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Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

Are there any other classes of ships in Starfleet similar to the Galaxy class that have families onboard but are made for exploring?

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"That's your plan? Wile E. Coyote would come up with a better plan than that!"
- Crighton, Farscape.

Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :

Um, Nebulas?

Freedoms, Niagaras, and Challengers might be too (unless you consider those "Ambassador-style" designs.)

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Rachel Roberts: "Hong Kong? Nah. Oh, but we can live in China! Yeah, China has great Chinese food!"

(discussion with fellow classmate, 9/5/00)

Mustang Class Starship Development Project

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

I think he means are there any other ships that carry families like the Enterprise D did, not are there other ships in the Galaxy Class Design Family.

Sisko had family aboard the Miranda Class Saratoga (which didn't make alot of sense). One could argue that they were there visiting or something.

Thomas Riker mentioned that he would be eligable to bring family aboard the Ambassador Class Ghandi.

I'd say that Nebbies probably have enough room to carry families as well, but that practice seems to have fallen out of favor with Starfleet. In fact, since the war started, I doubt any civilian family members live aboard Federation Starships.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.alanfore.com

Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :

I would think that most ships could carry families, but the only reason the Galaxy-Class is made such a big deal of is because it was designed not just to carry families, but really to act as sort of a "big-city" kinda enviornment type-thingy, you know? Not just a bunch of apartments, but the whole "suburbian" kind of deal ... it was mentioned that this would be due to the "extended" missions the ship would be going on.

Anyway.

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

Just to show off, I'd like to rattle off a couple of potentially relevant details.

The Saratoga not only had Sisko's wife and kid aboard, but also other civilian-clad individuals including the crying woman who didn't know Jennifer's whereabouts.

Pike's Enterprise had some civilian-clad youngsters aboard as well. Hitchhikers, colonists, or family members? Officers on leave always wore uniforms... Even on uninhabited planets.

Picard was uncomfortable with a ship full of kids, and asked Riker for help. Did the Hood perhaps have kids aboard, to justify Picard's faith in Riker's abilities in this respect?

Starfleet officers seem to take their kids and spouses to assignments if those are aboard space stations or outposts (Sisko and Laforge families as examples). Why would starships be different from space stations? We have seen many an outpost come to harm, so it shouldn't be an issue of safety. Is it accommodation standards? Any starship would seem better equipped than the initial DS9.

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

I'd imagine just about any starship on a low risk mission could support civilians. Now, whether you'd want to live on a Miranda if you didn't have to is another question.

But then, we don't really know what the Saratoga was doing before recieving her call to arms. Perhaps the ship had been making the Earth-Vulcan-Wolf 359 supply run and Sisko saw it as a good chance to spend some quality time with his family.

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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Timo makes some good points as usual. It does seem as though Starfleet has been allowing the officers' kids and civilian spouces to tag along with them for some time (as mentioned, at least since the TNG officers were kids). It's probably a seniority issue as well as a space issue. For example, the senior officers probably qualify to bring family with them as soon as they transfer, while Bob, the first year crewman probably has to serve for a while and, then, if there is room aboard the ship, he can request sanction to bring his family aboard. Stations would have more room, so they can probably qualify faster.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.alanfore.com

Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :

Senioryt does seem to play a role within Starfleet that's missing within the Federation as a whole. One example is junior officers sharing quarters, as seen in "Lower Decks" and "Good Shepherd" - In both instances, there would be enough room for everyone to have their own quarters (assuming, in the latter case, that Voyager's secret crew-replacement cloning lab doesn't really exist). No doubt the official reason is something about building teamwork, etc.

(just occurred to me - the people in "Good Shepherd" were crewmen. Whatever)

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Luke Ford: "What's it like having a dick in your ass?"

Zoe: "Imagine taking your bottom lip and pulling it over the top of your head. You get used to it but it does hurt."

Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

I would have assumed that Voyager's crews sharing quarters might have something to do with their attempts to conserve power.

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Posted by DARKSTAR on :

Ships that can carry families:-

Galaxy
Excelsior
Ambassordor
Nebula

Ship that can't carry families:-

Defiant
Nova
Prometheus
Constellation
Soveriegn

Ships that carry a LIMITED number of families

Intrepid
Akira
Miranda
Souyz

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

If the Excelsior Class is big enough to carry families, so is the Sovereign.

As I said, though, I doubt that the practice of carrying civilians aboard starships was continued during the Dominion War.

