A little short for a starship, isn’t he?
Have you seen container ships? They’re perpective-bendingly massive. 400m is a quarter of a mile.
I'm not kidding when I say for the FIRST time I actually can grasp the size
Submitted 7 months ago by Stamets@startrek.website to risa@startrek.website
https://startrek.website/pictrs/image/0639a790-70ff-44af-b467-ddbd43f0af37.jpeg
Comments
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Hotdogman@lemmy.world 7 months ago
That’s like, half of a half mile.
soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
I came to Lemmy to avoid this Reddit style comment
Szymon@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
It’s as if it’s two times half of a half of a half of a mile
PlasmaDistortion@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Thanks because this image still didn’t help. Most people don’t see container ships very often.
hitmyspot@aussie.zone 7 months ago
Or 40% of a kilometre.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Nobody knows what kilometres are.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Sorry, they use miles in Star Trek. Ha ha, America wins. Stupid Europe and your stupid metric system and stupid rail network and stupid universal healthcare.
Album@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Yeah but youre also saying that the bridge of the enterprise was about the size of a container, which i am not sure is accurate.
shalafi@lemmy.world 7 months ago
We get oil exploration rigs docking in our little port downtown. Mind bending is right.
Sat in the park and watched one roll in one day. Went from:
There it is!
Damn, looks pretty big.
My. God.
peopleproblems@lemmy.world 7 months ago
wait, exploration rigs?
Those things that look like platforms rather than boats?
they can dock?
caesar_salad83@lemmy.world 7 months ago
that’s the origin of picard’s famous saying “I live my life a 1.304E-14 parsec at a time”
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Parsecs are units of distance, Han.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 7 months ago
Going by the caption, it’s the container ship they had a hard time visualizing. Seems weird because I’ve seen container ships IRL but never a starship.
agent_flounder@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’ve never seen either. I’ll have to convert this to “cruise ship”
agent_flounder@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Ok… the one I am familiar with is Disney Wonder at 294m long
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I used to work at a port and would see those ships out at sea. They look like they are just offshore.
Then you see the fishing boats go out and all but disappear against the massive backdrop. You realize they’re many many miles out.
Drunemeton@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It seems bigger on TV…
hitmyspot@aussie.zone 7 months ago
TV adds 20 pounds.
ummthatguy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Yeah I’m not seeing how there’s several dozen people moving, working, and living in that.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 7 months ago
A container ships crew is 20-30 people, and that whole thing is mostly containers. I bet they’d fit.
ummthatguy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl 7 months ago
[deleted]jaybone@lemmy.world 7 months ago
But people mainly occupy the saucer portion right? Like they don’t live in the engines.
Looking at OPs pic, that saucer is very small compared to the container ship.
winterayars@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Oxygen is an issue, but heat generation is also an issue.
teft@startrek.website 7 months ago
They sleep in hallways…
iyaerP@lemmy.world 7 months ago
AS much as I enjoy some aspects of Lower Decks, that was one of the most phenomenally stupid decisions that they could possibly have made.
The crew sizes for Federation starships are TINY compared to the actual size of the ships. SNW giving every crew member their own studio apartment is something that reflects the ludicrous amount of empty space that a Federation starship has availalbe to it.
If you ever look at the deck plans, there’s just a crazy amount of space that’s unused.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Maybe if they narrowed that hallway a little, they could all have their own quarters.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 7 months ago
In Strange New Worlds everyone above Ensign apparently has their own studio apartment.
jaybone@lemmy.world 7 months ago
In TNG and Voyager they all did.
grue@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Speaking of which, something funny I noticed about Discovery recently is that Burnham and Tilly continue to be roommates even after
spoiler
Burnham gets her commander rank reinstated
. What’s up with that?
Stamets@startrek.website 7 months ago
You’d be stacking people on one another for sure. However the tight quarters then gives creedence to stuff like Cerritos and Voyager not having thick enough walls/doors to dampen sound. Then Enterprise-D is a whole different beast and it makes no sense for the opposite reason. It’s too damn big with not enough crew. You’d have people working in their own section never meeting another soul during their whole day.
