The size of the Sagan class - USS Stargazer

The Sagan class was a type of starship operated by Starfleet during the early 25th century. The first ship in the class, the USS Stargazer, had already received an NCC commission, and was the first of a new class of ship to utilize components derived from research on the Borg cube Artifact that was found in the Beta Quadrant.

According to the official turbolift LCARS the ship has 16 decks.

USS Stargazer turbolift LCARS (juliensauctions.com)

• The premise for all my deck calculations: a deck is 2.5m + 0.5m for EPS cables, power cables, ... = 3m height for a deck. 
• My calculations follow a purely mathematical approach. I do not compare bridge modules or disk heights with each other. I always pull in decks based on the rows of windows and then calculate a physically plausible room height.

bridge blueprint by CBS

For my calculation I also used the Stargazer bridge blueprints. To do this, I traced the outline of the bridge and positioned it to my deck sizes. 
Note the design on several levels of the bridge. 
Level 1: Viewscreen
Level 2: Captain's chair
Level 3: Ready Room

 

Using the dimensions given on the blueprint the bridge fits perfect into the size of decks (using the premise that each deck is 3m high). 

schematic by Star Trek Online

With a deck height of 3m, this results in a total length of 540.7m.
The official length is therefore correct. This is one of the few examples where the official length of the ship coincides with the mathematical "real" ones.

Design fact: The Sagan class has 17 decks (not 16) because one deck of the lower pylons does not appear in the LCARS blueprint.
This doesn't matter for the upper pylons, as there is only one large deck (3 decks high) where the Plamsma Accelerators are housed.

USS Stargazer - by Doug Drexler

The size of the Inquiry class

The Inquiry class was a type of starship operated by Starfleet during the late 24th and early 25th centuries.

The deck design of the Inquiry class is quite unique because the windows don't run straight to the decks in the side view. They often curve slightly.

According to this blueprint the ship has 21 decks.

schematic by Star Trek Online

• The premise for all my deck calculations: a deck is 2.5m + 0.5m for EPS cables, power cables, ... = 3m height for a deck. 
• My calculations follow a purely mathematical approach. I do not compare bridge modules or disk heights with each other. I always pull in decks based on the rows of windows and then calculate a physically plausible room height.

Despite the difficulties of deck design, I was able to determine a plausible number of decks (based on the rows of windows). These fit the position of the shuttle bay very well, especially from the rear view. 

schematic by Star Trek Online

With a deck height of 3m, this results in a total length of 477.2m. 

The official length of 640.1m definitely can't be correct. If the ship were 640.1m long, then the deck height would be 4.02m including the cables and technology. This would leave only 3.52m of headroom. With a length of 640.2m, many more decks would have to be added, which would then result in huge windows that often extend over two decks.

The size of the Reliant class

The Reliant class was a type of Federation starship operated by Starfleet during the early 25th century. Based on the configuration of the Miranda class from the 23rd century, it is based on the same construction method.

According to this blueprint the ship has 14 decks.

schematic by Star Trek Online

• The premise for all my deck calculations: a deck is 2.5m + 0.5m for EPS cables, power cables, ... = 3m height for a deck. 
• My calculations follow a purely mathematical approach. I do not compare bridge modules or disk heights with each other. I always pull in decks based on the rows of windows and then calculate a physically plausible room height.

With a deck height of 3m, this results in a total length of 355m.
The official length of 251m definitely can't be correct, which can be deduced from the rows of windows - especially visible on the bridge segment (decks 1 and 2). If the ship were 251m long, then decks 1 and 2 would be one, or the deck height would only be 2.12m including the cables and technology. This would leave only 1.62m of headroom.

The size of the Odyssey class - Enterprise-F

The Odyssey class was a type of Federation starship operated by Starfleet during the late 24th century.  In 2401, the Enterprise-F was under command of Admiral Elizabeth Shelby. She led the opening celebrations for Frontier Day wherein she gave a speech to the entire fleet.

According to this blueprint the ship has 43 decks.

schematic by Star Trek Online

• The premise for all my deck calculations: a deck is 2.5m + 0.5m for EPS cables, power cables, ... = 3m height for a deck. 
• My calculations follow a purely mathematical approach. I do not compare bridge modules or disk heights with each other. I always pull in decks based on the rows of windows and then calculate a physically plausible room height.

