaxy class did not live up to the hype. It was a beautiful, amazing and intricate waste of resources. They could have made 2 advanced Excelsior's for what went into one Galaxy.

[@okankyoto]

Imagine being in Voyager's situation but in a Galaxy class ship! There'd be hardly any improvisation required as it happily made its way home, replenishing its own antimatter, growing its own food supplies, building more shuttles as needed...

[@DrewLSsix]

In universe the ship could only go for 3 years without serious maintenance.

[@davfree9732]

The Galaxy was also intended to be a 100 year vessel. Just as the Excelsior's had lasted for so long, the Galaxy was intended to be customizable with plenty of capacity for new facilities, but also new innovations that could be tested without needing to throw out what worked before the new equipment could be field tested. Sadly the ships entered the age of the Borg and Dominion era and they became to be seen as 'putting all your eggs in one basket'. But... The Galaxy class can hold the trophy for the greatest testament to humanities willingness to explore and to what lengths they would go in that exploration. The Galaxy class is the ship that said space exploration doesn't have to be a choice of service or family life. Bring your family with you, the Galaxy will hold them. Voyager's Intrepid wasn't made to have families but with the prospect of such a long voyage it became a family ship... So in a way the Galaxy class ethos was abandoned too soon. A civilian volunteer core of families who sign on to take the same risks as their husbands and wives would allow for family life, and a non com army of support personal much as when wives marched with their husbands in 18th century army columns.

[@MrZorbatron]

​@@DrewLSsixNot according to the TNG technical manual.

[@markfox1545]

The plural of Excelsior is not Excelsior's.

[@petero.7487]

Looking at things, it would appear that the original intention was to have around 3000-4000 people onboard and it was felt that they couldn't get enough extras to be constantly walking through the hallways, so they set the ship population at 1014 or so.

[@Grim2]

And then there's Deep Space 9 to complicate things, from being depicted as dwarfing a Galaxy class starship, to being much, much smaller (final shot of the show).

[@zerrodefex]

Seriously how big were those windows that we could see if a Galaxy-class was so small while docked to one of it's pylons? The Promenade windows were nowhere near that big when seen from the inside.

[@jayt9351]

In the Next Generation technical manual, it discussed the use of modular internal modules to accommodate various mission profiles. It was estimated that 85% of the internal volume of the Galaxy class was normally empty space, in order to maintain that modularity. While that explanation does alleviate some of my concern with the ship being too big, I still think it is too big. Different ship designs could be created to fit different mission profiles. Meanwhile, normal ship operations are hampered by having to overcome the size of the ship. Examples include inertia of mass distributed at extreme distance from the center of rotation, requiring more torque to rotate the ship, which in turn requires more power to inertial dampers (dampeners? whatever you like...), and the cost of longer distance possibly delaying emergency medical help or other emergency procedures, such as emergency repair crews fixing a hull breach.

[@J_n..]

The ship was bigger because it was build for longer missions. In any tv show set in any city nobody complains that not the whole city is shown Btw the first Shuttle we saw in TNG was there because the the script writter recognized that there hadn't been Shuttle on the show until then. But yes there were missed options and budget considerations, otherwise there could've been more

[@Avatar2312]

The Enterprise D had a crew of 1,031 (including families). They were working in two shifts. The crew was spread out across several decks on the saucer. It would have been extremely unlikely to encounter another occupant while walking through the corridors. For non-comissioned residents the ship might have been a ghost-ship. And this accounts for the inclusion of a massive flight deck taking up almost all of Decks 4, 5 and 6 with more shuttles than Voyager. The technical manual says the ship could sustain another 15,000 for a limited time, but even then it would not have been even half full (as in 10m² personal space per person). The vessel is the epitomy of a starship ocean liner used by a family of 5 and mostly haules empty space through space. And behind 80% of all lit windows at any time is no one needing lights. Also in Generations, they had to evacuate into the saucer section for separation and like 100 kids and families were in a rush to move... into the section where all the family quarters, services and amenities were located.

[@DZ-X3]

A spectacular model, and an enlightening video as always. That said, I don't agree with the Galaxy-class being too large, or even truly understand why one might think that. It's certainly a shame that we never got to see the captain's yacht, but that's just as sad when it happens to the smaller Intrepid-class. While it might have been nice to see the large main shuttlebay in use, I don't see anything wrong with using the smaller secondary bays for most purposes. The only time you'd need to use such a large shuttlebay is when docking a ship far larger than any shuttle, or to launch/land a staggering amount of shuttles all at the same time (in which case you'd use all available bays, including the small ones).