But that brings me to something else (because I have severely unmedicated ADHD and I apologize). Picard Season 3 got rapped for having the Titans bridge be really dark all the time. The lighting of the whole ship was way darker. Surprisingly I actually liked that. It felt like they were on a submarine or some small contained vessel, just then against the harshness of what was outside. That submarine quality really should be used in more shows. I know TOS had random people walking around the corridors (like the famous example of a dude who was turning an invisible valve on a wall) but I like those tight spaces.
Oh and to prove the ADHD? The Crossfield class is 900m long. Roughly. I mean she’s 2/3rds nacelle but still.
grue@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Here’s some more perspective. The aircraft carrier pictured apparently carries almost 2000 people.
FaceDeer@kbin.social 7 months ago
This video has a rendering of the Enterprise D's crew standing in a group on top of the saucer section, to give an intuitive understanding of how ridiculously huge the ship is in comparison.
CarlsIII@kbin.social 7 months ago
Picard Season 3 got rapped for having the Titans bridge be really dark all the time.
Have these people not seen The Motion Picture?
ummthatguy@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Speaking of submarines, SNW s1e4 Memento Mori does a great job with the “flying blind” trope. They even use the “depth charge” trick.
Neato@kbin.social 7 months ago
If we check this image, use the 947' total size, we can estimate the rest of the dimensions. That would put the deck heigh at about 8'. The saucer widest deck lengths at around 450'. Definitely cramped but doable. There's only about 100-150 crew on this version as well. It's essentially a weirdly shaped cruise ship and nearly the size of our world's largest.
SlopppyEngineer@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
This one goes in detail. They’re are a few floors that are just sleeping quarters.
Rud_1UP@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I thought in NG 1000 people lived on it?
xantoxis@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Honestly thought it was way bigger than this.
SeaJ@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Container ships are fucking massive. The Enterprise only held like 1000 people which is only a small portion of a basketball arena.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 7 months ago
Well damn, how tiny was Voyager? It only had like 1-200 people IIRC.
VindictiveJudge@startrek.website 7 months ago
Voyager is just a hair longer than the classic Enterprise, but it’s also chonkier so it has more volume. About 150 people on an Intrepid-class, 200 on a Constitution-class.
ursakhiin@beehaw.org 7 months ago
This Is the 1701, Kirk’s. It only had 430 people on it.
ladel@feddit.uk 7 months ago
[deleted]brianorca@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Then how about this one: a large container ship carries 24,000 TEU which is about 12,000 40 foot containers.
Wilzax@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Per kilogram-meter of cargo transported, container ships actually have some of the lowest emissions of any form of transportation!
Iceblade02@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’d wager that just accounting for emissions in the production of said electric vehicle will make it entirely unable to compete with container ships. Boats are crazy efficient.
Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow@lemmy.world 7 months ago
What kind of emissions are we producing to build the ships?
Wilzax@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Good point, I wasn’t considering production.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I remember many years ago seeing a size comparison between an aircraft carrier and the TOS Enterprise. The aircraft carrier was bigger. I didn’t even know how to process that because of how big the Enterprise seemed to me.
Ryumast3r@lemmy.world 7 months ago
305m is 1000 feet. The USS ENTERPRISE was 342m or 1,123 feet.
A modern day FORD class carrier is 1092 ft or 333m.
For personnel comparison, ENTERPRISE held ~5000 people and a FORD class has between 4-5000 people.
The fact that NCC-1701 only had like 1000 people is…a big difference.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I can understand that on a mathematical level, but on a more emotional one, it’s hard to process. Just like I know that the speed of light is 186,000 mps, but I can’t really fathom how fast that actually is.
ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 7 months ago
This made me realise you could probably fit an entire small town including all it’s drama on a container ship.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
Star Trek: Evergreen
supercriticalcheese@feddit.it 7 months ago
Stuck sideways in hyperplane!
livedeified@lemmy.world 7 months ago
the Enterprise “D” (632.5m long) held 1000 people IIRC. crazy!
aeronmelon@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Even crazier, the Galaxy-class has the capacity to evacuate an additional 10,000+ humanoids.
