Trekyards EP300 - USS Discovery Scale Revealed! (Analysis) 

4:30 a side note is that the enterprise under the pike carried far less crew than under kirk. also, there's no rule that the best ship in the fleet is the biggest ship in the fleet.

For an X ship, of which only 2 were built, I don't feel like the ship is too big. Especially considering how this ship is designed to house 2 FTL drives and impulse engines. Works for me, still wish they used more beam wepons instead of projectile wepons.

The Enterprise E was not the biggest ship of her era in terms of volume. The D was larger.

These new designs do not convey "Star Trek" at all - closer to something like Mass Effect, actually. Say what you want about politics and (lack of) deliverables, but the ship designs shown in Axanar were a beautiful modernization of the original designs, and would have worked so well in this series. I think if/when we finally see a Constitution class on screen in this new show, it will be a radically updated design, a la the already shown D7. It's a bit of a shame, but was inevitable with the current state rights ownership related to the Star Trek franchise. It's just a shame the suits decided that this show would be deemed a new Star Trek series. This really should have been its own, new franchise. Not even the tone matches - it's currently much closer to Battlestar Galactica!

What most people are forgetting, is that the Constitution class was already 10+ years old when the Discovery was built.

I've always liked long nacelles. I feel like on the USS Disco the nacelles are so long because the warp coils inhabit only the bak half of the internal volume of the nacelle and the rest is spore drive tech. I would like to see a model of the USS Disco that has been back dated with normal nacelles that are JUST warp coils. It would be much small I think.

just another thing in this show that makes no sense, technological leap seems way too big for the time this show is set in. Makes me miss ST: Enterprise, there they actually put an effort into it and made the tech less advanced than TOS while still making it look good and fit into the era. I really dont get why they dont want to make post VOY era show where they could have an open playing field in what technological leaps to pursue and make a show that really would look good for today's standards. Or they could have gone with a similar technology, just slightly more advanced then what was used in Enterprise. Axanar wanted to do it just like that and they destroyed it, and that show already looked and felt 100 times better than this show currently is

My take on the size of the Discovery compared to the Enterprise was always that early versions of new technology are usually huge in size. Take computers, phones, trains, etc. Without the time to develop many iterations of the technology the machine is made to facilitate its function rather than the human desire to fun-size everything. Once the techology has proven itself engineers and designers can go about making it less cumbersome and more manageable. I think we are safe to believe that this technology will be destroyed eventually so it will never reach the otherwise inevitable point of getting build into a Defiant class ship, while Warp drives got to get to that point.

I am 100% okay with this, the TOS Connie was always ridiculously small for its crew compliment. Even the big bad D7 is a tiny ship next to TOS Connie. This scale just further proves that they are retconning (thankfully) TOS and going with TMP era as their base.

Why didn't they just make Discovery part of the Kelvin timeline? It would've solved so many continuity errors...

"Officially" 137 crew, but "unofficially " much more.

I love Trekyards and appreciate their effort. Thanks guys for the info!

And don't forget that they only built two of these. They would have been a terrible expense considering the tech and engineering needed. Built in secret too - presumably at that asteroid base somewhere on the Romulan DMZ they showed in that preview. I'd still like to see that original design come up somehow as like an archival design we see like on a display or something if they ever give us a hero ship history flash back episode.

The saltiness of this comment section makes me laugh

Damn. That makes 1031 easily the biggest use of TOS-era resources short of a space station.

Well you can definitely see that the Discovery Xfield class is a real departure and designed to a purpose - whereas all those other ships are generalists. It has different nacells, its secondary hull is boxy and its saucer is less curved and the deflector appears to be far more advanced than anything of its era. Far more high power. But it isn't a war ship. It doesn't have the shields a Constitution would have or the armament. We see in their battle sims that they can raid/hit and run. The scale of the Discovery though makes sense for a space ship. space is fucking huge and to explore it you have to go big. Just the amount of space you need for carrying your own stuff is huge. The scaling makes sense based on its purpose and based on sense. I get the sense of discontinuity but the scale of other ships in TOS era is irrelevant. This ship was practically a one off (2-3) and not a fleet ship. It's like comparing a giant Maersk liner to an Arleigh-Burke destroyer.