[@-werksmith2078]

I always imagined that the larger shuttle bay was used for shuttle maintenance, cargo, worker bees, operations for external hull maintenance and had to keep some open space to accept a runabout or two when needed and be able to repair a runabout. I think I remember hearing/reading that " The D " could park 2 runabouts. Runabouts were developed around the same time as the Galaxies I believe.

[@mcarp555]

As far as shuttle bays, Note that bay #1 is for the saucer section, while #2 and #3 are for the warp drive section. It would be silly to have one section of a separated ship not having a shuttle bay. The two small ones are probably nearly the same floor space as the main one, so you could move many shuttles if need be (such as to evacuate one section of a separated ship to the other section).

[@AdmiralKarelia]

Nah, the main shuttlebay is frickin huge inside. it takes up a considerable portion of the saucer on the decks it's on. forgottentrek.com/the-next-generation/the-unseen-enterprise-d/images/Enterprise-D-main-shuttlebay-deck-plan.jpg It's like having a small airport on your ship.

[@Gentleman...Driver]

Yes, the ship was too big as Michael Okuda stated many times. It was even mentioned in his book, the "Technical Manual of the USS Enterprise". In the book it was also mentioned that Federation space grew so large that the ressources would be used wiser to build many little ships, rather than fewer big ships. The Nova Class concept drawings were also in the book, stating it was possible that the next Enterprise could be a Nova Class vessel. Lets be honest, the Galaxy Class was something born out of the believe of a progressive future. Like the original NCC 1701 in the 1960s. Back in the day, in not even 80 years time, humanity went from first powered flight to almost landing on the moon. Just imagine how fast the progress was, and how the people might have imagined the future. So, I would argue the Galaxy Class design is pure Star Trek. The reason why most of the ship wasnt shown, and why we never saw cool things like escape pods or the Captains Yacht, were out of budgetary reasons. In fact, the transporters were invented for TOS for budgetary reasons as well. Simple effect which reduced the need for physical models.

[@oscarphillips3654]

One thing I would like to point out is that the thousand or so crew members mentioned in most of the material it just the size of the standard crew complement including officers and enlisted. but before the Dominion War Galaxy-class vessels often carried the families of the crew as well so they had a significant civilian population aboard so total population of the ship was probably closer to something like 4 to 6 thousand when factoring in the civilian families and required support staff and facilities for the civilian population. It does make some sense for the ship to be so large when compared to the constitution class. since it was essentially a flying town or village and not strictly an exploration/military vessel like the constitution was.

[@marcneef795]

My theory was always that they just made it twice as long as the original, not realizing that this meant 8 times the volume

[@ripley_hicks_newt_86]

Most people underestimate volume.

[@marcneef795]

@@ripley_hicks_newt_86 😇

[@blue387]

I wonder if the Galaxy class was made so big in order to house civilians and families as well as resources for those civilians and families.

[@darthkek1953]

Plus the ability to evacuate (or imprison) thousands.

[@RotalHenricsson]

There's a wholeass giant arboretum under the two giant blue windows on the back end of the Saucer; i'd assume the Saucer is packed to the gills with ways of making (particularly the family members not in Starfleet) feel more "at home". Tons of Holodecks, Sick Bay has *got* to be bigger than the general area we always see. Plus all the crew quarters. I actually have a bit of a bone to pick with Lower Decks showing lower ranks still having to share quarters (...that being the *episode* Lower Decks, not the show set on a substantially smaller vessel). Cetacean Ops is never shown but we know it exists and if Lower Decks (*this* being the show, not the episode) is anything to go by they likely cart a lake around somewhere. They got schools, they got cargo bays up AND out the ass, and i always wonder when i see those volume-calculations... do they take into account that the nacelles and pylons are effectively uninhabitable? You got a control room, you got an access way aaand that's about it. And that's a huge chunk of the ship just given to the plasma gods. Shuttlebay One probably eats away at volume too; the blueprints aren't canon but their layout is fairly reasonable and shows it being two decks tall and hollowing out most of those decks.

[@DavidTraynier]

While we only saw a fraction of the Enterprise D, this allowed our imaginations to do the rest, aided by books like the Tech Manual and blueprints. And I have a feeling we saw even less of the original Enterprise.

[@CIS101]

Weren't the Romulan ships from Star Trek TNG much larger ?

[@mito-pb8qg]

1,353m in length by intended design as far as I know

[@eddievhfan1984]

Bigger in overall dimensions, but a lot more empty volume between the nacelles and other spaces-maybe comparable to a Galaxy-class in internal useful volume, though.