I believe that Sisko stated that the Defiant would have "no families" aboard implying two things: A) None of the Defiant Class ships are big enough to carry families and B) that was the exception to the rule at that point.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.alanfore.com

Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :

I think the Soyuz-Class was out of date well before the end of the TOS Movie Run (IIRC), so I doubt they would've carried families, honestly ...

The Intrepid-Class? I gathered the mission profile was one of high danger, mostly skirting the badlands and things of that nature. I suppose as they commissioned more ships, that might have occured, but honestly, the only reason you've got to put that there is because VOY has kids aboard ... of course, have you EVER seen a classroom on VOY?

I'd agree with you on the DEFIANT & PROMETHEUS -- no excuses, these are warships. Pure and simple -- fight fight fight, there's barely enough room for a transporter room.

I don't know if I agree with the SOVEREIGN. Although we've never seen the E-E with families aboard, both FC and I have been during times of crisis in the Federation, times when ALL families may have been removed from starships, so there's no proof in that.

I think the EXCELSIOR and AMBASSADOR listings are just guesses. We don't know for sure.

NEBULA sounds like a good bet, as the ship physically resembles a "sister-Class" of the Galaxy, it's a good bet a lot of the interior features such as classrooms etc. exist.

Posted by Obi Juan (Member # 90) on :

I wasn't aware "Lower Decks" established that junior officers have to share quarters. Thats fairly messed up considering the size of the officer quarters (which probably have more square footage than my entire house). It also seems inconsistant with the egalitarian themes of the TNG+ stuff. I mean obviously Starfleet officers are granted a few more perks, but making junior officers and enlisted double up so that Worf can have three bedrooms plus a study/rumpus room just doesn't seem right.

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Well, the truth is, we don't have facts about hardly any of the ship classes. The Galaxy Class and the Defiant Class are about the only ones in the current era that we know anything about in this area. Voyager is under special circumstances, so we can't infer anything about the rest of the Intrepids and every thing else has pretty much been during war time.

It's all guessing. I'm just saying that size-wise, if the Excelsior is big enough, so is the Sovvie.

And I'm out..

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.alanfore.com

Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :

I'm not as young as I used to be, and my memory is going. Why, I remember back in the winter of '06. . . *falls asleep*

As best I recall, the young officers in "Lower Decks" had to share quarters. I may also be misremembering, but wasn't one of the perks awaiting whoever got the Ops job a single cabin? And we know there's loads of space on a Galaxy, supposedly there are whole decks as yet empty - therefore making them share is for other reasons.

Forgot about power conservation on Voyager - but that's OK, so do the writers, most of the time!

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Luke Ford: "What's it like having a dick in your ass?"

Zoe: "Imagine taking your bottom lip and pulling it over the top of your head. You get used to it but it does hurt."

Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

It's an ensign thing. To build camraderie on a larger vessel. Smaller ships like Intrepids would have no need for that. It's like going to a small community college versus Penn State or Auburn, meeting your entire freshman class in 15 minutes versus being ranked 432nd out of 1300.

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Posted by Austin Powers (Member # 250) on :

IIRC the TNG-TM states that "a huge amount of interior space" aboard Galaxy class ships is empty. I mean, there are obviously whole decks that are left empty say for emergencies etc.
That might be one reason why (junior) officers and the like share quarters, although the ship could easily be outfitted so that everyone could have his/her own room+extra space.

I think it was also mentioned that the Ent-D could carry up to 11.000!! people during rescue missions.
Given the normal crew complement of ~1000 there would be plenty of extra space. (Even if the ship would be cramped like a tin of sardines with 11.000 onboard!)

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Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :

Nebulas may *look* like they'd be all fancy-schmancy Galaxy-ish on the inside, but everything we've seen of them suggests the contrary. The one bridge set we've seen ("Second Sight") is a relatively primitive redress of the E-A/Excelsior bridge. The Battle Bridge ("Redemption") was equally as unsophisticated. The corridors we've seen ("Waltz") is a redress of the Defiant's hallways, and the brig from the same episode was taken from Voyager. Finally, the only quarters we've seen (also "Second Sight") were made from pieces of the Runabout set!

In fact, the only notable comfort we've seen is the Nebula ready room, with its nice desk and comfy sofa. If you look through the door, you can also see a potted plant, apparently sitting on the bridge!

Anyway, the Nebbies are apparently more "utility" kinds of starships, and their patchwork-looking sets are testament to it. All this only points to how much *cooler* the Galaxy class is over everyone else.

The Nebula doubtless would have room for families, but the comfort level is certainly questionable. I've suggested before that the patchwork thing is a result of the inner-modularity of the class - that lack of windows on significant portions of the primary hull would mean that there'd be lots of swappable, mission-specific rooms and such stuffed under there. This goes well with the "utility" description.

