Spaceship Crew Sizes - A brainbug?

[AirshipFanboy]

A lot of sci-fi ships tend to be huge, but have freakishly small crew sizes for their habitable volume. For instance...

-> Star Trek's Galaxy class ships carry 1,000 beings and are 621 meters long.
-> Babylon 5's Omega class destroyers also carry 1,000 beings, presumably in a rotating section that is roughly 400 meters tall.
-> Imperator Star Destroyers carry 37,000 crew and are 1600 meters long

The real life Queen Elizabeth II is 300 meters long and can carry 2,700 people; this is a luxury liner and not a warship. This means that:

-> A QE2 scaled to the length of a Galaxy class ship could carry 20,000 people easily.
-> A QE2 scaled to the height of the Omega's rotating section could carry 6,400.
-> A QE2 scaled to the length of the Imperator-I could hold 400,000.

Also, note that the Imperator, the Galaxy, and the Omega's rotating section are all a lot fatter than an oceangoing liner - meaning they'd have even more volume than this comparison indicates.

My Point?
I think these small crew sizes are a brainbug caused by space opera writers not realizing the true scale of the massive ships that their special effects departments like to put together.

[AirshipFanboy]

Since this is SDNet, I'm going to immediately cover my ass by giving my retorts to some explanations that may be suggested for this conundrum.

We could argue that the Galaxy wastes most of its space on empty volume and cooshy accomodations. But, even if we assume that 30% of a Galaxy is left empty, and that 20% is reserved for machinery, each Galaxy crewman would still have to have a suite 10 times the size of the QE2 for the volume to even out. And, from TNG's "Lower Decks" it looks like a good portion of the crew reside in dorm-room like areas, and not in the massive multi-room suites that would be needed to fill the Galaxy's huge deck area.

We could argue that only parts of the Omega's rotating section are inhabited, due to the different levels of gravity within it. But, Babylon 5 used most of its rotating section as habitable levels, why couldn't the Omega do the same? Even if it did devote only a small slice of the rotation section to crew quarters, remember that its rotating segment is still a lot fatter than the QE2; the section could be made smaller and still do the same job.

We could argue that the Imperator is an automated fortress consistly mostly of shield generators and other machinery. But the Incredible Cross-Sections cutaways still show enormous segments of the ship devoted to floorspace... far more than it would need to hold 40,000 crew.

[Stark]

Or you could argue that, unlike a luxury liner, population isn't the defining design characteristic. Warships need to be whatever size they are based on powerplants, weapons, protection needed etc, not just 'slap more room on for people'.

In short, if you've built a 1000m long warship due to requirements of the weapons and speed you require, why would you squeeze as many people on it as possible when the ship can be run by far less people?

[AirshipFanboy]

That's true, but... in these three cases I've mentioned a large amount of space is clearly devoted to carrying crew - more than should be necessary.

The Galaxy spends much of its volume on expansive quarters. The Omega's rotation section exists explicitly to provide gravity for crew. The ICS shows that the Imperator has gobs and gobs of floor space that fails to intersect with any prominent pieces of equipment.

My case isn't so much that "the crews are small for the ships size" but rather that "the crews are small for the size that seems to be devoted to carrying crew."

[Stark]

How do you even know how the Omega's (retarded) rotating volume is used? The Galaxy is, in fact, a space luxury liner. The ISD has a few books showing four or five areas of open floor in a ship a mile long. Whoo... hoo?

I love how you don't even attempt to compare these warships to ... y'know... warships. Like modern aircraft carriers, for instance.

[Aeolus]

You could reverse the question. Why do those ships have so many people on them. However Starks already given a good answer to your question. The function of the vessel requires a certain size. Why put more people on it than you need?

[Lord Revan]

also how many of those people are troopers/pilots/passengers/ect. GCS have civilians in addition to the main crew and ISDs have pilots and ground troops and Omegas have at least Pilots (dunno if they got ground troops as well).