[@The280TimesTriviaChannel]

Depends on the day, the shot & the pov of the viewer. Her size in comparison to other ships fluctuated more severely and frequently than the Defiant (which has been famously picked at for years) - The Neutral Zone she looked.. 5 to 10 times bigger than the Galaxy. Tin Man, equal to maybe.. 20% bigger.. Pegasus, about the same as Tin Man.. DS9 - whoa.. lol.. Using the Jem Hadar attack ships as a comparison, "Die is Cast" Warbird and "The Jem Hadar" Odyssey.. The Galaxy is at least equal.. maybe, slightly bigger than the Warbird. Tears of the prophets, in one shot the Excelsior and a Warbird seem to be of generally equal girth. - It really does depend on the day, the shot and the mindset of the viewer.

[@danielhenderson8316]

​@@The280TimesTriviaChannel It is all when the episode was shot. The Romulan Warbird model was scaled to the 2 foot ILM model that was used in Season 1 and 2. From Season 3 onwards, Greg Jein built a 4 Foot Enterprise with extra surface detail that was easier for the FX team to move around as opposed to the 6'x6' ILM Enterprise (instead of just to add Ten Forward like this video suggests). Since there was nothing wrong with the Warbird model, they never rebuilt it and for the rest of TNG it's now put beside a model 2x the size it was originally scaled for. Once they went to CGI, they put the scale back to what it was supposed to be.

[@BagoPorkRinds]

@@eddievhfan1984 The internal volume of either the D'Deridex Warbird's upper and lower wings are greater than a Galaxy class. The main forward head itself is more than twice the internal volume of a Galaxy.

[@Gift0r]

EC Henry has a great video about this where he also placed the whole crew outside, on the saucer section. All 1014 people are a speck on the hull. The ship is massive, and according to I-can't-remember-sources, not even all the interior was built out when it first launched, keeping some space for on-demand outfitting.

[@AndrewProbert]

Interesting video with some valid observations. When this ship was first Designed , it's length was an even 2,000 feet. After a review by the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry, the length grew to 2,108 (not 2,106) feet long. The size was dictated by the fact that this ship was assigned a mission length of five years. The original crew complement was proposed to be 4,600 with an invitation to bring families on board for the duration. Roddenberry changed that proposal to a complement of 1,300 due to concerns of not being able to afford enough background actors to suggest that crew size. The Captain's Yacht, Calypso, was added as a nod to the convention in today's Navy, of providing a 'Captain's Gig' for commanding Officers on larger ships, to use during diplomatic missions or other 'official' uses. One particular script started with Picard returning from some off-ship rendezvous noted by a ship-wide announcement of to "prepare for the arrival of the captain's Shuttle". when the Production Manager was told that the wording should be changed to 'Captain's Yacht' he bulked at the idea (since he had never heard of such a vessel) even-though he was told that Gene had approved it,... so it languished. The same can be said for the Drop Ship nestled under the Ferrengi Marauder: provided but never used. 1--Forward was pretty ridiculous, not in concept but in location. Of all the large window alcoves provided under the saucer,... berman decides to located this lounge in a space which is too small to support it. The saucer's rim (originally) was 16 feet high, supporting hundreds of "Observation Lounges" (not to be confused with the originally-named Officers' Lounge behind the bridge) for crew-members to sit and enjoy an unobstructed and non-reflective view into space; a series of various-sized areas for some quiet time. The rims of both the saucer and engineering hull have these lounges. Those rims also incorporate the ship's lateral sensor arrays and the lounge windows are above and below this sensor strips. If the rim was 'perfect' for a crews' lounge,... that should have shown the windows at the top and lower corners of the space,... not some huge top-window suggestion,... disregarding the integrity of the original concept - while throwing off the ship scale and requiring a new model. Krazy,... huh ?

[@SullenSecret]

I've always thought about those extremely angular windows on the top and bottom and wandered if they looked like the ceiling or floor from inside their rooms. It seems like such an odd design for interior decor.

[@MrGriff305]

The Enterprise D looked so regal and powerful

[@TheMsLourdes]

The ship was designed to essentially be a space hilton and to go out basically in one direction for five years before turning around and coming home only to go and do it again from outposts built in the interim. The size was supposed to accomodate, not just the crew and their families at the start, but the growing family sizes over the duration and other mission types (such as colonizaiton efforts). That we only saw a crew of 1018-1024 at any given time and that the ship never went out for more than a few episodes before returning, was a cop out in those regards to the initial premise. We were rarely supposed to see Starfleet and Federation planets at all... but the series was reigned in a bit and refocused. In that thinking, Yes the galaxy class was way too big for the kinds of missions that the ENT-D was assigned and could have been better accomplished by a ship half its size... BUT, the Galaxy Class... was a ship of the imagination, and there were so many possibilities for story telling aboard. That budget constrained those stories is nigh criminal... but with the tech we have today, doing it justice and telling those stories is now possible. So, we may get to see large ships again , done right, eventually.

