Constitution Class Size(And size of Starships in General)

[Zycho32]

I would imagine most of us know the original Constitution specs to heart; Length of 289 meters, Width of 127.1 meters, Height of 72.6 meters. And to a know-nothing layman such as myself, that seems appropriate enough. Or is it?

Given the overall role a Constitution Class was to function as, and the basic needs and working/living space required for 430 personnel, are these dimensions proper? Is a size on the scale of the Abramsverse Constitution(over 700 meters in length) more appropriate?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

It's not just LxWxH. It's also how many decks, then how many decks with rooms reserved for private quarters.

It's never just that simple considering a StarShip seems to have so many different rooms for different things.

 

[blssdwlf]

Given the overall role a Constitution Class was to function as, and the basic needs and working/living space required for 430 personnel, are these dimensions proper? Is a size on the scale of the Abramsverse Constitution(over 700 meters in length) more appropriate?

To me it isn't really a question of is it proper for 430 people to function because 430 did fine in the series. It's more a question does everything as seen inside the series fit into those dimensions. And from testing that out, the answer is no for the 289m size Enterprise. It needs to be scaled up. I can only imagine that the Abramsverse ship might also have the same problem if someone should test that out too...

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

To me it isn't really a question of is it proper for 430 people to function because 430 did fine in the series. It's more a question does everything as seen inside the series fit into those dimensions. And from testing that out, the answer is no for the 289m size Enterprise. It needs to be scaled up. I can only imagine that the Abramsverse ship might also have the same problem if someone should test that out too...

Can you explain the Math / Geometry that you used to come to that conclusion?

 

[trekfan39]

Can you explain the Math / Geometry that you used to come to that conclusion?

Yes please! other then the bridge turbo lift issue I can't think of a reason the TOS ship should be scaled up but people keep saying it's to small which I don't understand. The CVN 65 isn't much bigger and the deck count is about the same but has a crew of around five thousand so how can the TOS Enterprise not have room for 430 people?

 

[StarCruiser]

People don't understand the difference in size between a person and a 947 foot long ship...

In the days of sail, it was common for a frigate of around 200 feet (counting the bowsprit) to have 3-400+ men on board. A ship of the line - easily over 5-700 men. Yes, it was tight.

A super carrier usually has a total complement of around 6000 in a ship a bit over 1100 feet long (320-330 meters). Also fairly tight but, workable.

A starship has to carry all of the stores and spare parts and equipment that a naval vessel today would not have to carry. It has to safely house it's crew and provide literally everything they need to survive for years at a time. 400+ people in a 947 foot ship is definitely doable.

Now, if you argue that the hanger doesn't fit or the turbolift to the bridge MUST fit inside the dome (God, that argument again?) then yes, the TOS Enterprise needs to be a little bit bigger. About 1080 feet (329 meters) would be more than enough for everything to fit.

There is NO reason it needs to be 700 meters long. It's completely pointless and excessive. Even in a future of plenty, it's wasteful to build ships bigger than needed for the job. It's a waste of resources and would require larger facilities to support, more people and/or more equipment to operate and maintain and so on and so forth...

 

[Tenacity]

I can only imagine that the Abramsverse ship might also have the same problem

If the size of the crew in the Abrams-Enterprise are scaled up along with the ship (not just the increase in length but the cubic), then the Abrams-Enterprise would be just as crowded as the Roddenberry-Enterprise.

The CVN 65 isn't much bigger and the deck count is about the same but has a crew of around five thousand

The aircraft carrier is blocky, the starship has a unusual shape.

f you argue that the ... turbolift to the bridge MUST fit inside the dome

If I also want there to be a small maintenance access space around the bridge too?

 

[blssdwlf]

The TOS Enterprise's flight deck/shuttle bay is the only set that has a direct connection to an external feature of the ship and can be used for scaling purposes. I didn't use the bridge for scaling because there is no direct opening where an object passes through it from the outside into the bridge (or vice versa.)

Many moons ago I modeled out the Enterprise flight deck/shuttle bay as close to screen accurate as possible. When placed inside a 947' Enterprise the side bays stick out of the hull so I scaled it up to 1084' prevent the poke thru.