Well, the "new" Nebulas we saw towards the end of DS9 could be *nice* Nebulas on the inside...

And while I'm at it, there's no reason Excelsiors and Mirandas and Oberths can't carry famlies (and be refitted to that extent, as the Saratoga must have been - look at the Sisko's quarters windows). After all, they started off carrying crew counts in the hundreds, and from various TNG episodes we know that ships of the early times carry much smaller operational crews in the current times (The Lantree had 26 crew; Brattain, 34, Tsilkovsky, 80; Yellowstone, , etc.). There's plenty of room. Remember, 5000 people are squished into your average supercarrier!

Mark

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"Why build one, when you can build two at twice the price?"

- Carl Sagan, "Contact"

[This message has been edited by Mark Nguyen (edited January 18, 2001).]

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

A potentially related RW reference: I heard the USN and USCG were considering converting old Perry frigates to address USCG shortcomings in the high-endurance cutter department. And one of the main problems was that even after removing all weapons (save perhaps for the amidships gun), the Perry wouldn't have enough internal room! The whole chopper hangar would have to be converted into a stores room and staging area for boarding parties, fitting in proper brigs would be near-impossible, and crew requirements didn't go down much even with the omission of weapons so cabins wouldn't be freed.

So perhaps it wouldn't be trivially easy to house families aboard a 24th century Miranda even if she sailed with 250-300 fewer crew than her predecessors in the 23rd century.

Another related point: constant reconfiguring is probably the norm aboard all starships. That's the easiest way to explain away the fact that Paramount can't afford to give the same sort of internal sets to a ship class in different episodes. Fitting in some families onboard an utilitarian Nebula would probably just involve making X cubic meters of her non-utilitarian. Swap a cabin module here, install a purifier there, redecorate Tactical Analysis into a disco and Signal Processing into a nursery... A layover of a few weeks on a well-equipped starbase, and that's it.

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :

Did Jennifer Sisko actually have a job? Maybe that's how you get to be on smaller ships, if you're a scientist or whatever.

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Luke Ford: "What's it like having a dick in your ass?"

Zoe: "Imagine taking your bottom lip and pulling it over the top of your head. You get used to it but it does hurt."

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

Could well be. But we never ever heard what her job might have been. Apparently, the mirror-universe technohead Jennifer was fundamentally different from the real one, so her profession probably was, too.

We don't really know if it is at all typical for a civilian to HAVE a job in the first place. Perhaps just those who feel they are good in something take that on as a profession, while some disturbed people try to hunt for jobs even though they don't need them, and can't keep them, like Bashir's dad.

But it would make sense for Starfleet to try to make the best possible use of the people it hauls across space. Certainly there could be rules that make it easier for "useful" civilians to come aboard than for "useless" ones. And yes, the rules would be the more relaxed the bigger the ship was.

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Well, hey, If Wesley gets to fly the flagship and Jake gets to fix the station with O'Brien even though there must have been countless scads of officers and crewmen who could've done those jobs, I'd saythe possibilities for civilian advancement in Starfleet are pretty much endless.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.alanfore.com

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

Okay, what about crew quarters on the Galaxy class? It's like being in a 4 star hotel. I bring back my old quote I made a few years ago: "The Galaxy class is a luxury liner." And I'm going to make it even worst: To my opinion it is made for ambassadorial tasks, not for exploring. Why put families on board a ship that goes into unfamiliar and (possibly) hostile territory?

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"That's your plan? Wile E. Coyote would come up with a better plan than that!"
- Crighton, Farscape.

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :

Well, space *is* a nasty place. And with human nature being fundamentally different (they're *okay* with the whole exploration bit), there wouldn't be a short line for civilians (and by extension, families) who wouldn't mind a free trip into the unknown. And if it's dangerous on a fast, maneuverable, heavily armed starship, just think how safe those same people would be on an immobile, defenseless planet!

As for the Enterprise-D being a four-star hotel, it's not a surprise. The Galaxy-class was designed to be the ultimate in creature comfort for the crew and the people they meet. It *is* the flagship, after all, and the head of the fleet's diplomatic arm. Wouldn't you wan tto show your best to all the aliens you'd encounter, and all the friendlies you'd want to impress?

Mark

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"Why build one, when you can build two at twice the price?"

- Carl Sagan, "Contact"

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

And keep in mind the mindset that was going on when TNG was created. Roddenberry was on this all humans are brothers kick. The ship was designed from the very beginning to be this lush human oasis in the middle of space.