I just checked Globalsecurity.org (there's a link in the main site) and Nimitz-class carriers have crew of 5680 (3200 main crew and 2480 air wing) and they're mere 332.85 metres long.

[Furlong]

If you look at the ICS for the ISD, you'll see that the main hull area is devoted to power plants, perishable storage, fighter bays, weapons etc. the area with the crew is the superstructure.

As for the Galaxy, it is stated, IIRC, that it is designed to be able to take on a large number of people for emergencies. Trek design philosophy revolves around the idea of the Swiss Army Starship.

[Darth Tanner]

I was going to expect you to argue that the brainbug would go the otherway, with ships having far too many crew.

What exactly do the 37,000 on a Star Destroyer do exaclty in a droid economy?

the Omega's rotating section

The bridge isn't in this section though is it, which raises the question of what is actually spinning, the section or the ship.

Also as has been said, warship and spaceships in general will use up more space for engines and stores rather than crew than a liner that has the sole purpose of holding people.

Both the Galaxy and Star destroyer use up pretty much all of their interior volume on the main reactor, engines and fuel cells. The galaxy has the large saucer section but have you seen the size of the quarters? Not to mention its shuttle bays and fighter hangers.

[Lord Revan]

I was going to expect you to argue that the brainbug would go the otherway, with ships having far too many crew.

What exactly do the 37,000 on a Star Destroyer do exaclty in a droid economy?

without a crew break down it's hard to say does it or does it not include startfighter pilots/support crews and ground forces (those AT-ATs didn't get teleported from Corusant to Hoth after all), also empire has something of an anti-droid bias.

[Molyneux]

I was going to expect you to argue that the brainbug would go the otherway, with ships having far too many crew.

What exactly do the 37,000 on a Star Destroyer do exaclty in a droid economy?

without a crew break down it's hard to say does it or does it not include startfighter pilots/support crews and ground forces (those AT-ATs didn't get teleported from Corusant to Hoth after all), also empire has something of an anti-droid bias.

Remember that in the SWU a large(ish), expensive fleet of mostly droid-controlled ships was lost irrevocably when the few commanding crew were compromised. The anti-droid bias has good reasoning behind it.

Also, I seem to remember from the TIE Fighter manual (wherever that falls in canon) that a given Star Destroyer contains a fairly large area given over to recreational space - essentially an internal mall?

[AirshipFanboy]

How do you even know how the Omega's (retarded) rotating volume is used?

Why else would you have a giant roating block on a spaceship other than to provide gravity for the crew? And if only a small slice of the Omega's spin-section is used for accomodations - that would only support my position - that B5's writers didn't consider the scale of the ship when they decided how many people it would carry.

The Galaxy is, in fact, a space luxury liner.

And, its looks like its even more spacious than the show depicts. While the senior officers may have had multi-room suites, Data and Worf didn't, and nor did the junior officers shown in Lower Decks. Data's quarters certainly aren't the size of ten luxury liner cabins.

I love how you don't even attempt to compare these warships to ... y'know... warships. Like modern aircraft carriers, for instance.

I was hoping that comparing them to the QE2 (a ship that provides generous passenger space) would make my point for me better by leaving less doubt that the crew complements were low. But, since you cried about it, I will do an aircraft carrier comparison.

According to this Naval Technology site, Nimitz class aircraft carriers carries over 6000 crew and have 330 meters long flight decks. So...

-> A Nimitz scaled to a Galaxy's length could carry 40,000 crew
-> A Nimitz scaled to an Omega rotating section could carry 10,600 crew
-> A Nimitz scaled to an ISD's length could carry 680,000 crew

In other words, if we pretend these ships are using space like an Aircraft Carrier, we get even higher "expected" crew complements.

And, I would've used Lord Revan's lower numbers for the crew, but I did these calucations a few hours ago, and I don't think changing them makes much of a difference.

