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Estimating a ship's crew complement!
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: [QB] I had this possibly brilliant, probably not-so-brilliant idea just now. I'd be very surprised if no one's tried it before, but [i]I've[/i] never seen it... ;) Why not count the number of escape pods on a ship and use that to estimate how many people would normally be on board? I started with the TNG:TM, since the guys who helped design the Enterprise-D would know the most about how those lifepods work and how many would be needed. According to the TM, the Galaxy class carries 400 lifepods, designed to normally carry 4 people each (max 6). So, multiply that and you get 1600 people that can fit into all the escape pods -- plenty for the normal complement of 1000. So, let's assume that Starfleet wants to overestimate and have approximately 1.6 times the space vis � vis the normal crew complement, for safety's sake. Now, let's test this out on the other ships we've seen: (Note: Since the TNG:TM says that pods can fit up to 6 people, I'm going to assume that most smaller ships fit 6 people in every pod by default -- the numbers fit better that way, anyway.) -- Intrepid class: I've counted 42 pods on the physical model (pics from EAS). Now, 150 crew * 1.6 is 240. Divide that by 6, and you get 40 pods. -- Sovereign class: I counted 200 life pods. Now, if we assume a crew of 850 (semi-official stat) * 1.6 equals 1360. Divide that by 6 to get 226 pods. The Sovereign might be slightly under-equipped with pods, but it's still close enough for me. -- Defiant class: The DS9:TM deck plans (crappy though they might be) show 16 escape pods. I seem to recall a couple more in the Deck 2 "nose" section (seen ejecting in "Valiant"), but I'll leave them out for our purposes. Take a crew of 50 * 1.6 = 80. Divide that by 6, and you get 13 pods. Plenty of room. -- Nebula class: Assuming a standard Galaxy-class model part set, you lose 36 escape pods in adding the dorsal pod and redesigning the engineering hull. So there's a huge excess of pods on the Nebula for a crew of 750. (I won't do the math here, it's obvious.) But then, we always knew that the Nebula was a big ship for its type anyway. -- Nova class: This is the first one that seems to run into trouble... I only counted 10 pods, all on the dorsal surface. With a normal crew of 80 (ref: "Equinox"), they'd need space for at least 128 people. Those 10 pods would only have about half that space. (Possible explanation: the pods on the underside are covered under blow-away hatches like on the Defiant. But that'd be inconsistent design.) So, let's try some extrapolation here: -- USS Pasteur: I count 108 pods in the engineering hull, and maybe another 100 on the sphere (it's tough to tell without a decent forward view). That gives a crew complement of about 780 crew (with 6) or 520 crew (with 4 per pod). Seeing as how that's an awful lot for a 300-meter medical ship, though, it makes sense that they'd build in a lot of extra pods for the patients. -- New Orleans class: I counted 108 pods on the model: 50 on the underside of the saucer in Okuda's color model, 46 on the top in Bernd's schematic, and 12 on the engineering hull in Bernd's side schematic. So, take 108 times 4 (for a Galaxy-era ship), divide that by 1.6, and you get a crew complement of 270. I think that's just about perfect! -- USS Prometheus: I counted twelve pods. Well, even if it's a warship, that's just dumb, and I don't think that a ship that big (especially one that needed crew for three separate sections) would have a crew of only 72. I guess we'll have to assume that they had a lot more pods protected under the ship's armored plating. -- Saber class: Based on the Fact Files schematics, I counted 108 hatches, which again translates into a crew of 270. That's a lot for a ship of only some 170 meters! But... the escape pods look kinda small to me. Let's see what we get with my Federation Models model of the Saber I've got sitting on my desk: It's 14 cm long, and the escape pods are 0.3 cm long and 0.2 cm wide. If we translate that to meters, that means the escape pods are 3.6 meters long and 2.5 meters wide. Assuming they can be no more than 3 meters tall (to fit into the deck structure), that means there's slightly less internal space to fit people into. So, let's say the pods fit only 3 people normally -- that gives us a crew complement of 202 instead. A bit more tolerable, but still a heck of a lot compared to the Defiant and the Voyager. -- Akira class: I count 72 pods on the Fact Files schematic. With six people per pod, that yields a crew of 270. Or, with no margin for error in pods, that's a crew of 432. -- Steamrunner class: I count 88 pods on the Fact Files schematic. With six people per pod (the Sovereign-types), that yields a crew of 330. That's actually just about right. ...So... I guess this isn't [i]quite[/i] the magical solution I was hoping for when I started this message. After all, it depends on how much thought the ship designers put into the design, and sometimes it's not all that much, is it? Oh well... at least, I think it can still be used as a guide alongside other rationalizations. What do you guys think? Did I bore you to tears yet? :D [/QB][/QUOTE]
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