The Enterprise is Insanely Huge

We all know the Enterprise-D is big, but how big IS it? Well, turns out it's massive. Insanely huge, in fact.

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[bpdmf]

You forget that every ship is required to be at least 75% Jefferies tubes and 5% Riker's sex palaces.

[mordavi]

The Enterprise was also expected by Starfleet to be used to carry delegations for peace talks and other gatherings, not to mention for emergency evacuations of whole colonies. So a lot of the extra living space was used in those specific situations and was probably kept mainly offline/powered down when not in use.

[bcnghhwk]

"How do you explain all the empty rooms!?"
of colonists... diplomatic missions... emergency evacuations..."
"Thank you, mister Data...."

[man]

This makes me think of the episode "Remember Me" where Beverly asks Picard why, if there are only 230 people onboard, why there is so much extra space, and Data says something about transportation of colonists, emergency evacuations. That supports the idea that there are thousands of empty quarters onboard even in normal situations.

[sdube]

I actually don't find the empty corridors odd at all, especially the levels with living quarters. If you compare them to apartments or hotels, including massive apartment buildings like in NYC, or giant hotels like Las Vegas, outside of the areas you expect to have people, the average corridor is usually quite empty. You may run into a neighbor from time to time, but they aren't packed with people.

[UnauthorizedExpression]

You forgot that at least 1/4 of that space is for camera crews and directors.

[Platypi]

It's the Federation's flagship, they want to impress people.

[thegardenofeatin]

Early episodes make frequent mention of an "arboretum." Which is a tree garden. The Enterprise D has actual trees growing in it.
Scotty is ushered into unoccupied guest quarters, and marvels at the size of them.
There are multiple shuttle bays and multiple cargo bays.

[QemeH]

This explains how the senior officers can always do these walk-and-talks over miles and miles of corridor and only encounter like one random technician at a console. I always wondered why the halls were so empty on a busy ship. Thanks! :D

[russellhewett]

Scott: "Good lord, man, where have you put me?"
Kane: "These are standard guest quarters, sir. I can try and find something bigger if you want."
Scott: "'Bigger'? In my day, even an admiral wouldn't have had such quarters in a starship!"

[JohnnyWishbone]

"Geordi LaForge living *very* alone..."

Ouch. Even thirty years later, that's a sick burn.

[JaimeWulf]

I'm not sure the "crew" count listed to the Enterprise "D" includes family members...
When they say "crew" I believe they are referring to actual crew members only...
Tagging along with other good comments about evacuation assistance and other things, the ship being so large makes perfect sense...

[RRW]

"We have data for single quarters."


We also have single quarters for Data. *Ba Dum Tiss*

[clearspira]

People do insult the Galaxy class nowadays but honestly it was a perfect ship for the time in which it was built: the Klingons were allies, the Romulans were in hiding, the Cardassians were at peace. No one else was anywhere near the Federation's weight class. Cruising the galaxy in a flying mall isn't all that silly a concept during peacetime and people overlook that it was capable of taking on any conventional threat and coming out on top. The problem was that once the Borg and especially the Dominion appeared the Galaxy class became a huge, lumbering target; which is why we suddenly started to see the Sovereign, Intrepid and Defiant classes appear that did away with many of the Galaxy class's design flaws.

''The Galaxy class is an elegant ship, for a more civilised age'' - Obi Wan Kenobi (probably).

[georgiahoosier]

Probably why the most common thing said on board is "on my way"

[Mephilis]

Once upon a time, I made a scaled representation of the enterprise D for google maps, and then placed it in my home town where my house was. When I saw how many blocks were being covered, I truly understood the magnitude of this ship. I even planned out a walk around the neighborhood to further illustrate the size in my mind.

[iamjoeysteel]

This much space is likely why there are scenes where some decks are compromised, but no one is injured.

[brianedmonds]

If I remember correctly, no one told the artist how big the Ent-D was supposed to be. So he drew it for a crew of 6, 000. When Gene Roddenberry found out, he said they didnt have the budget for that many extras, so they would claim it had 1, 400 or so crew. But it was designed to be spacious living for a crew of 6, 000+

[Nutmeg]

I think I remember Troi mentioning that at least one deck in particular, while giving a tour, was intentionally incomplete (or some terminology to that intent) to give the Enterprise the ability to repurpose it as necessary. Plus, considering the saucer is practically a giant escape pod, you practically want all that extra space for the crew who would otherwise be occupying the other half of the ship and vice versa.

[Shatterverse]

If you remember from the episode which I believe is called *Yesterday's Enterprise* The enterprise is described as carrying some 3, 000 troops or personnel. The ship is built for comfort in the canonical setting, and everybody's quarters are very spacious from a military vessel's point of view. If crewman had bunks instead of quarters, say four crewmen to a unit, you could pack a lot more people in that ship for relatively little change in energy cost. The rest of that ship can easily be assumed to contain equipment, power conduits, bulkheads, weapon subsystems, etc. For example, corridors have multiple security force fields that can be put into place. Without knowing the size of a force field generator, it's difficult to know how much of the invisible space behind the walls is taken up by the machinery necessary to power and control that system, and that's for each independent field generator. They also use force fields to fill hull breaches, which means they're going to have field generators literally crisscrossing the entire hull. That's in addition to the standard issue structural integrity fields, which I imagine are a dedicated subsystem of force fields that have the sole job of protecting the physical hull of the ship from damage. You need space for all of those force field emitters, power systems, back up power systems, batteries and capacitors, etc. And that's just force fields. Grav plating similarly takes up an unidentified amount of space underneath the flooring of any given square foot of ship deck. It could be a meter thick for all I know.