You could reverse the question. Why do those ships have so many people on them. However Starks already given a good answer to your question. The function of the vessel requires a certain size. Why put more people on it than you need?

I'd be perfectly happy to say that all of these ships have tiny crew but are highly automated. My problem is, it seems that they're devoting lots of space to what I think is habitable volume, while having crews that are relatively small.

Reversing the question would be asking why they devote all this stupid space to accomodations when the ships are huge to begin with.

The ISD has a few books showing four or five areas of open floor in a ship a mile long. Whoo... hoo?

without a crew break down it's hard to say does it or does it not include startfighter pilots/support crews and ground forces (those AT-ATs didn't get teleported from Corusant to Hoth after all), also empire has something of an anti-droid bias.

Well, I checked Wookieepedia, my numbers were wrong, still in the same soccer field; I looked at the crew instead of the total complement.

According to officially available statistics, Imperial-class Star Destroyers had at least 37,000 officers and crew. Counting the stormtrooper complement (one division or legion, 9,700 men) would total 46,700. This would include a stormtrooper detachment, starfighter pilots, and support craft pilots.[5]

AND NOW, provided by the back of my envelope... some Star Destroyer capacity calculations...

In this picture, the rectangular "castle" on the back of the ISD is mostly deckspace. A top view from the Essential Guide to vehicles and vessels shows that the castle is about 700 meters long and maybe 350 meters wide.

If we scale a Nimitz up to the length of the castle (not the whole ship!), we would have a Nimitz with a crew of 57,000 (greater than the ISD's complement). If we scale up a QE2 to the length of the castle, we would get a QE2 with a crew of 34,300 (a little below the ISD's complement).

If we take into account how wide the castle is, then the superstructure itself should be more than sufficient to hold the 37,000 crew and troops of an ISD. And there are more peopled areas than just the castle; take a look at the forward region above the hanger, or the windows lining the bridge tower and brim trenches.

[Zixinus]

The problem is also supplies: starships are by nature isolated from any outside source, so the ship has to carry everything. Food, water, air, etc. If you add stuff like a biosphere, then even more space is devoted.

I don't know about scaling, but you can say that for the average crewmen you have to carry 10 times more supplements then the crewman takes.

Furthermore, a starship has to carry stuff that a luxury liner or even a aircraft carrier doesn't and I am not talking about supplies: nuclear reactor (yes, yes, some aircraft carriers have nukes to roll, however an average starship's reactor would make that one look like a foot dynamo), fuel (not just for the reactor, but propellent), shielding, a series of extra equipment (which can range from solar wind scoops trough FTL drives to holodecks), other and smaller ships or landers, etc.

Rocket propellent is especially an issue (IF the ship uses a rocket engine), since lighter propellent gives you better performance. The lighter the propellent, the less dense it is, thus more space is needed to store it accurately.

[Pablo Sanchez]

-> A Nimitz scaled to a Galaxy's length could carry 40,000 crew
-> A Nimitz scaled to an Omega rotating section could carry 10,600 crew
-> A Nimitz scaled to an ISD's length could carry 680,000 crew

In other words, if we pretend these ships are using space like an Aircraft Carrier, we get even higher "expected" crew complements.

What is this obsession with the number of crew a ship "could" carry? It doesn't mean anything, the real question is how many the ship should carry. Additional personnel above the minimum (including replacements for anticipated casualties) required for efficient operation of the ship are dead weight, because they require more living space, more mass and space devoted to stores and supplies, and more power devoted to life support.

A lot of the ship functions are probably automated, and not even necessarily by droids. For example, each of three main batteries on an Iowa class battleship has a crew of 94 men. Most of the tasks done by these men would, on a Star Destroyer, probably just be automated by systems by the turret itself (e.g. loading, aiming, etc.)