It's like Godzilla... Every new rendition seems to want to make him even bigger. That side view is just downright ridiculous. 😆

Amazing how the discovery suddenly makes Excelsior look so well proportioned and well thought-out in comparison. After all these years of looking out of proportion with engines that were way over sized, now the Excelsior looks perfectly balanced and designed.

I have never been a fan of the rotating discs nor the time frame they have inserted this ship, but otherwise I've always quite liked the design and always felt that it lent itself to a very large scale. I think like most people I think the warp nacelles are too long, and I wish the color was more of a pure metal type, but compared to many ships I think it really has very few flaws. The storyline, the acting, and the effects are a whole different thing. But the ship itself? She's solid!

One thing I do like about Discovery, as a starship, is how it fits actual technological logic. When a new technology is developed, it's often large, cumbersome, space isn't utilized well, it's inefficient, and suffers from problems. That's what we essentially see with the Crossfield Class. It's big out of necessity, as where something like the Constitution Class can be smaller and more compact with way better streamlining. Starfleet at this point has utilized warp drive for over a century, and the technology existed 90 years before that. Warp drive had time to go through re-design, re-evaluation, starships could be designed with better technology integration, etc. So, you get a much smaller looking Constitution class where yes, it is cramped for 400 personnel, but it utilized its space much better. Discovery is mostly saucer, and a lot of drive space dedicated to experimental technologies. So yes, it would be massive. Plus, I don't like how people talk about how Starfleet couldn't have possibly built something that big, when not even 30 years later Earth Spacedock would exist. If Starfleet can build that, then the Crossfield class really doesn't seem all that farfetched.

Great Video guys ,but there is no way the Discovery is in the prime universe. The infrastructure needed to build the Discovery & others like her just does'nt exist in this timeframe. The shipyards needed to build Discovery & her ilk would have to be massive & since she has a warp drive still the amount of warp coils in the nacelles would be beyond current Federation tech if it is in the prime universe.She's still a cool looking ship but just not beliveable for the era she is supposed to be in .

So further proof that STD has nothing to do with Star Trek in general and TOS Prime timeline especially.

Further proof that all anyone working on this show wants to do is change Star Trek to make it fit their own ideas instead of making it fit into Star Trek. Hacks.

It would have been interesting to see the size comparison between the Discovery and the JJ Enterprise.

Just when you think you've stomached all the changes they made they come up with another ridiculous thing. 750m? WTF? We should drag the people who cough this up by their ears to see a US Navy aircraft carrier in real life so they can get a sense of just how big a 300+m ship already is. 750m is just insanse.

Just when you thought Discovery can't fuck up even more.... Edit: oh for... LOOK at that side view, it's like a small Planet Killer...

McCoy: My God, that's a big ship. Scotty: Not so big as -her captain- the Discovery, I think.

I love your series and whole channel. I didn’t know there were people out there as passionate about trek as I am. Thank you for what you do

I am not feeling the size. Liked the idea much better of the small ship. Heck, that is longer than the JJPrise. How about a comparison with it.

This ship is just dumb !

No redshirts died in the making of Discovery.

The way the nacelles are I’m betting standard warp is slower then the Connie. It’s so much bigger to accommodate the field of plants for the spores for the spore drive.

So with the chart of Starfleet Ships, we see about half a dozen ships over a period of about 300 years and that's all that's supposed to exist? In all of TOS, we only saw the Constitution class (no, I'm not going to include the Tholian ship with warp nacelles!) representing Starfleet vessels. Bigger is supposed to mean most advanced? In a galactic organization -with how many member words? Dozens? Hundreds? - these ships represent all of the space vessels at their disposal? I'm always surprised how small the universe some Trek fans think it is.

