quote:Originally posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov: Here's an interesting fact from TNG's third season. When Riker, Troi and Lwaxana are taken hostage by the Ferengi, Data and Wesley talk about the academy. Data tells him that 90% of those who finish the academy are not transferred to Galaxy-class starships. Assuming that there are six Galaxys, each with a crew of 1000, there are only 60,000 new ensigns each year. Just taking the statement from Wolf 359 into concideration (40 ships equal 10,000 people) either starfleet has been constantly growing at a constant rate over the past decades (few retirements/deaths) to maintain such a fleet or there are (better: were during TNG) much less ships in service than we currently think. For comparison: The DS9TM assumes that the Cardassian military recruits more than half a million new troops each year.
I don't believe your math is correct.
You're assuming that each Galaxy gets a 1000 *new* ensigns each year (x6), if I'm reading you right. There isn't even that many officers assigned to a Galaxy in the first place, AFAIK - being the large number of civilians/families aboard.
Data inversely says, that 10% of all graduating ensigns get transferred to a GCS -- so the math cannot be figured unless you know the number of ensigns assigned to a Galaxy each year, which was not given -- and/or you need to know what percentage of the ships crew of 1000 are *new* ensigns. In contrast, you can only determine the number of newly assigned ensigns to a GCS if you know the number of SFA grads....
Also, at that point, as far as we know, there were only 5 GCS, being that the Yamato was out of the picture.
As far as Wolf 359 goes and the average of 250 casualities per ship...there must have been a significant number of survivors or a lot of skeleton crew ships, or we have vastly under estimated the number of crewmembers these ships have, as I cannot imagine the Excelsiors, and Nebulae and Ambassadors involved were so lightly manned.
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Amasov Prime
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We don't know exactly how many out of these 1,000 people are civilians so the actual crew of a Galaxy could be 500. We also don't know if those 40 ships had a total crew of 20,000 and fifty percent of them were able to escape. I'm just doing a basic interpretation of the figures given on TNG to get a number they probably had in mind when they wrote the show. That number may not be accurate, but at the moment we have nothing; this could at least give us a hint.
Let's assume that a Galaxy class gets the same percentage of new ensigns a year (in relation to the total number of crewmembers) than any other starfleet vessel. It does not matter if they get 10 or 900 ensigns, the information we get is that consequently 10% of all starfleet crewmen who serve on a starship are stationed on a Galaxy-class vessel. Basically, if 6,000 people on a Galaxy are 10% of the fleet, and we take the 10,000=40 ships figure, Starfleet would consist of no more than 240 ships at the time the statement was made. Of course the fleet is growing and we don't know how fast. But if Starfleet was supposed to have 250 ships at that time, Shelby's statement that the fleet needs a year to return to its former strength after loosing 40 ships sounds reasonable.
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WizArtist II
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Another assumption is that all these greenhorns are all going to the fleet. What about shore installations, various research labs, communications arrays, etc, etc.? There has to be new postings in these areas not to mention where do the crews of ships in for SLEP-like programs ( to borrow from the USN ) go?
We know that stafleet has its own R&D programs and maintenance facilities, but one of the things we never see is the depths of support needed to maintain a fleet.
It's like seeing a bunch of Tomcat crews having adventures with an occasional appearance on deck of a fuel handler, munitions or deck handler or LSO. Not to mention the cooks, barbers, supply, logistics and other personnel of a carrier. If I remember right, there's about 5,000 crewmen on a flattop and only about 200 of them are the glamour boy pilots. While I realize that showing the day-to-day life of a fuel handler isn't exciting, it is an extremely important support function that could cripple an airgroup if they were to be unable to perform their duties.
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When Data says that 91% of fresh ensigns don't get assigned to Galaxies for their first assignments, it still sounds as if this is only a MILD rebuke of Wesley's expectations. That is, Wesley probably was justified in thinking that he'd get a Galaxy, if not the Enterprise. Nine percent is such a big part of the (yearly? bimonthly?) total that one might postulate that Galaxies are actually the appointed ensign acclimatization vessels of the Fleet.
Thus, virtually everybody who graduates (=9%) ends up on a Galaxy at first, before being distributed to the Fleet. The 91% that don't aren't evenly distributed across the rest, either - they end up on other acclimatization vessels before seeing regular service. Some 99% of the Fleet vessels might never receive a fresh ensign at all. Thus the 91%/9% division here gives us no meaningful data on the size of the overall Fleet, except that its needs for fresh blood are adequately served by what is channeled through the acclimatization vessels.
We can't even accurately tell how many ensigns a starship would need per year, not even in the case of the E-D whose overall crew size we do know. Perhaps several thousands of ensigns actually go through the E-D each year, on assignments that last mere months? The mission profile of the vessel seems eminently suited for that.
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