[AirshipFanboy]

doesn't mean anything, the real question is how many the ship should carry. Additional personnel above the minimum (including replacements for anticipated casualties) required for efficient operation of the ship are dead weight, because they require more living space, more mass and space devoted to stores and supplies, and more power devoted to life support.

As I said before, I'm trying to go by the space these ships devote to carrying crew. I'm just using the amount it "could" carry just as a frame of reference. This is why I also made comparisons with the rotating section and with the Star Destroyer superstructure.

[Stark]

Why else would you have a giant roating block on a spaceship other than to provide gravity for the crew? And if only a small slice of the Omega's spin-section is used for accomodations - that would only support my position - that B5's writers didn't consider the scale of the ship when they decided how many people it would carry.

Dude, the very existence of that retarded rotating section shows how dumb the B5 writers are. But you can't piss and moan about it being 'too big' for the crew when you have NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT'S EVEN IN THERE. You also don't know how the habitable volume is spread around the rest of the ship, and if most of it's outline volume is habitable AT ALL.

And, its looks like its even more spacious than the show depicts. While the senior officers may have had multi-room suites, Data and Worf didn't, and nor did the junior officers shown in Lower Decks. Data's quarters certainly aren't the size of ten luxury liner cabins.

Yeah, it's huge. Did you know it has a giant five storey shopping mall? Or giant cargo bays? Or that much of the secondary hull is uninhabitable? Whoops, turns out simplistic analysis is often wrong.

I was hoping that comparing them to the QE2 (a ship that provides generous passenger space) would make my point for me better by leaving less doubt that the crew complements were low. But, since you cried about it, I will do an aircraft carrier comparison.

According to this Naval Technology site, Nimitz class aircraft carriers carries over 6000 crew and have 330 meters long flight decks. So...

-> A Nimitz scaled to a Galaxy's length could carry 40,000 crew
-> A Nimitz scaled to an Omega rotating section could carry 10,600 crew
-> A Nimitz scaled to an ISD's length could carry 680,000 crew

In other words, if we pretend these ships are using space like an Aircraft Carrier, we get even higher "expected" crew complements.

And, I would've used Lord Revan's lower numbers for the crew, but I did these calucations a few hours ago, and I don't think changing them makes much of a difference.

Um... so you missed the point. Did you even look at what the Nimitz's crew DOES? That's right, half for flight crew alone! How big is the fighter complement of the ISD compared to Nimitz again, and how much droid automation is helping the crew? Hmmm, looks like mindlessly scaling the population is a dumb idea!

I'd be perfectly happy to say that all of these ships have tiny crew but are highly automated. My problem is, it seems that they're devoting lots of space to what I think is habitable volume, while having crews that are relatively small.

Reversing the question would be asking why they devote all this stupid space to accomodations when the ships are huge to begin with.

So maybe it's not habitable volume, and maybe things like the quoted ISD crew figures are unreliable. ZOMG. You know the old WEG stats said Executor had a crew of like 250,000 right?

AND NOW, provided by the back of my envelope... some Star Destroyer capacity calculations...

In this picture, the rectangular "castle" on the back of the ISD is mostly deckspace. A top view from the Essential Guide to vehicles and vessels shows that the castle is about 700 meters long and maybe 350 meters wide.

If we scale a Nimitz up to the length of the castle (not the whole ship!), we would have a Nimitz with a crew of 57,000 (greater than the ISD's complement). If we scale up a QE2 to the length of the castle, we would get a QE2 with a crew of 34,300 (a little below the ISD's complement).

If we take into account how wide the castle is, then the superstructure itself should be more than sufficient to hold the 37,000 crew and troops of an ISD. And there are more peopled areas than just the castle; take a look at the forward region above the hanger, or the windows lining the bridge tower and brim trenches.