[@The2wanderers]

I would suggest that at the model creation stage, the idea of having room for growth was appealing. Introducing new spaces as the series went on was a definite possibility.

[@lordcommander3224]

You barely scratched the surface of how absurd, yet awesome this ship would have been. A thousand people would be stretched out so much it would be too much wasted space. There would have been entire decks just empty perhaps with no internal volume at all until it was required for a mission or evacuation. The main shuttle bay 1 was so large it encompasses a chunk of the internal volume of the saucer and they never showed it. It would have looked like the hangar deck of several Nimitz class carriers combined.

[@mxg75]

Main shuttle bay was used once in The Best of Both Worlds, when Worf and Data depart via shuttle to rescue Picard. The stardrive section is visible out of the shuttle window just after launch, meaning they had to depart from the saucer, though all we see of main shuttle bay is brief view of a wall through the same shuttle window.

[@stephenmiller9013]

The size of the Enterprise-D does play toward the narrative set out in the first episode and elsewhere that those of the Federation could tackle anything, boosted by the political situation at that time and directly rebuttalled by Q.

[@DJ_Force]

The curved corridors suggested they were encircling the axis of the saucer. However, the curve was so tight that the hallway couldn't have been bigger than a tennis court.

[@phillipthorne8363]

I agree. That's a production limitation -- a small number of standing sets forced to represent every corridor, no matter what shape you'd "realistically" expect. The saucer could contain a straightaway of 200 meters, Deck 10 rim to center, but the sets can't possibly depict that, so the "interesting" stuff is always "just around the corner." It feels even weirder when the small-radius corridor is used directly outside Main Engineering. (For a different take: the forced-perspective backdrops for up-curving corridors aboard Babylon 5.)

[@playswithblades]

Galaxy class was a long-range multi-mission class, it was clearly explained countless times why it was so big, they were often involved in several missions in parallel and they needed enough space for all the extra personnel, cargo and equipment. Also, evacuation capacity, it was speculated that starbases like Earth space dock or starbase 47 have between 35-50 thousand stationed officers and civilians, so three galaxy classes could evacuate a whole starbase in a matter of hours.

[@terranempire2]

I always imagined that much of the Interior of the Enterprise D was built using existing modules as a a result of the interior and some systems of the ship not being completed. As time went by Starfleet intended to give the newer ships more of the grander interiors and systems but as a result the ships had been left less opulent. I imagine as the Borg and Dominion wars flared up the renovations got pushed back farther.

[@guillermodiego819]

Budget constraints always rein in the best ideas. Still, I love what we got, however limited. Great video!

[@michaelbrett2760]

I always thought the philosophy behind the design was flexibility over a potential decades-long lifespan. Lots of room for multiple mission types or the potential for exploration far beyond Federation space.

[@HawkGTboy]

Any ship the size of the Galaxy Class would need some kind of color coding scheme on the corridor walls to tell you what deck your were on, what section, etc. Maybe even different architectural themes. The sameness of the corridors would be a nightmare to actually live with.

[@bongmuon]

The computer could guide you with the LCARS displays. It was shown on at least one episode.

[@AmalgmousProxy]

Why didn't they show or use the main shuttle bay in the show? I don't know. That said, I don't find the quantity redundant. Why? The Enterprise D has the unique ability to separate the saucer separation from the main drive. Apart, each then will still have useable bays. This occurred to me when someone brought up how it was "redundant" to have 3 impulse drives. I can't argue that having all 3 active is potentially redundant. However, the quantity makes sense when you consider the separation factor. Only one plausible thought why the main shuttle bay wasn't used that I can think of. It's primarily storage. Even in the show the other 2 bays are almost always cluttered with storage containers of somesort.

[@sodiorne2]

You always put out Great videos! Thanks!

[@rubaiyat300]

I think the sheer scale of the ship was unfortunately never captured on screen in a personal way. I've always wanted an outside location shot set up where some scene occurs at maybe a table outside a cafe or something, and then after whatever dialogue, the camera pans out to see the buildings on the street and above the cafe, and then it keeps going and you see the bulkheads and hull and you realize all this was done in some multideck recreation area nestled into the hull. Also highlights the ridiculousness of the smaller hero ships that followed her (like the Defiant and Voyager) being anywhere as capable given the cavernous amount of volume for equipment and ship stores the Galaxy can shove into place (like a computer core around as tall as the Defiant itself....and it has 3 of them).