Galaxy is still bigger than Sovereign, Enterprise E is longer than D but the D out masses the E. Compared them in STO and the Galaxy saucer is the same size as the Odyssey.

I still feel like the ship is WAAAAAAAAAAAAY too big, but I can concede a few points: #1.) If this is STRICTLY an experimental class that, once we wrestle with the aftermath of Lt Stamets, no other members of this class are produced. I could easily live with the departure. #2.) The nacelles carry a movie era feel to them. I could easily imagine these are THEE FIRST experimental version of these nacelles before the Enterprise is eventually refit with much more refined versions of these.

It kinda works for me since the ship is so thin. Instead of building up like with regular ships of the fleet, they built out. Now i want to see a render of it without the outer ring or nacelles and see just the “ship” parts. Hopefully they make a tech manual with blueprints.

Surprisingly this makes sense. When you start carving out chunks of the ship's non crew space from the top view, shuttle bay and impulse engines for example, you see that it isn't really that oversized a ship with regard to the Connie. Also the Connie saucer might be a smaller diameter but it's only because it moved that internal volume to the center. It's essentially a research freighter versus a navy cruiser.

Just because the Enterprise is the flag ship doesn't mean it has to be the biggest. Even in TNG there are a lot of ship, including Starfleet ships, bigger than the Galaxy class. Even in current times our aircraft carrier is the biggest in the fleet but not the flag ship of our Navy, for example the USS Mount Whitney. I think we're all getting hung up that the Enterprise has to be the biggest and most advance but why? It wasn't even the most advance in the movies, remember the Excelsior anyone? Just because Discovery is bigger doesn't make non Canon or makes any ship obsolete. There are dozen and dozens types of Starfleet ships and we only know of a few from movies, TV and books.

In watching Ep10 last night it's obvious this is simply wrong. They do a sweeping camera zoom across the top of the saucer up to the bridge "window" and they make the size of that window relative to the command orb and thus the saucer undeniable. Discovery may still be longer due to the absurd warp nacelle length, but the saucer is smaller than a Connie. They made that abundantly clear.

Well I can think of a few explanations: 1) Whomever made the mock-up of the cover made a mistake and it was supposed to be a 2 or a 1 instead of a 7 2) The original _Crossfield_ was an overly ambitious project to make a supership that ended up being canceled after a run of three ships had been laid down and assigned numbers with _Glenn_ and _Discovery_ being recommissioned later and gutted for the spore drive. Incidentally, that could also be another reason why the spore drive wasn't attempted again. Eats up too much room. It could also tie into the differences between the Kelvin Timeline and the original universe. A key difference could have been that the _Crossfield_ wasn't considered a failure in that timeline and other designs also grew in size. 3) Eaglemoss screwed up again. Not a simple misprint, but just straight wrong information. It wouldn't be the first time they've done something like that so it's a really good thing that the size isn't canon. 1 and 3 are more likely because otherwise most of the shots don't make sense (much like how a 700+ meter size wouldn't make sense for the Kelvin timeline _Constitution_ due design details). Especially since multiple people have worked to calculate the size and it comes out to around half of what was claimed on that cover.

The Discovery being enormous makes complete sense if you view it as being designed almost as a mobile base rather than a long range exploration ship. Without the spore drive, it's probably quite slow, and it's intended to be able to perform all sorts of scientific investigation over a long term. Like the later Galaxy class, it's most likely able to be extensively refitted internally to fit whatever mission it's dedicated to at the time, then brought back into drydock and modified for the next long-term project. Needless to say, like the Galaxy, this makes it able to be a scary ship in a fight once all that internal volume is repurposed for combat. . .

I had forgot how much of a headache I get trying to figure out Discovery.

The Discovery looks a bit unusual because it is designed for both warp drive and the experimental spore drive.