Like Pablo says, looking for how many people you can squeeze into what you have decided is the habitable volume is totally meaningless. The crew sizes in most fiction probably ARE bunk. Your analysis, however, is retarded. Saying 'oh noes the whole population can fit in the tower' is fucking retarded, when you can squeeze the crew of ANY ship into some small portion of it. That doesn't mean they can do their jobs, be supported and fight the ship in that volume, particularly when the layout of the ship is NOT dictated by crew volume concerns (particularly in the case of the ISD). They're warships of largely unknown requirements and layout, not convention halls.

Can you demonstrate (for instance) that removing the 'wasted' volume from an ISD would allow it to still function effectively?

[AirshipFanboy]

So maybe it's not habitable volume, and maybe things like the quoted ISD crew figures are unreliable.

Yes, that's occured to me.

Like Pablo says, looking for how many people you can squeeze into what you have decided is the habitable volume is totally meaningless. The crew sizes in most fiction probably ARE bunk. Your analysis, however, is retarded. Saying 'oh noes the whole population can fit in the tower' is fucking retarded, when you can squeeze the crew of ANY ship into some small portion of it. That doesn't mean they can do their jobs, be supported and fight the ship in that volume, particularly when the layout of the ship is NOT dictated by crew volume concerns (particularly in the case of the ISD). They're warships of largely unknown requirements and layout, not convention halls.

Can you demonstrate (for instance) that removing the 'wasted' volume from an ISD would allow it to still function effectively?

Point conceeded. I don't really know what all that deckspace is doing.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

There may be a major difference between the number of crewers that a ship can operate with and the number that it actually has, because of maintenance issues.

For warships, that also involves damage control. In my own writing I have, for instance, the operational combat crew of a 23 million tonne battlecruiser (/empty/ mass, try some 90 megatonnes fully loaded) as 15,500. The embarked crew? 30,000. They have such population sizes, combined with conscription, as to make it quite sensible to place more than 14,000 extra crewers on a ship to reduce burdens on one hand, and on the second, in action to basically provide more than ten thousand extra pairs of hands for damage control.

Now that brings up the other problem with your issues: You're using length or height. The correct calculation would be volume. And it's true that for volume considerations these ships are hugely undermanned. Hell, at a volume of more than 75 million cubic meters, those battlecruisers I just described are massively undermanned, too! But that's because they're people playing around with power production in the 1x10^19 watts range; obviously they're sophisticated enough to have massive automation, and on top of that, there's simply massive areas filled with fuel and other stores. And large pieces of equipment which may need little maintenance and are only infrequently accessed. Or that are simply laden with layers after layers of immensely thick hull armour. Or are void spaces for absorbing combat damage.

And those factors apply to every single space combat warship out there shown in sci-fi pretty much.

[Ted C]

Also, note that the Imperator, the Galaxy, and the Omega's rotating section are all a lot fatter than an oceangoing liner - meaning they'd have even more volume than this comparison indicates.

My Point?
I think these small crew sizes are a brainbug caused by space opera writers not realizing the true scale of the massive ships that their special effects departments like to put together.

I'll point out that the QE2 is designed specifically for transporting large numbers of people. A warship has many other uses for its volume. It needs to carry weapons, ammunition, fuel, possibly transported vehicles (fighters, landing craft, surface vehicles, etc.), high-performance engines, physical armor, sensors, counter-measures, and possibly other sci-fi-world specific equipment. Many of these burdens can easily consume a large portion of the ship's volume.

At the same time, advanced computer technology should allow automation of many features that are handled by human crew today, reducing the crew requirement.

I don't see any obvious reason why a futuristic warship couldn't operate with a relatively small crew. A Virginia-class cruiser is 178 meters long and carries a crew of 562. Scaled up to the size of the QE2, it could theoretically have a crew of 3,000, but would all those extra bodies improve its combat performance? Most of the ship's weaponry is computer-controlled. How many more people would it really require to handle the extra maintenance?