[@xBINARYGODx]

For most people for most of their day, they could not look out a window and see the real thing - but also, most of the time, even if they did, they would not seem much. A fresh, nice, exciting look at the stars in the paintings all over the place is great propaganda on such a star ship doing what it does (which DOES mean a lot of nothing to look at most of the time). But also - I think the drive section was small, relatively speaking, to show tech moving forward, and the disc was bigger to show everyone have families on the ship and all of the non-work stuff needed for that, and just because SF was less militaristic at this point, for a while.

[@CrazyFool75]

I think the production team realised the D was “too big” and started adding lines to the scripts to explain it. There’s one episode I think where dialogue states the ship can accommodate up to 15,000 people. So all the extra space makes sense if one of the design requirements was to transport or evacuate colonies. “Yesterday’s Enterprise” also mentions the alternate Enterprise D can accommodate 6000 troops, in a presumably similar internal volume. The TNG Technical Manual also makes reference to areas of unused space which can be configured for specific roles and missions, now this isn’t canon as such, but it helps explains the large volume of the vessel. This is also how a number of modern warship classes have been designed and built, when areas are unused at build in anticipation of future systems and capabilities being installed later.

[@eddieschwab864]

One thing I've never quite figured out is that when the Enterprise in the movies goes in and out of ESD it seems just big enough to fit through the doors. Enterprise D is a lot larger yet it fits effortlessly in ESD as well as starbases that have a space dock unless they did some construction work in between and enlarged the doors substantially...

[@ronaldhudson169]

One of the mission profiles for Enterprise - D was colony rescue. A colony of perhaps even a thousand people, maybe more is on a planet that is about to experience an "end of life as we know it" catastophy. We gotta get all of them off the planet, now. So, lots of empty staterooms, Transporters that can continuous cycle, a big shuttle bay that can handle 100's of shuttles to evacuate that way. The D might also be about planting such a colony, so not only all the space and transfer ability but the initial load-out for the colony - prefab buildings, vehicles, equipment etc. What we saw of engineering was mainly the engineering control space. There were probably huge galleries of equipment and storage tanks and battery banks for emergency power.

[@mattheww2797]

The bigger problem was when we got to Voyager and they had gigantic sets for the Captains Ready Room and Main Engineering which then made the galaxy class sets look so small in comparison

[@IxDeepOne]

Cetacean ops was another prime example of the same tell-not-show issue of the series. It's there in the ship plans, but never on screen.

[@rafale1981]

Really well done! You outdid yourself with these visuals, took me right back! Even the bright, even lighting was spot on! Also: good argument on enterprise d‘s size there. And this applies to all star trek ships and stations, with the exception of Discovery‘s „systems hub“/turbolift system which utterly broke immersion for me

[@therichieboy]

Why would you want a painting of Earth when you can look outside and see the real thing? 😜

[@phillipthorne8363]

This is a recurring phenomenon in TV SF that uses physical sets to depict an extensive environment -- the Enterprise-D, Babylon 5, Goa'uld motherships, the Atlantis city-ship in the Pegasus galaxy, etc. Either the characters are strangely limited in which sections they inhabit, or the decor is highly repetitive, or techniques to depict additional space (forced perspective, virtual set extensions) are rare/expensive/unconvincing. The result is that, as a viewer, an allegedly huge space feels strangely claustrophobic. Even if using CGI, you encounter finite production resources -- you repeat the same section of corridor -- or limitations in "shooting" the scene; you want a "stage" that the "actors" can interact on. (The gigantic bridge set of the U.S.S. Discovery on *that* show actually makes it difficult to frame multiple bridge crew in a single shot.)

[@Snowwie88]

Since this was the Capital Ship of the Federation and went 'where no man has gone before' they needed to be prepared for as many things they could encounter. The ship was also capable and ready to support thousands of extra people in case of emergency. It went years from home, so the last thing you want is being stuck in a very tiny vessel. 640 meters at maximum length does not appear to be that big. But from a single person's perspective the ship might appear somewhat empty. There is a guy here on KZbin who made a calculation how much average living space there was on the Enterprise and he came to the conclusion the ship was so big that you could easily walk minutes through those corridors before seeing someone. The ship did not require much space to take real 'stuff' that people would need, maybe only taking existing cargo from one place to another. They did had food rations, but otherwise all required items, from clothing, furniture, machines, tools and even food could be replicated. Indeed the replicator would be a fantastic invention if it ever came to be. And it's real, energy can be converted to matter and vice versa. Except if you want order a cup of coffee, using a replicator, then think about the processes that are needed to just get one. First you need a whole bunch of energy; okay the warp core can give that, then you need a massive computer that holds the entire molecule structure of coffee, but also the mug. Then when building it from energy, well, I don't know how they would separate the coffee from the mug, but the processing power of doing so much be enormous. Anyway, end conclusion, was the D too big. I don't think so, considering it's mission.