I Feel The Discovery design is more stable and it's growing on me, despite the separations of a ringed saucer section. Enjoying the Discovery Designs

I am fully on board with this scaling for the Discovery. As discussed in the video, the combination of supporting up to 300 discrete scientific missions plus the tech needs of the spore drive, it makes total sense. I just hope the rest of the vessels as seen at the Battle of the Binary stars follow a more conventional scale.

Congratulations on episode 300 guys!!!

One think I have always liked about Star Trek is the way they handle scale. Designs generally get larger over time, but that is more about putting in more crew or whole families or a school or gym. As shown with the defiant "power" is not based on size, but more on tech. You can shrink warp coils, but you can't shrink comfortable crew quarters. A bigger ship doesn't mean a better armed or faster or higher tech ship (often the opposite - compare the Enterprise E to D), just a ship that holds more crew or cargo. Perhaps the Discovery needs absurd amounts of space for that preposterous spore drive of theirs. The point is, just because it's big doesn't make it implausible. As long as it's not designed for atmosphere and it has a big enough budget, there is no reason Starfleet couldn't build something Galaxy-class sized before the Constitution.

ST:Discovery is in it's own alternate prime timeline

Hahahahahahahhaahahahahahha!!!! I honestly didn’t think Discovery could disappoint me any more than it had. Thanks for the comparison gents. I appreciate the video. Nicely done.

I think they could explain the size with "It was so big that without the spore drive it is better to make smaller ships like idk Miranda? than huge Crossfield-classes". And majority of the people might not even know about the crossfield-class.

While watching this, I pulled up a pic of a 1956 Cadillac Coupe DeVille and a 1985 version of the same model. The newer, more advanced car is smaller. So, considering that, I can accept the size of the Discovery. I think the spore drive is the primary reason the ship looks the way it does. Probably the reason the warp nacelles have to be as long as they are too.

Really enjoy watching these old videos! 🙂

But, bigger could go hand-n-hand with the technology of the era. The Discovery had to be bigger to house technology that is physically larger than what is now used in Voyager, etc. Like the difference between a 1990's personal computer and today's cell phone. computer. Both can do about the same thing, but the technology miniaturized over time.

Whats interesting to me about this is that the Constitution was supposed to be a bohemoth (if I remember my TOS right) - that generally ships were smaller then it.. So the dimensions are interesting.

The Excelsior is still a large and impressive ship to the Enterprise crew even if there was an even bigger ship decades earlier, it's completely irrelevant. If a new SUV pulls up next to my regular car I think "wow, that's big" regardless of there having been an even bigger SUV 10 years prior.

The way I see is simply... It's a Ship full of experimental Tech, it has 2 Large Bays full of Sporeforests in the Secondary Hull meaning the outcrops towards the nacelles, the Sporedrive itself probably needs a bit of room and the activation sequence, the interaction between energies necessitated splitting the Saucer and enlargen it to that size. So, if you would rip out all the NX Tech and transform it into a Standard Ship it probably would be around the size or even smaller than the Constitution.

In my personal head canon, I shrink the Discovery by what they scale up the Constitution in the final episode of season 1/whole of season 2. The ship is still longer than the Constitution but closer to the length of the Excelsior. It feels more comfortable in-universe. It’s longer than the Constitution but with a smaller saucer. Closer to the Excelsior in length, but smaller in volume, the Excelsior is still impressive in size and the Discovery is still large for its era due to the experimental technology

"My God, that's a big ship." ~ McCoy in Star Trek VI. Decades earlier, we have a bigger ship. Something's not right.

I just pictured some off-duty ensigns in the bowling alley of the Enterprise, trying to bowl while the ship is getting knocked about--simultaneous gutterball / strikes, and a killer shot when gravity is down to 0.8...

Remember everyone, new technology tends to be bulky and takes up a lot of room. The first computers took up entire rooms and all they did was crunch numbers.