Keep in mind that I don't have a problem with 430 personnel living and functioning in a 947' ship. It's just that it has never been said to be 947' on screen and the one feature that can be scaled against suggests it is larger than 947'.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I would imagine most of us know the original Constitution specs to heart; Length of 289 meters, Width of 127.1 meters, Height of 72.6 meters. And to a know-nothing layman such as myself, that seems appropriate enough. Or is it?

For one thing, the ship was originally envisioned as being much smaller, about 150 meters long. The larger size was retconned into being after "The Cage" but has never actually been canon.

For another, most of the things that fit into the TOS Enterprise (and the TMP refit) don't actually fit inside of a ship that size. The TOS version's sets are too high to fit a vessel that size and the ship would have to be scaled up to about 340 meters to accommodate them. The TMP refit would have to be bigger still, closer to 400 meters, to give room for some of the things we see inside of it.

Given the overall role a Constitution Class was to function as, and the basic needs and working/living space required for 430 personnel, are these dimensions proper? Is a size on the scale of the Abramsverse Constitution(over 700 meters in length) more appropriate?

Depends on what you have in your ship that needs lots of space, but it's clear that a crew of 430 on a ship that size would be insanely cramped unless the entire crew practiced some form of hot-bunking.

 

[Ronald Held]

No evidence of hot bunking,at least among bridge officers.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The CVN 65 isn't much bigger

You're confusing volume with length, or under-estimate the ship's funny shape. The saucer is only 120 meters in diameter, and then only at its thickest deck; the other 6 decks are between 10 and 40 meters in diameter at most.

The secondary hull is about 100 meters long, but is also only about 30 meters wide. And if we consider that the nacelles probably aren't habitable spaces, then the ship's internal volume would be relatively small.

Assume the ship's internal volume is something like 150,000 cubic meters. Assuming three-meter deck heights, that's 50,000 square meters or floor space, or 530,000 square feet. That's enough for a crew of 400 people to each occupy a compartment of about 1,000 square feet (about the size of a two-bedroom apartment) without having to share it with anyone else. If you then add in machinery, turboshafts, the engines, the phaser banks, the shield generators, the hangar deck, the impulse engines and however large the cargo bays are, you get a higher population density which is pretty consistent with what we see on screen.

So 400 people in a ship this size is just about right, IF they have really advanced technology, really good water recycling and very compact ways of storing their food.

On the other hand, the 750 meter Kelvinverse enterprise crams the entire crew into the saucer section and seems to give them a lot more living and recreational spaces, also includes larger laboratory complexes and probably more machinery for fabrication and equipment. The shuttlebay is enormous, as is the engineering complex. They end up having almost the same habitable volume as the smaller version, just with a shit ton of room for OTHER stuff that would have been useful for a ship on a five year mission.

so how can the TOS Enterprise not have room for 430 people?

Because a starship has to carry more than just people.

 

[Mytran]

For another, most of the things that fit into the TOS Enterprise (and the TMP refit) don't actually fit inside of a ship that size. The TOS version's sets are too high to fit a vessel that size and the ship would have to be scaled up to about 340 meters to accommodate them. The TMP refit would have to be bigger still, closer to 400 meters, to give room for some of the things we see inside of it.

Indeed! @blssdwlf did some great work in this using the TMP cargo bay to figure out that the overall ship length would have to be in the area of 1,164 feet (355 metres)
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/tos-enterprise-wip.119751/page-10

That suggests that the TOS-E would have correspondingly larger as well

 

[DanGovier]

I'm currently sticking with 305 metres for my TMP/TWOK build, because at that length the saucer depth is pretty much perfect for accommodating two full-height 2.43m decks with just enough space in between (40cm) for structural members/pipework etc. It certainly couldn't be any smaller, but if I were to make it bigger then all sorts of things wouldn't line up properly.

One of the next things I'm going to do actually, is start making rough mock ups of each on-screen set to see how badly they fit :P

 

[David cgc]

I'm currently sticking with 305 metres for my TMP/TWOK build, because at that length the saucer depth is pretty much perfect for accommodating two full-height 2.43m decks with just enough space in between (40cm) for structural members/pipework etc. It certainly couldn't be any smaller, but if I were to make it bigger then all sorts of things wouldn't line up properly.