[@braderickson9996]

This video dovetails nicely with a video from EC Henry. The stated crew compliment for the D was stated from 1000 to 1200 total compliment. His video showed what that would actually look like. The calculations showed the D was an incredibly spacious ship for that crew count. If the ship had actually been used for long-range exploration, far and away from starbases, etc, It could make sense. Extra space for supplies, fuel, etc. I think his point was that the ship could comfortably hold twice that count. If you are going to have a ship this size, you expect to see more than you did. I thought there was a VR project going on at one time, the places one could explore, to flesh out...

[@larryboyd1872]

The main shuttle bay was on the saucer section. The smaller two were on the drive section. The existence of the main shuttle bay would be required if shuttles were to be launched while the two parts of the ship were separated.

[@JLRules]

I've actually always wondered if the Enterprise-D was big _enough_ , considering what we're told it has. It's supposed to have, what, dozens of science labs, several transporter rooms and cargo bays, a few holodecks, as well as _separate_ quartres for everyone aboard (even taking families into account, that's ALOT of living area), and as we see in the film, Stellar Cartography was on par with Main Engineering. And those places aren't cramped - they're all spacious and comfortable. That's not to mention Jefferies tubes and turbolift shafts, which run along _the whole_ ship. Finally, the height, length and width doesn't take into account the _shape_ of the Enterprise. It's not a box where every square metre of what those numbers would suggest, are used (if that makes sense). It's more like a deformed "S" shape (looking at it on the starboard side), where two "corners" are nonexistent. What I'm saying is, the Enterprise has often sounded more like the TARDIS in terms of space.

[@LaunchpadGamingGuy]

The ship was not too big, it was just perfect absolutely perfect! I cried, like a baby when the ship returned in the 3rd season of Picard. Looking at those hallways and the quarters, reminds me how much I just want to go live there!

[@DonDonP1]

Enterprise-D was my first-ever "Star Trek" starship I've even seen in my life. Season three of "The Next Generation" introduced me to the entire "Star Trek" universe. My reintroduction: the 2009 movie reboot.

[@ThubanDraconis]

What happened was that they decided that the original Enterprise should be about as long as an aircraft carrier because the audience could relate to that size. It wasn't absurdly large but it was plenty big. (That point could be argued I guess.) Anyway, when TNG came out they wanted everything to be more advanced and in their mind "advanced" meant bigger. Of course that's not the case. A ship (space or ocean ship) is designed to be able to complete a set of missions and it needs to be big enough to do that well, and no bigger. Higher technology would mean smaller ships, not bigger. In any case, when asked how much bigger the new Enterprise should be they were told, "make it about twice as big" and that's what the designers did. But someone didn't appreciate something very important. If you double the length of an object, but keep the proportions the same, you give it eight times the volume. So when they took the Enterprise D which was already a bulkier design based on proportions, and doubled the length, they created an absurdly large starship. Oh, for a post scarcity civilization to create a few diplomatic cruisers designed to show off the power of the Federation makes sense. But as exploring ship it is way too big. (Given the way trek technology works. If you make other assumptions about the fictional technology then the Enterprise D could be packed full of reactors, generators, and other equipment to the point that there wasn't much room left over for crew.) But, the Enterprise D was mostly used as a diplomatic ship, not a true long range exploration ship.

[@hivebrain]

I always assumed they held concerts in ten forward. Thinking about it now, it was probably supposed to be another room (next door maybe).

[@clot1770]

It was a little strange to me that there was never a true long mission in a show called "Star Trek". It was basically just a lot of flying around in a tiny area of space for the whole show.

[@_BLACKSTAR_]

The reason for 2 more shuttle bays separate from the main shuttle bay is because you still want shuttle facilites even when the saucer section is separated from the engineering section. The main shuttle bay is part of the saucer and bays 2 and 3 are attached to the engineering section.

[@d.akross3639]

The most illogical thing about the Enterprise D to is the Jefferies Tubes. Why are crawl-spaces needed to access vital ship systems when they can be located in their own rooms? This was not unique to the Enterprise-D, but the Enterprise-D had room not only for vital machinery, but also rooms for backup machinery (maybe even a spare warp core or two so that you can eject one and still be warp capable). The Enterprise-A was the most smartly designed from this standpoint: the vital conduits and systems were located on the walls and ceilings for direct access in case of battle damage.