[Big Orange]

The most egregious examples of small crew sizes for space bound warships is seen in Aliens and Alien: Resurrection; it is clear the USS Sulaco and USM Auriga were driving by advanced AI mainframes, but there is no excuse for their minimal crew compliments (the nearly four kilometer long Auriga only had a crew of about 45!).

[Nephtys]

The most egregious examples of small crew sizes for space bound warships is seen in Aliens and Alien: Resurrection; it is clear the USS Sulaco and USM Auriga were driving by advanced AI mainframes, but there is no excuse for their minimal crew compliments (the nearly four kilometer long Auriga only had a crew of about 45!).

Aliens is pretty terrible for having a kilometer sized military spacecraft crewed by what... 15 people? But they had SOME in-universe reason for small crews, if not crews that tiny. To survive FTL travel, humans have to be put into stasis. The stasis equipment is presumably fairly bulky or whatnot. Still, you could have crammed a few hundred in, not.. fifteen.

[Typhonis 1]

Sulaco , according to the Colonial Marine Techincal Manual, had space and freezers for a crew of up to 90. With addtional space in the cargo hold for up to 2000 more.

[Stark]

Hooray for made up shit? Although it is clear that they deliberately sent a small group in order to be an evil company-military conspiracy. Sulaco is probably just as small as military light carriers get.

[Junghalli]

I'll second what Pablo said. Those ships are likely a lot more heavily automated than modern sea ships. Considering the rate at which computers are advancing it's almost certain that realistically a lot of stuff that gets done by humans on a modern ship will be automated on a space ship from hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

Ships being disproportionately large can easily be explained by bulky equipment. Whether it's automated or not there's probably going to be hard limits on how small you can make the components and get optimal function out of them.

A good example is to think of a realistic hard SF starship. It'll probably be huge, but mostly a flying fuel tank with a big engine strapped to it; the crew will likely be tiny in comparison to its size, especially since more crew means more deadweight in supplies, which reduces rocket performance.

[Sea Skimmer]

The largest oil tankers and container ships in the world today are already automated enough to need only about six or seven people to man the bridge and engine room at any given time, and thus need total crews.. of only about thirty to forty. These ships can displace more then ten times what Queen Elizabeth II does.

I'll point out that the QE2 is designed specifically for transporting large numbers of people. A warship has many other uses for its volume. It needs to carry weapons, ammunition, fuel, possibly transported vehicles (fighters, landing craft, surface vehicles, etc.), high-performance engines, physical armor, sensors, counter-measures, and possibly other sci-fi-world specific equipment. Many of these burdens can easily consume a large portion of the ship's volume.

Quite true, and in fact QE2 also uses a vast amount of internal volume for tasks besides merely accommodating people, like having absolutely huge dining rooms with 20ft ceilings, indoor swimming pools, theaters ect… all because the ship is a luxuary liner. So in fact her normal complement and crew of 2,700 is absurdly less then what the ship could actually carry if it was a pure transport. In fact when QE2 was used as a troop ship in the Falklands war she had some 3,650 personal onboard, but this was still no where near using all available space.

RMS Titanic for another example, which was designed primarily to transport huge numbers of immigrants with a minimal of accommodation (despite being famous for luxury, immigrants are how she was supposed to make money), could carry 3,500 passengers and crew. Her gross tonnage (measurement of internal volume not to be confused with GRT) meanwhile was about 46,000, while QE2 is about 70,000 gross tons. The new Queen Mary 2 meanwhile is some 150,000 gross tons and carries about 3,800 people.

The original Queen Mary of 1930s vintage, by this point immigrant traffic was dead and so everyone had a fairly good standard of accommodation, was designed for about 3,000 people on 80,000 gross tons. However in WW2 she was converted into a troop transport with a capacity for about 15,000 solders (the maximum ever carried was slightly over 16,000) plus something like seven hundred crew. Many other big liners were converted to transport 10,000-12,000 men at a time.

SO yeah… trying to figure out how many people a freaking warship should carry based off an examination of luxury liners is really pointless.