If they would just come clean and just admit that Discovery is Kelvin timeline, it would honestly solve 80% of complaints, continuity issues, aesthetic issues, just ISSUES.

Consider this; With the way the saucer rings spin you would keep habitation in the spinning areas to a minimum. However they keep people from turning to paste when the rings spin just safety and practicality would keep people in them to a minimum. So I think living areas would be in the secondary hull, with standard Warp stuff, spore tech in the rings, and then the scale doesn't seem too off. :\

The bowling alley was in the saucer, though XD

Ok so I made notes XD My thoughts are that the extra size is for both shielding and structural integrity for such a large space frame in the time scale - too early for the Structural dampers for the size of a Galaxy class. The long warp nacelles could be that they are using the Constitution style coils in a longer array to get a better warp bubble, and then by ST:TMP the coils have advanced furthe for the Refit and then still more by the Excelsior which is why their nacelles are different. Maybe the Outer ring refit was seen as too much of a structural burden on the line ships as they would also have to rebuild the warp nacelles in line with the shielding?

If the Discovery is bigger than the Constitution, why would the constitution class be the flagship of the fleet? Why would people want to serve on them?

Not to be argumentative, but one progressive line of one starship doesn't really mean anything. Giganto planes have been built since the 60s. It's not really a logical error, since we only have a tiny sliver of the entire picture to consider, no?

Given scenes from the show where we've seen crew members relative to windows, the scale of the saucer - bridge etc - relative to the Constitution Enterprise seems to look about right. What doesn't look right are those nacelles! It would look so much better of they were 25% shorter.

Something that just occurred to me - in this particular Trek universe (different quantum reality/timeline, yadda yadda) maybe ships got bigger and bigger because there was no hostility from the Klingons since around the formation of the Federation. They've had no major conflicts, so their ships tend to be larger. After the open hostility with the Klingons and Romulans do they design ships to be tighter, more compact and better armed. It's hard to survive a battle when your science vessel is the size of a whale and as maneuverable as a oil tanker.

You guys really need an updated Discovery model. This one looks fine, but the neck is super inaccurate. Not a video problem though, is great as always!

If you think about it in the side wiew with the excelsior. The excelsior is about the same size as Discovery if you take away the third saucer ring and remove the nacelle length.

Peace and long life. Thanks for the ep, very concise.

I think we should consider height and length, but overall volume and mass are really more important in considering potential capability. And like a home, I’d also consider floor space in square feet.

One thing that sometimes bugs me it's the fact that when talking about ships in the trek universe, size shouldn't necessarily be a measure of technological advancement. There is no actual limitation in the TOS timeline tech level for not making, let's say an excelsior size starship. We should always take this things with a tablespoon of salt. As you have said lots of times, trek has comparatively smaller ships than other universes, many the size of modern naval vessels; with the caveat of also having almost limitless energy resources. Having that, size could be very well just the result of necessity or particular purpose.

Well... not everybody has a really long ship like Lorca does. In fact an average ship's length is much shorter.

What actually strikes me as most crazy in these renders is that the TOS Enterprise is the same height as the Ent E -- though I looked it up and the E only has 2 more decks, apparently. The bridge dome on the TOS Ent looks huge compared to the one on the Ent E. Would like to see a cloes-up of all the bridge modules side-by-side.

Thank you guys for answering my question that cool way:) And my mind just blew up, I didn't think DSK will be SO big.

1:31 - Cmdr. Cockings "And why is this chart important?" You should ask the folks over at CBS that same question.

As Starfleet is Science and Exploration based rather than strictly a Military, I would normally say that it makes sense that their research vessels would be huge (and fragile), as that is the focus, and then they would have smaller, tougher ships like the Constitution class to do their fighting. But then the Discovery is used as a frontline warship, so there goes that idea. To be completely blunt and cynical, just as they call a nondescript Klingon ship a "D-7," and the Klingons are honorless claw-handed monster faces, the Discovery is HUGE because they don't care about the canon, and trying to find a reason that fits the lore is futile. Scaling the Discovery to previous federation ships probably never occurred to them.