With a deck height of 3m, this results in a total length of 1061.10m.
The official length is therefore correct. This is one of the few examples where the official length of the ship coincides with the mathematical "real" ones.

Design problems:

• at the end of decks 3 and 4 there is an oversized airlock (height over two decks)
• the airlock on deck 27 is as high as the entire deck (3m high)
  

The size of the Gagarin class

The Gagarin class was a type of Federation starship operated by Starfleet during the early 25th century. Based on the configuration of the Shepard class from the 23rd century, it contains many design elements of this class.

According to this blueprint the ship has 16 decks.

schematic by Star Trek Online

• The premise for all my deck calculations: a deck is 2.5m + 0.5m for EPS cables, power cables, ... = 3m height for a deck. 
• My calculations follow a purely mathematical approach. I do not compare bridge modules or disk heights with each other. I always pull in decks based on the rows of windows and then calculate a physically plausible room height.

With a deck height of 3m, this results in a total length of 679.03m.
The official length of 492m definitely can't be correct, which can be deduced from the rows of windows. If the ship were 492 m long, then decks 1 and 2 would be one, or the deck height would only be 2.06 m including the cables and technology. This would leave only 1.56m of headroom.

The size of Commodore Oh's Romulan flagship

General Nedar (Commodore Oh) infiltrated Starfleet in the mid-24th century. In 2399 she commanded a large warbird with a fleet of 217 Romulan vessels to Coppelius where the synths live.

To calculate the size of the ship, I took a closer look at the bridge of the Warbird. The bridge was originally planned for the small Warbird. This is also the reason why the main hull looks like this on the design sketch.

design sketch by John Eaves

 In both cases, the bridge has a very large window section (almost floor to ceiling).

screencapture by trekcore.com (PIC: "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1")

Therefore, it can be assumed that the two stripes above and below the bridge window mark the space of the bridge.

• The premise for all my deck calculations: a deck is 2.5m + 0.5m for EPS cables, power cables, ... = 3m height for a deck. 
• My calculations follow a purely mathematical approach. I do not compare bridge modules or disk heights with each other. I always pull in decks based on the rows of windows and then calculate a physically plausible room height.

With a bridge (deck) height of 2.5m (3m for complete deck), this results in a total length of 432.7m.

Since the architecture of the small Warbird is also designed with such a bridge window, a similar bridge can be used as a basis. However, this means that this Warbird would then have to be 190m long (official size 119m).

The size of the Edison class

The Edison class was a type of Federation starship operated by Starfleet during the early 25th century. Based on the configuration of the Hoover class from the 23rd century, it contains many design elements of the ships from "Star Trek First Contact", especially the Saber class.

According to this blueprint the ship has 20 decks.

schematic by Star Trek Online

• The premise for all my deck calculations: a deck is 2.5m + 0.5m for EPS cables, power cables, ... = 3m height for a deck. 
• My calculations follow a purely mathematical approach. I do not compare bridge modules or disk heights with each other. I always pull in decks based on the rows of windows and then calculate a physically plausible room height.

With a deck height of 3m, this results in a total length of 379.4m.
The official length is therefore correct. This is one of the few examples where the official length of the ship coincides with the mathematical "real" ones.

The size of the Pathfinder class

The Pathfinder class was a type of Federation starship that had entered service by the early 25th century. Many elements are reminiscent of the design of the earlier Intrepid-class of the 24th century like the USS Voyager NCC-74656. For example, there are the indented windows, the bridge module, the auxiliary deflector, impulse drives, the side sensor strips, the movable warp nacelles...

As with all my size calculations, I first spaced the decks evenly.

schematic by Star Trek Online

According to this blueprint the ship has 14 decks.

• The premise for all my deck calculations: a deck is 2.5m + 0.5m for EPS cables, power cables, ... = 3m height for a deck. 
• My calculations follow a purely mathematical approach. I do not compare bridge modules or disk heights with each other. I always pull in decks based on the rows of windows and then calculate a physically plausible room height.

With a deck height of 3m, this results in a total length of 340.1m.
The official length of 431.42m is therefore too large. If that were the case, a deck would have a height of 3.80m.