[@paul1979uk2000]

I think I remember reading somewhere that the Enterprize-D on average had around 1,000 people onboard, but could hold around 6,000 people in reasonable comfort. With just 1,000 people onboard, the ship would have felt quite empty, and you have to wonder, would it make much sense to build a ship that can carry so many people and then have it going into unknown parts of space on a regular basis when you don't know what the risk is? That seems quite reckless to me. To me, a ship of this size is more like a luxury liner or cruse ship, which really should have been a ship that only flies in Federation space where it's safer to protect the boarders, but not in unknown areas of space, that would have been better for smaller ships or more specialised ships for that task. With that said, if I was living in space on a ship, I would want to be living on a ship that has all the things we take for granted, the Enterprize-D offers that whereas something like the Defiant doesn't, but even so, the ship is probably too big for only 1,000 people and if you have a lot of people on a ship, you don't want to send them into unknown parts of space until you've got an idea on how safe it is. As for the show itself, we didn't get to see a lot of the ship because of limited budget.

[@acnelson75]

TNG was the most expensive series on TV when it first aired and they were still limited by the tech of their day and the 22 episode a season requirement. A lot of what happened on the show was often implied instead of shown so as to give the sense of so much more going on off-camera due to time, money and logistics. It was a show that did require you to use your imagination a lot, but that’s also how some of the best novels work too.

[@algi1]

The expansive size kind of future-proofed the ship for other media like games, comics, novels, etc. to explore.

[@zigadabooga]

Cause and Effect showed it and was cool, maybe nice to see inside. But the reason there's a main and two others, is that the main shuttlebay is for the saucer section and 2 and 3 are on the Star Drive.

[@tigdamch.6321]

It makes sense to me at least. I always imagined the larger shuttlebay being used for worker bee's or cargo handling/evacuation or perhaps containing workshops/storage for additional shuttles. Why use the larger shuttlebay is the smaller one will do? Modern cruise ships can have entire sections that can be lowered and raised to allow people/cargo on and off however if they want to take on a pilot for entering or leaving a port they use the small pilot door. The Galaxy class technologies were tested on other ships but put together in the Galaxy class, as we invent new technologies sometimes they are larger than what came before so it would make sense that there's a lot more bulk to things like the Engine room than what we see on screen, the engineers don't always hang about in the engine room but often in the control room which is what at least I imagine we see on screen. Same kind of thinking also goes towards miniturisation, a powerful but much smaller warp core was put in the Nova class so perhaps lessions learned from the Galaxy and other ships? Given the size of the think compared to the TOS Enterprise having if I recall 500+ crew, technology advancing to allow larger ships though only having 1000 crew makes sense to me. Modern Warships and Cargo ships have less crew than their WW2 or earlier counterparts, the same crew amount that would have run a Coal powered transport in ww1 of only 5-10000k can now run a modern transport with of over 200k tonnes. So crew numbers to size also makes sense as well. Technology further advanced during the Dominion War for the number of crew for a Galaxy class also went down over time.

[@NeonVisual]

The D was built during an unprecedented time of peace, it seemed perfectly logical to bring family along for diplomatic missions. That's until the Borg and Dominion showed up from the delta and gamma quadrant. There are also a bunch of decks on the E which are just huge empty voids left there for future expansion as the mission dictates.

[@Maddoktor2]

The D was supposed to literally be a traveling city in space, and its large size reflected that nicely. Kirk's Enterprise was designed for exploration and defensibly, so it was necessarily much smaller.

[@BPond7]

The entire crew could stand comfortably in the main shuttle bay with an enormous amount of room to spare. You could traverse the ship front and back, side to side, and never even see another crew member all day.

[@calvinnickel9995]

The Captains Yacht was never mentioned on screen. The only reason we knew it existed at the time was the canon Technical Manual. Thats where we also found out about things like the saucer photon torpedo launcher and the antimatter generator.

[@paultyler7535]

The Federation: “We built a ship that’s too big” The Borg: “Hold my beer”

[@DomH75]

In Yesterday's Enterprise, it's mentioned that the ship carries 6,000 troops, IIRC. The Galaxy Class strikes me as the sort of ship designed to have permanent large numbers of guests on board. For example the main shuttle bay might be intended to hold colony vessels and the like, while a a few thousand colonists might be berthed on the Enterprise-D until they reach their destination. I presume the ship's crew of 1,000(-ish) plus families would have increased the ship's permanent population to about 2,500. It's just another problem with Paramount's handling of the Star Trek franchise in the cinema. There was an opportunity to make a TNG film a bit more along the lines of TMP and really make use of that giant Enterprise-D. A missed opportunity, sadly.

