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.

[@noppornwongrassamee8941]

@@3mpt7 Ultimately as the series progressed, the saucer separation as civilian lifeboat all too often couldn't be used. By the time the crew knew they should use it, it was too late to get the Saucer out of danger. So up until the its last movie, it was better for the Ent-D to keep its saucer attached rather than separate and quite possibly leave the saucer vulnerable to attack. Weirdly, the Odyssey on DS9 didn't use the Saucer separation despite knowing it was going into combat. Sure, they offloaded their civilians first, but wasn't that the point of saucer separation? Leaving your civilians somewhere safe while the leaner star drive section could go into combat?

[@3mpt7]

@@noppornwongrassamee8941 It certainly would have been difficult for the Enterprise to predict and separate the saucer section in time for spatial and temporal anomalies, and rampaging gods, and Q, but I'm fairly sure that Gerry Anderson from the Thunderbirds/Stingray/Captain Scarlet shows would have made doubly sure that the saucer section got separated whenever any normal enemy was predicted to be in the area. They could have made some really interesting stories with that, as sometimes saucer separation might backfire, but the writers were just obstinate and lazy on the whole issue, and of course, Gene Roddenberry wound up dying, so there was nobody around to ensure that protocol concerning armed forces protection of civilians was followed.

[@TheThreatenedSwan]

TNG was very inconsistent because the path of the show contradicts the cringe space liberalism the writers seem to like. Also funny you bring up Troi because 1) it doesn't make sense why she would have that job vs the higher ranking jobs of other empaths/telepaths, and 2) that group is a scarce resource with their abilities being "commodified"

[@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!

[@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.

[@noppornwongrassamee8941]

Who needs theaters when the Holodeck can just make one on demand? Really, it always amazed me that a single person can use a single large, multifloor recreational room all to themselves for hours at a time. You'd think with a thousand plus people on board, there'd be more demand for holodeck use than there were available holodecks. But that seems to not be the case as there's always a holodeck available when someone wants to use them. Why is the Ent-D so big? Because it has to be to fit in all the holodecks needed to create zero wait time for using one! For a crew of 1000+ no less!

[@linz8291]

Exactly, modern mothership is not similar to previous types when we considering flexible settlements as floating cities.

[@DoNotEatPoo]

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Every inch of the ship has been accounted for. There's literally no space left for shopping malls and food courts because everything that's unseen is actually consumed by AI datacenter space to drive the holodeck. That's right people, 90% of the ships physical space is necessary to drive one 20x20 foot holodeck funzies play area.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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).

[@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.

[@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.

[@DavidDouglas-q7v]

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.

[@DavidDouglas-q7v]

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

[@DavidDouglas-q7v]

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?

[@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.

[@Galleitch]

It needs to be big to hold the navigation whales

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@jeffstrains4014]

I agree! They just never really showed enough for its size

[@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.

[@Woopaloops]

What’s strange though is that it seemed like the Enterprise D was barely ever in deep space. In season 1, Picard mentions that they’ve been on the “outer rim” for most of the time since the Farpoint mission, but from the third season on, it seems like they’re always in Federation space or on the border of Klingon and Romulan space. The original Enterprise was in deep space 99% of the time, so why did the Enterprise D never go very far when it was designed to do so?

[@rocketguardian2001]

@@Woopaloops True. They never really venture beyond easy contact with Starfleet. The OG Enterprise was often the only ship in its sector, or well beyond contact with Starfleet.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@guillermodiego819]

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

[@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.

[@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. 😊

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@plutoniumshore]

9:35 Don't forget Cetacean ops!

[@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

[@floriang2801]

In TNG "Yesterdays Enterprise" Tasha says the Enterprise is capable of transporting 6,000 troops. In TNG "The Ensigns of Command" they consider evacuating a colony of 15,000 people to the Enterprise. Nobody mentions any space constrains. So the Big D can hold a lot of people.

[@brookestephen]

With a height from keel to top of 137m, and a hull thickness of 0.5m, and 42 decks, that is 3.238m per deck. In the TOS Enterprise, I used 2.555m per deck and 0.5m hull thickness, yielding 24 decks. That's 1.27 times the height per deck for Ent-D. I always considered Ent-TOS as a step or two above a submarine, but the Ent-D as a step below the grandeur of the Titanic.

[@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.