By the way: The official length of 431.42m is achieved if the Aero Shuttle (front lower saucer section) is scaled up to the same size as the one of the Intrepid class. This does give you huge decks, but it's a good example of how arbitrarily ship sizes are sometimes determined.

The size of the Enterprise-E

The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E) was a 24th century Federation Sovereign-class starship operated by Starfleet. This ship was the sixth Federation starship to bear the name Enterprise.

I never really considered the size of the Enterprise-E until I looked at the LCARS graphics on the Enterprise-E's MSD (Master Situation Display).

There I noticed that the silhouette didn't match the real one of the spaceship.  

So I traced the Tourbolift LCARS graphic and that of the bridge's MSD (which are identical).

screen used tourbolift LCARS grahic by "Star Trek Fact Files"

 According to this MSD the ship has 24 decks.

• The premise for all my deck calculations: a deck is 2.5m + 0.5m for EPS cables, power cables, ... = 3m height for a deck. 
• My calculations follow a purely mathematical approach. I do not compare bridge modules or disk heights with each other. I always pull in decks based on the rows of windows and then calculate a physically plausible room height.

And in fact, with this MSD, the total length of the spaceship is calculated to be 572.2m if one deck has a height of 3m.

A design sketch version was used to draw the decks that didn't correspond to the blueprints of the later model or the CGI Enterprise-E.

design sketch "The Art of John Eaves"

design sketch with MSD overlap

For the correct silhouette I used the CGI image from Santa Barbara Studios' CGI model of the Sovereign-class. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 3, Issue 11, page 50). 

Now I compared it with the silhouette of the spaceship. 

Without doing any calculations, it is immediately clear that the total length of the MSD can't be correct because the final blueprint wasn't used for the MSD.

If we now use the height of 3m for a deck, we calculate a total length of 718.8m for the Enterprise-E.
The official length of 685,8m is therefore wrong.
And one more thing: If you look closely at the side view of the Enterprise-E (the real one), it has 26 decks (and not just 24 decks, like in the MSD).

Only in this configuration would the main engineering on deck 16 and the upper shuttle bay in the correct position.

The configurations on the Enterprise-E for Star Trek Nemesis made it slightly shorter because the warp nacelles were raised a little and pushed forward by 3.5%.
Additional phaser strips and photon torpedo launchers have also been added.
In the end the extended saucer detail beside the upper Shuttle bay had no effect at all in the side view because it was too flat to be seen there. Nevertheless, this extended detail gives the appearance of the Enterprise-E a more smooth look.

 This results in a length of 706.1m for the Nemesis configuration.

The Size of the Excelsior II class

The Excelsior II class was a Federation starship class that was in service with Starfleet by the early 25th century. In 2401, the USS Excelsior was amongst the fleet led by the USS Stargazer to meet a Borg faction. Cadet Elnor and Commander Raffaela Musiker were both assigned to the vessel which took part in protecting the quadrant from the massive energy released by the opening of a transwarp conduit by an unknown source.

• The premise for all my deck calculations: a deck is 2.5m + 0.5m for EPS cables, power cables, ... = 3m height for a deck. 
• My calculations follow a purely mathematical approach. I do not compare bridge modules or disk heights with each other. I always pull in decks based on the rows of windows and then calculate a physically plausible room height.

I have drawn decks based on the clearly visible screen opening of the bridge on deck 1. The ship was obviously designed in such a way that the number of decks is exactly based on the size of the bridge.

 

side view by Star Trek Online

 

The ship was marked with an official length of 588m.

 

With a height for each deck of 3m, the total length is 694.9m.  

If the ship were only 588m long, the decks would be 2.5m high, including the cables and technology. This would leave only 2m of headroom.

 

The original Excelsior class was also already calculated incorrectly. And this despite the fact that there was an Excelsior-MSD (Master Situation Display) with the decks.

STAR TREK Size Comparison Charts - Shuttles Part 2

Here is the part 2 of my Shuttle Size Chart Project.

PS: A special thank (and all copyright) for the picture material to: John Eaves, Drex Files, Star Trek Fact Files and Star Trek The Magazine, Starship Collection Magazine and The Light Works.

Size calculations:

Shuttle ARGO