You can see in my cutout one of the problems I had with my window-boxes that I had to cheat. You've got the windows on the lower rim of the saucer at a reasonable height, but the upper row is almost sitting on the floor. If I was starting from scratch, I probably would go with a 350-ish meter length and rationalize the size of the airlocks and positioning of the window rows and hope it didn't end up looking too wildly different from the original model.

 

[DanGovier]

You can see in my cutout one of the problems I had with my window-boxes that I had to cheat. You've got the windows on the lower rim of the saucer at a reasonable height, but the upper row is almost sitting on the floor. If I was starting from scratch, I probably would go with a 350-ish meter length and rationalize the size of the airlocks and positioning of the window rows and hope it didn't end up looking too wildly different from the original model.

The upper windows on the saucer didn't sit right with me until I explored the area in VR (

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). Interestingly enough, when you're lounging in a chair they're actually at a decent height for star gazing, and because of the angled nature of the outer hull the inside window frame is another 6 inches or so higher.

I'm still having to shift things around very slightly of course, but so far I've had to make minimal changes relative to the Big Jim Slade blueprints I'm working from.

The only truly unsermountable problem I've encountered so far is being able to fit an additional deck between the bridge and the officer's lounge. I'm going to have to make it so Kirk's ready room and the conference room are towards the front of the teardrop shape, with the officer's lounge wrapped around them in a sort of U shape.

 

[blssdwlf]

@Mytran - thanks

The upper windows on the saucer didn't sit right with me until I explored the area in VR (

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). Interestingly enough, when you're lounging in a chair they're actually at a decent height for star gazing, and because of the angled nature of the outer hull the inside window frame is another 6 inches or so higher..

That's a great visualization Dan - the windows on the lower half can work for lounging around.
When you do try your hand at the interiors, try it with Andrew Probert's set designs as they will fit in a 305m hull.

 

[Longinus]

The saucer windows have always bugged me, and it really doesn't seem plausible to me that they would build all those windows at that height. TOS Connie has the same problem too, though it is less obvious as there are not those stripes at the saucer rim. And of course Franz Joseph famously just downscaled pretty much everything by 20% to make stuff fit in his blueprints. Shuttle bays, TMP cargo deck and rec deck, these just do not fit. The ships would work better if they were 20 to 33% larger. Of course in Kelvinprise scales you run in problems too, as you will either need to have huge amounts of nothing between the decks, or exactly every other deck bizarrely missing all the windows.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The saucer window problem is somewhat worse on the Reliant, where the window rows are closer to the centre of the saucer rim

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

In "Trials and Tribble-ations" Dax does say about how Starfleet really packed the crew in on the old ships, whilst in the films we saw enlisted quarters were barrack-like in their layout with nothing to say that this wasn't the case during the TOS days.

 

[Mytran]

The upper windows on the saucer didn't sit right with me until I explored the area in VR (

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). Interestingly enough, when you're lounging in a chair they're actually at a decent height for star gazing, and because of the angled nature of the outer hull the inside window frame is another 6 inches or so higher.

That's a great visualisation of the interior. While the angle is useful on the upper saucer rim windows though, wouldn't it present a problem on the lower rim? They are already high, so the extra 6" may be too much for some of the shorter crew!

The saucer windows have always bugged me, and it really doesn't seem plausible to me that they would build all those windows at that height. TOS Connie has the same problem too, though it is less obvious as there are not those stripes at the saucer rim. And of course Franz Joseph famously just downscaled pretty much everything by 20% to make stuff fit in his blueprints. Shuttle bays, TMP cargo deck and reck deck, these just do not fit. The ships would work better if they were 20 to 33% larger.

The obvious alternative is that not all of the lights on the hull are windows, or at least not viewports for the crew. I tend to interpret many of them as enclosed sensor beam units. In fact, the position of them on the TMP saucer rim is more than a little similar to the lateral sensor array on Picard's ship - a precursor, perhaps?
At any rate, having many of the "windows" as "sensors" would help justify the high number of them on the Engineering hull and dorsal!

Of course in Kelvinprise scales you run in problems too, as you will either need to have huge amounts of nothing between the decks, or exactly every other deck bizarrely missing all the windows.

Maybe not all the decks have windows. Really, with all the hi-res screens available, it's not like anyone would really need a physical window to look out of?