[@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.

[@brookestephen]

I always wondered about how many the ship could rescue... with all that size, and way more cabins than crew, they might be able to rescue a whole colony of people, all just with one ship.

[@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.)

[@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.

[@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.

[@duramirez]

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!! 😃

[@Woopaloops]

You’re right, but now she’ll always be associated with that stupid throw away line in the terrible Picard show. A heroic ship, that battled the Borg and the Remans, reduced to a punch line. Sickening.

[@duramirez]

@@Woopaloops truths 😞

[@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.

[@RenardThatch]

That's what the Enterprise J is...

[@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.

[@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.

[@marsmech]

I'd love to just walk around those hallways.

[@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.

[@Cyberguy42]

No, ~1000 is the total number of people, including civilians and families.

[@kenwynn3871]

I remember reading that Gene wrote scenes in Encounter at Farpoint in places like main engineering specifically to force the studio to build the sets cos he feared budget restraints later on in the shows run wouldn't allow for that sort of thing

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@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 😇

[@joshuanorthey2026]

100%

[@floriang2801]

It’s much more that 8 times the volume. The D is much wider and also has a much thicker saucer. It’s more like 20 to 30 times the volume of the Constitution.

[@marcneef795]

@@floriang2801 I think you are right. She looks very slim, but this is just because of the shape, not because of the actual volume.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@73rmin8r]

That is such a fantastic model you made of her.

[@alienrefugee51]

Still the most beautiful of all Starship designs.

[@whitewolf3051]

That honor goes to the Refit Constitution class.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@VerilyVerbatim]

This is another example of 'form follows function'. The Captain's yacht was there for diplomatic purposes, because not everyone likes the concept of transporters. The saucer section has its own shuttle bay, for passengers/families to have direct access to the 'residential areas'. The Stardrive section has two smaller shuttle bays, for people or items relating to engineering or similar, because the two sections can operate independently. It is also worth noting, the 'saucer section' on the original Enterprise could be detached from the main hull, but doing so implied extreme circumstances (warp core failure or similar), as it was not designed to reconnect after that.

[@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.

[@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

[@sodiorne2]

You always put out Great videos! Thanks!

[@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.

[@spikeep6141]

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the number of occasions when they *talked* about separating the saucer section and then *didn’t* do it -

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@vegeta002]

The Enterprise-D was a Galaxy Class, it was therefore perfection in all fields.

[@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.

[@lightpawshird]

The Enterprise D tech manual tells you why the ship was designed so large. Go read it.

[@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.

[@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).

[@LordCommanderEdTN]

Put 1000 people in a 500 square meter space like the one you show, for a trip that will surely last several years? Any submarine designer knows that overcrowding in a hermetically sealed and insulated can is one of the main enemies of the crew's sanity. That's why the Enterprise D is so massive, we don't want a thousand people trapped in an airtight tube with access to weapons of mass destruction to go crazy, or that in a psychotic attack, some crew member decides to manipulate the warp core and to blow the ship with everyone on board

[@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.

[@QUICKBOOKS1]

People DO realize The Star Trek Franchise was/is Fiction, right?

[@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.

[@noppornwongrassamee8941]

I think the one video that brought home how big the Ent D is was a Minecraft video about building a 1:1 scale replica of the Ent-D. The camera perspective of 2 meter tall Minecraft player looking up and seeing the skeletal under-construction saucer blotting out the sky (the Ent D was on the same bedrock floor as the player) really made an impression on me.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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...

[@Woopaloops]

Oh I’m sure they’ll buy Star Trek eventually, just like they bought and ruined everything else. Just enjoy Star Trek while you can…

[@david_walker_esq]

@@Woopaloops No. I haven't enjoyed Star Trek since Nemesis of 2002.

[@Woopaloops]

@@david_walker_esq My point was when disney gets their hands on the franchise, they’ll ruin the shows / movies you like, too. So you need to enjoy them now before that happens.

[@david_walker_esq]

@@Woopaloops What makes you think Disney would get control of Star Trek when Paramount was just purchased by Skydance? If anything, more Bad Robot produced Star Trek can be expected.

[@Woopaloops]

@@david_walker_esq they’ve bought everything else. It’s only a matter of time until they buy and ruin Star Trek

[@therichieboy]

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

[@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).

[@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.