When you watch videos like this, you realize that 1,000 is not that much against the actual size of the ship. The entire crew can comfortably gather in the main shuttlebay at the same time.
AndyLikesCandy@reddthat.com 7 months ago
I know we only ever see a handful of rooms, that’s fine, but with over 100 crew they always all have personal quarters that are probably the square footage of 3/4’ish containers.
150m in diameter is one way to think about it. But then it’s also 8 containers long, or 25 containers circumference at the largest point down to no more than a few in circumference at the bridge.
You know, that seems tiny, it’s like there’s no volume left for the hardware that needs to be between every room and all over the hull
Nurgle@lemmy.world 7 months ago
More context, Empire State Building is 380m without the spire, 443m with spire and antenna.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 7 months ago
It helps that containers are a standard size.
Comment105@lemm.ee 7 months ago
“I literally can’t fathom”
supercriticalcheese@feddit.it 7 months ago
CoolBeance@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Should we start having villages on boats?
NickwithaC@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Those are called cruise ships and they suck.
BlueKittyMeow@beehaw.org 7 months ago
I really hate/love that is is what actually put the size of those container ships in perspective for me. I’ve seen the massive liquid natural gas tankers and those things are terrifying big but like… I still didn’t get the scale of these. Thanks sci-fi (look you guys that box set of TOS pays off irl!!!) 🤪
(Fr tho, anyone else have that set with the plastic curved cases with one of the uniform colors for each season? Prtty curves, infuriating snag-the-case,drop-the-DVD-on-the-floor-and-swear-and-snag-the-insert-pamphlet-closing-it-up-every-singlegoddang-time. But prtty curves)
MrShankles@reddthat.com 7 months ago
That’s what she said.
brown567@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I grew up near the coast, so this actually helped me conceptualize the size of the starship more XD
CCF_100@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
What’s the Enterprise-E look like in comparison?
Stamets@startrek.website 7 months ago
Enterprise-E is 685ish meters if I remember correctly (previously my favorite Enterprise/Starship). So its not that much longer than the cargo ship.
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Sci-fi has issue with scale a lot of the time. Star Trek is no exception. Population numbers and scale of ships is often really bad.
teft@startrek.website 7 months ago
Look at Deep Space 9 and literally anytime a starship is near it. The scale goes way out of whack.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
In the DS9 title credits you can see engineers repairing the outside of one of the pylons on a spacewalk and the scale feels really wrong
Stamets@startrek.website 7 months ago
Oh agreed but I think there’s one major thing which is what really fucks up how your perceive it. There’s nothing to compare it to.
When we see the ship it’s typically just by itself flying through space where there’s no comparison. Or it happens across a ship but same problem as the Enterprise so no reliable comparison. Orbiting a planet, surveying an asteroid, being yanked into a Pulsar, sitting in front of a Borg cube… All of these huge events have literally nothing reliable that humans are familiar with to compare it to. The closest you can say are the windows but the windows are such strange sizes for what we’re used to that it doesn’t help much.
Honestly the biggest ‘events’ that I can think of in Trek media that demonstrate the size of the ship are usually ones where the ship ends up on a planet. Generations crash land, Into Darkness crashland, Voyagers Blue Alert sequences, Discoverys crash land, etc. The only other one I can think of is from Picard Season 3. The Borg cube in Jupiters eye. That thing is fucking massive and the cube took up an enormous amount of space in it. That really shook the hell out of me in seeing how big that vessel was.
samus12345@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It’s hard for people living on a planet to comprehend how huge space is.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 7 months ago
Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.
Stampela@startrek.website 7 months ago
Ever played Eve Online? The “Noob ship” you get free when yours goes boom is bigger than a fighter jet, the battleships (fairly big) are about 500 meters and the capital monstrosity stuff gets to a plainly overkill 17 kilometers. And in all of this? It’s hard to figure out the small ships actually need a crew and aren’t just the pilot inside
thegiddystitcher@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Zooming in and realising that little nubbin on your Rifter is actually the whole cockpit is quite the shock!