You'll note, that with DS9 and Voyager, not only has that mentality disappeared, but the sets, props and even costumes have radically changed to more "realistic" designs.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.alanfore.com

Posted by Obi Juan (Member # 90) on :

True, but I don't really think that these changes really contradict the atmosphere of early TNG. Times have just changed. One gets the idea that in the utopian naivete of 2364, no one ever though a ship like the Defiant would ever be needed again. However, the universe is still a pretty dangerous place and perhaps the USS Ritz-Carlton with everyone's loved ones aboard wasn't such a good idea after all.

Like many of you, I assume that the practice of carrying families aboard Starfleet vessels was completely abolished during the war (even in areas far away from the front). I just wonder if Starfleet would choose to reinstate the policy during peacetime.

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

What I wonder is if Starfleet will actually change the whole interieur of the Galaxy class. I can remember someone saying things like a different saucer with a second warp core for more power. Although this is quit possibly a fan idea, I think that it's a great idea.

Personally I think the Galaxy's were at least temporaraly refitted to carry lots of ground troops and other stuff in the Dominion war.

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"That's your plan? Wile E. Coyote would come up with a better plan than that!"
- Crighton, Farscape.

Posted by Fructose (Member # 309) on :

You know, I read all that stuff about the TNG:TM saying that there's ton's of empty space on board, but the blueprints made by Rick Sternbach show that every deck has something on it. No empty space. So does the TM mean that there are just a bunch of empty quarters? Or did the blueprints just show how the empty decks would be filled? Hmmmm...

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Posted by Toadkiller (Member # 425) on :

I would think they'd almost have to allow families back on ships - especially explorers.

You can't overstate people's wishes to have a normal life even though they are in the "service". I'd think that S Fleet would have a very difficult time getting anyone to sign up for a multi-year mission if they had to leave the spouse and kids at home for 5 years or more. Picard is basically unique on TNG - everybody else seemed to value having a Sig O and eventual family (OK not Worf).

The best model we have for this is the age of sail - most people who had a choice didn't live that lifestyle for more than one 1-5 year voyage. Also East India Company's ships allowed officers to bring family along IIRC - and they may most closely match SF in many ways.

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TK

Posted by Mikey T (Member # 144) on :

One can think of the TNG Blueprints from Stearnbech as the Enterprise-D's configuration before she was shot down at Veridian III. Maybe during the refit the ship was filled up for a reason. And the blueprints did show some empty spaces on some decks.

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If you fancy a threesome at this time of night, you can't get start getting choosey about which particular three!
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Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :

Mark: Regarding the Bridge of the Promethius (Second Sight). I believe that it is common knowledge that the bridges are in modules that can be easily changed. Wonder if the Captain chooses them.

Wartime may see ships like the Galaxy, Sovereign, Nebula, etc. sacrificing family quarters and non-essential rooms to store more tactical equipment like phasers, torpedoes, shield generators... etc.

But that would probably make the ship a flying timebomb. That super-armed ship with lots of weaponry stored in "Unification I" blew up with one phaser hit.

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

I too, think that lower ranks have to share quarters, as a moral/bonding/comradery thing and so the newbies can make friends etc, instead of them just running off to the Holodeck...

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Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :

"...making junior officers and enlisted double up so that Worf can have three bedrooms plus a study/rumpus room just doesn't seem right."

And that's only the Junior Officer's quarters. (Actually, were Worf's quarters that big? I only remember a bedroom and living area).

On a related topic, did anyone else think it weird that Geordi and Data also had the small JO quarters? Sure, Worf was a lowly lieutenant, but Geordi and Data were both lt commanders, one was Chief Engineer, and the other was third in command of the ship. Are there so few quarters-with-windows that the second officer can't get one? Hmm?

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-Bubbles

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :

I wondered that too, at least until I got the E-D blueprints. Apparently, Worf, Data and LaForge had quarters on deck two, with windows in the ceiling. As for size, yes, they were smaller than those granted Picard, Riker, Troi, Crusher and others, who were all down on deck eight.

Data never really *needed* huge windowed quarters, so his digs make sense despite his rank. Worf and LaForge started out aboard ship as Lieutenants junior grade and single, so them starting out there makes some sense (as bridge officers without family, I guess they're entitled to stick close to the bridge). And despite promotions (and Geordi moving down to Engineering), they remained in their usual quarters. 'Cuz they wanted too, perhaps? Jenna D'Sora and Robin Lefler, both Ensigns, got full-size quarters...

Mark

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"Why build one, when you can build two at twice the price?"

- Carl Sagan, "Contact"

[This message has been edited by Mark Nguyen (edited January 27, 2001).]