[@jimmydesouza4375]

A thing to note is that the show does make use of the supposed large size of the ship, but not directly. A nice example is the episode where they pick up that village off of the dying planet and then hide them in a holodeck. The holodeck would have to be gigantic for them not to notice, which is plausible on a gigantic ship. Basically the huge supposed size of the ship allows them to just create new areas of the ship or do things that would require huge areas (like that deck which is entirely empty that they mention in another episode) without it seeming implausible.

[@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.

[@jaybodner4189]

Yes, The Big D was the perfect size. Do you ask if Space X's Star Ship is too big...probably not...so why ponder Big D?

[@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...

[@markmiller6402]

I always imagined a huge shuttle bay, full of craft for science missions, a huge engineering section, as they have in the new films, and strangely, bigger crew quarters

[@BanditBeauDarville]

That episode where wesley and Picard crash on that planet, should have used the Calypso Captain's yacht.

[@SuperSnakePlissken]

Great video as always. When you compare the Galaxy Class to the modern ships of the Star Trek universe like the Enterprise-F's Odyssey/Yorktown class the Galaxy is relatively small. Personally, I am glad that the Enterprise-G ended up being a smaller ship once again, because where is the danger on a Yorktown/Odyssey class size ship? Nothing is going to be able to take one down. It is larger than the Romulan ships and there is no sense of danger. With the smaller ship if the ST: Legacy show ever happens, there can be a sense of danger in every episode once again.

[@mikehill572]

Love your content. Thank you. For me:- 1) Galaxy class was designed for 20 year missions, so need plenty rec rooms and life support mechanisms and storage. 2) There are familes with children onboard (a concept that I personally disagree with!). So schools and extra rec spaces needed. 3) It is able to transport circa 5K in emergency evacuation situations. However. I also agree that it looks too big overall, and Main Engineering has always seemed too small to me. Personally, the relatively small and compact TOS D7 has always seemed (go me anyway) seemed the most exploratory looking Starship to me!

[@t.bunker2511]

Well, while USN aircraft carriers are big; compare the American carriers to the current Carnival or Royal Caribbean mega-cruise ships that are rivalling oil tankers. And the only carry provisions for several weeks. Imagine the increase in tonnage if they sailed for 6-month without resupply. Even the American carriers travel with their own support ships and have to provision every few weeds even when the are on-station for months.

[@forumicebreaker]

The "bringing the family" with for crew members angle might need to be pondered more. There were school's on board, we saw the kids. Was it too big? Maybe. But, shooting off into "what if" territory, what if Starfleet possibly had a "generational" ship idea in the backroom drawings for galaxy expansion of the Federation underneath it all? Not until Voyager did the exploration of the Delta Quadrant come into fictional terminology. What if the Galaxy class had the ultimate missions of the extended, like, past the normal life expectancy of a human's Starfleet career? With the family, kids, and more people on board, that ship could go farther. Perhaps that Captain's Yacht was the last ditch ship the entire time? On a generational ship, the Star Drive could be lost, the saucer could drop down on to a planet and become a new colony base...., the Calypso and shuttles then being the remaining ships for the new far out in the galaxy stranded colony of families to use. Perhaps, that's why the main hanger bay is so large and on top of the saucer?

[@Cre80s]

I always thought the "surplus accomodations" existed to be able to serve as mass evacuations on a (nearly) planetary scale. It's a ship of peace, and intended to help in emergencies over others, not just themselves.

[@cgarciahfcu]

Yes it was too big. I love the Enterprise D, but the writers got too carried away. No amount of explanation will excuse that.

[@Revkor]

ten year tour

[@tobiasbandt161]

The size of the ship wasnt only a result of accomadations, science labs and long term mission specific stuff, but i'd say it was also a result of the engines itself. To quote Charles Tucker III when he saw the connies nacelles: "look at the size of those things!" Since the conni they had to introduce a whole different warp-factor-scale... If the galaxy was smaller, there wouldnt have been enough space for the nacelles, the core, or even if you'd give it the huge nacelles there wouldnt have been room for the impulse drives (including fusion reactors) and thrusters to steer the enormous mass around... To achieve the speeds they needed to explore outside the allready explored space in a reasonalbe timeframe the needed the huge nacelles and the engine anyway. Making the rest of the ship big too just made sense from an engineering point of view.

[@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.

[@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.