[@DemonBlueDays]

No: The Galaxy Class was designed to be out on the frontier, from being an "all in one" starship that could conduct any type of mission, for years at a time if needed. As well as being a sort of "Mobile Starbase" to fly the flag in the newest or barely populated areas where infrastructure hasn't yet been built and be a luxury diplomatic representation for the Federation. The in universe idea at the time was to take the unprecedented peace that was in the Quadrant at the time and build a class of ship that was unparalleled in luxury, technology, scientific and industrial equipment and have it explore, perform dignitary hosting and if needed, lay waste to any threat in her way. And the design (again in universe) was all the "main" areas (bridge, labs, shuttle bay, quarters, sick bay, observation lounges etc) existed in the saucer, which is essentially the "heart" of the ship and where 70% of the crew spent the most of their time aboard. With the Stardrive section basically being the industrial and engineering areas, and in view but "hidden away" like on old ocean liners....and in a way, its just a glorified "engine sled" with weapons to support the saucer. Looking at it "as its laid out" it makes sense like that, so she needed to be a heffer of a girl to fly the flag as she did. Annnnd may explain how you can get away with mating up a formerly smashed to bits saucer with a "spare"/"orphaned" Stardrive "sled" and be able to call it the name from the saucer 😉

[@thinkingitthrough8368]

I think "Yesterday's Enterprise" explained it best. In times of war, it could easily be modified to carry up to 6000 troops. I do think that if you were in the Dominion war, and you wanted a ship that was more maneuverable, Star Fleet would have come up with a weapons saucer that would replace the current saucer. Something with less bulk, more firepower and energy creation.

[@crownprincesebastianjohano7069]

It should be noted that the missions that the Enterprise D went on is not representative of the Galaxy Class in general. E-D was the flagship so was kept closer to the Federation than even many larger explorer type ships. Rather than true deep space exploration, E-D was more tasked with diplomatic missions, showing the flag and deterrence, and serving as flagship in times of crisis for its own battlegroup, along with a few mapping missions and colony assistance. Other Galaxy Class starships probably actually fulfilled the mission-set the ship was designed for with years-long missions of exploration. That said, the scarcity and prestige of the Galaxy ends up limiting its use. It was the Nebula Class that ends up being the preeminent large deep-space explorer. There is virtually nothing a Galaxy can do that a Nebula can't do, but cheaper, with the right mission module. The Nebula is the real MVP of Starfleet in the decade prior to the Dominion War.

[@tophercaesar5375]

I don’t recall the original enterprise crew bringing their families and children on board with them. It adds up when you need schools and play areas and more recreation areas etc. the enterprise is a small city/town in space with families living on it. I would say they might have made the saucers section too wide, but personally I love the giant disk. Both sections had to be of decent size as the either section at any moment might be forced to take on the entire population if the ship ,both starfleet and civilian and separate as a means of escape or survival. So each section had to have independent systems for everything, impulse, life support, full medical, independent weapons control, science, civilian necessities, etc., so I don’t think it’s overly surprising that both sections of the enterprise were massive

[@ProjectVastness]

For me even enterprise F is small, still (and again in my opinion) the most beautiful ship that appeared first in the game . If a ship has to be the flagship and multifunctional and endure whatever it comes (peace of war) I think it has to have some mass , firepower, human resources , etc etc etc

[@pyronuke4768]

I've seen a video go around every few months that showes the size of the Galaxy class in scale to it's crew, and it does make it feel ridiculously big. However I would like to point out that Roddenberry himself said that he wanted the crew to bring their families with them on the ships for TNG. So while the crew numbers just over a thousand there would potentially be like three to four times as many civilians aboard too. Add in some theories that in addition to deep explorers the Galaxy class were also ment to be colonizer ships, and her large size starts to make some sense. But again, unfortunately, this is where the vision runs headfirst into the budget and they were just never able to accurately depict the scope of it all on-screen.

[@mephistoxarses8585]

How many families died on the Yamato? I would ask that of Roddenberry....... Inexcusable behavior in my opinion of Starfleet's "complacency".....Space is incredibly dangerous...you don't take families out into the unknown.

[@RoySATX]

To sum it up, Enterprise D was not too large, the budget was too small. One thing about the set that always bothered me were the hallways. Given the size of the ship and the curvature of the hallways, the crew never ventured far from the center of the saucer. Had they been on one of the middle decks and on the outer hallway at the front of the saucer the curvature would have been such that you would have been able to see quite a distance.

[@jhmcd2]

I do remember hearing the reason for this. In one of the documentaries for the series, its explained that they wanted the new Enterprise to be at least twice the size of the original, but with smaller engines and engineering space to show that the technology has improved. Yet it works in another way in universe. The Galaxy class is known for having engine problems, in fact they try to replace the warp core of the Enterprise over a decade before it was due. Most likely this wasn't working out very well, at least in the initial launch batch.

[@charliedontsurf334]

I always the Galaxy class was massively underarmed. She carried 250 casket sized photon torpedoes. Honestly, she could have carried 250 SLBM sized torpedoes quite easily.

[@73rmin8r]

That is such a fantastic model you made of her.