Is the Original Enterprise BIG Enough?? Analysis!!

The size controversy of the Enterprise is going nuts! Some people think bigger is better always, while others are staunchly against this notion. Let’s do some calculations and find out!!

Music credit:
DOS-88 – Checking Manifest [Synthwave]

[williamreynolds]

Matt Jeffries was an aviation engineer and historian. He knew what he was doing when he designed this ship.

[roof_ratcv]

I served aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS America (CV-66) for more than 3.5 years. She was 1, 147.5 ft from the bow to stern, with a 148 ft. beam at the waterline and 248 ft beam at the flightdeck. Not counting the island, there were at least 6 decks used for berthings, galley and messdeck, labs, repair shops and the hanger bay. The Island was 6 decks alone which was used for navigation and control. Then there was an additional 4 decks below the 3rd deck that were used for storerooms, ammunition magazines and the ship's boilers & engines.

We had a ship's company of nearly 2, 700 people permanently assigned just to operate the ship. When underway, when you add the Air Wing personnel and the Admiral's Staff, the number onboard ranged between 5, 500 and 6, 500 people. This is non-wartime manning. If we were at war, then the ship was equipped to handle up to 10, 000 people for long periods of time. Despite the numbers of people on board while the ship was underway, there were more places than you can imagine where people rarely, if ever, went.

So,  a starship of approximately the same length with a crew of only 430 people? Considering that the Enterprise of the UFP more than likely recycled resources in ways to make a 21st century tree hugger shed a tear in envy, a vessel the size of NCC-1701 would be more than roomy enough for 430 to go explore the galaxy in style.

ABE3(AW),
V-2 Waist Catapults
USS America (CV-66)
1981 - 1984

[supergeek]

As an ex submarine sailor, it's *WAYYY* more than enough!

[steelgreyed]

The whole time I'm looking at this Starship to Winnebago comparison, I'm just sitting here and going. "Great. The Enterprise compared to Spaceball's Eagle 5."

[celt]

Fortunately, Kirk saw the overcrowding on his ship and took action by sending a lot of redshirts down to a hostile planet.

[daleeasternbrat]

Funny thing is, the Enterprise has always been this size. I never thought she was too small. When I was a kid I remember getting lost on the USS Franklin Roosevelt, a Midway Class carrier. NCC 1701 is plenty big.

[Privrf]

Love this video.
What people need to remember is that Star Trek was about 20 years after WWII. Roddenberry and other people who worked on Star Trek had participated in WWII or who lived through it. Matt Jefferies served on a variety of bombers during WWII as an engineer understood operating in limited spaces and maximizing those spaces. Not just living space. Applying those real-world experiences to his designs. You may recall the Pilot Enterprise story with Captain Pike had a larger bridge module and a smaller crew completement. Later revision of the TOS Enterprise under Captain Kirk showed the smaller bridge module and the familiar crew of 400+. It is obvious that there was real thought and effort to make the ship realistic to the size of the crew and the mission and proposed tech it utilized.

[hubachecka]

Makes the Enterprise-D a monster in size compared to its crew members. No wonder you rarely see people in the corridors in the show.

[tyro]

Walter “Matt” Jefferies once talked about how he consulted with real Navy Personnel to be sure he made the ship large enough for crew and everything else. At the end of his research he decided to add more than a third to the minimum size. He later came up with the Blueprints and Manuals that were sold back 1970s.

[marcjones]

3 x 8 hour shifts would mean two thirds of the crew at any given time would be asleep or idle in recreation so.... Actual movement of ships population would be at most 200 across the whole ship. You'd pretty surprised how a quiet a place with a 1000 operating personel can be let alone 430.

The old Connie bless her is more than enough to do her job. and she's a pretty ship too.

[michaelmorris]

Hollywood writers, as a rule, have no sense of scale. Roddenberry served in the Army Air Force - he could extrapolate what the size of a ship needed to be to serve it's purpose. In real life and in realistic fiction ships are as big as they need to be to serve their function and no larger. The largest warships in the world, the Ford class, are still as small as they can get away with being while still carrying the planes desired for them. Can we build larger? Well, yeah - there are several cruise ships that are much larger than an aircraft carrier, and oil tankers are larger still - but why make a carrier that big when you can make 2?

EDIT: The service Roddenberry served in has been updated.

[muznick]

But a lot of the space is taken up by the "chompers" and the Omega 13.

[LionkingCMSL]

Don't forget that there was, at one time, a complete set of deck-by-deck plans of the Constitution Class heavy cruiser. It had all the rooms laid out and it showed there was plenty of room for everything. Deck 7, the topmost of the two largest decks, held the sickbay and transporter rooms among other things. If you can find a set of those plans, there were 12 pages in all, it is well worth the money is well as the Technical Manual for the original series. Yes, I own both. :)

[kellymartin]

I lived on an essex aircraft carrier. The crew was in forecastle and other sections of the ship. That said, it housed over 80 aircraft, bombs and missiles, food, other stores, offices, labs, library, barber shop, cafeteria, officer’s mess, bank, post office, radio dept, engineering dept...huge engineering dept ...and more, and over 3600 men. Literally, a floating city. I could walk in the passage way...any passage way and have plenty of space. In other words, it had all that, and plenty of empty space. I think the 1701 is big enough to house 430 people plus stores, etc. Way big enough.

[JackPonissi]

Something worth mentioning: the crew in the original Pilot “The Cage”, canonically ten years before the series and before a major refit, was around 200. It was raised to about 430 for the series for unknown reasons...perhaps someone pointed out that the ship was in fact too big for such a small crew?

[krisgonynor]

The original "Star Trek: Technical manual" shows exactly the layout for the saucer section and most of the rest of the ship. 400+ crew would be more than comfortable for a long voyage. Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country" showed both galleys and bunk rooms. The TNG Technical manual and "Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise gives great info on the layouts of both the Enterprise A (Scotty's book) and the Enterprise D.

[jpaul]

Hell ya the original Enterprise was big enough. As Scotty said once, “NCC 1701. No bloody A, B, C, or D”. I love your videos keep it up

[catfish]

I think you make a very convincing argument, enough so that it seems almost certain there was intent behind the size of the TOS Enterprise. Not only is it large enough, it's just the right size for the crew complement and multi-year missions. Using an RV as a comparison for living space is also a very good and vivid image.

[rangermcq]

Very well done.
Im nearly 60 now, but when i was a kid my folks gave me a gift of the Star Trek USS Enterprise NCC-1701 blueprints, which I looked at as pure gold at the time (I still have them and cherish them still). Shortly after receiving them and learning what they gave as the Enterprises' length (it was 900 and some odd feet as I recall) I decided to go out in the nearby field and measure out and mark these dimensions so as to have a visual reference as to just how big that wonderful ship was. It was a fun undertaking for a young lad who adored Star Trek and dreamed of being on that ship. Well, that visual reference told me one thing... that the Enterprise was/is one big ship!!
Thanks again... very well done.

[RobertBreckenridge]

This is the sort of thing only ultra-nerds argue about and fret over. I can't believe someone decided to make this an issue, and someone else did the math to settle it.
I enjoyed every minute of it.