The only rationale I can conceive for this size, it is a heavy explorer/research vessel, a concept only briefly tested in the TOS era, but later revisited, leading to the development of the Galaxy- & Nebula-classes.

It's like a flying space station to me. I mean, look at that size! This ship can basically dock at no facilities of starfleet. But there are maybe some ways to explain this: Maybe the inferior 2350's tech is the reason they needed warp nacelles as long as a moon for a ship of that internal volume. Maybe that's the reason all of the following ship projects were much more incremental in their sizing. Maybe going much bigger just wasn't really feasible, a lesson learned with the crossfield project.

To add to the positive Discovery The scale of Discovery is really a non issue. The ship is full of new technology. New tech is usually big and bulky, then is refined and optimized and becomes smaller. Then we enhance on our new smaller tech and it gets bigger. look at your mobile phone or PC heardware. I love Trek in all its incarnations, and I'm happy to add Discovery to that list, as I did ENT. Side note. I raged about DS9 when it first started on BBC2 (I was 11 and it different) . I refused to watch an episode. Then I watched the 3rd episode and It became my favourite Trek. The lesson I learned, don't resist, just go with it and enjoy.

I think they can justify this by saying ships with new tech always end up being bigger. As the tech becomes more mainstream, they shrink it down. Size doesn't represent firepower. The Defiant was built with largely proven tech, eliminated all the noncombat functions and crew, but could take on a larger ship.

I can accept it to a point. The Discovery being a test bed for next generation technology. As such she is quite large, to carry and equip/unequip various experimental systems. Still yes, while I could accept a larger silhouette than the 1701, it's clearly too big overall compared to late generations. Especially as this is supposed to be some kind of research ship. Test bed or not, it's looking more like the size of an experimental dreadnought. My biggest concern here is just how large the Shinzou is going to be. While I can really stretch my mind to this might actually be an experimental dreadnought packed full of prototype tech and labs under the nominal control of Section 31. If the Shinzou is similarly oversized that's going to throw everything right out the airlock!

22:00 Did the Enterprise use that Pegasus cloak? :)

I just want to note that being able to "handle 300-something scientific experiments" is not the same as allowing for a large crew. Yes, they could devote a lot of space to scientific equipment, but it's not like you'd need 1 scientist per experiment...

Seeing that first 3/4 scale with the Constitution class I think freighter. You have those two big wings that you could stick cargo containers or even ship components to, and having the nacelles so far back means the warp field wouldn't be obstructed by what the ship's hauling.

I think that a lot of this could be explained away by the fact that the Crossfield-class was doing largely classified work and there were few of them. It's likely few people had seen or heard of them. Also, it may be long and impressive, but I think because we don't see spore drive tech later, the experiment is ultimately a failure. Therefore, newer ships do not need to be so large (using the rationale that the spore tech takes up a large chunk of the internals),

Hey guys, Happy New Year. My thought why the federation doesn't build any ships as big as Discovery is because a ship that big is a sitting duck to enemy fire. Failed spore drive or not. And everyone knows it's not a battle ship.

I almost unsubbed from this channel due to my hatred of Discovery, but you reaffirmed my faith! As always thank you so much for what you do Trekyards.

Size and scale a side, the Discovery is just bluntly ugly. There will be no beauty shots, no loving the ship, it doesn't appeal at all, whereas those others, especially the bow shots, look lovely.

the cross field class is a mutant class. it from an engineering stand point "lets make this as easy as possible." its a hybrid with two independent FTL systems yes. its massive. it needed to be. and dont forget that the impulse engines are in the engineering hull as well.

We know by the time TOS comes along the spore technology is not in use. So they may remodel and remove the outer ring and reduce the size of rooms so they can make a more Slimline ship with better sheilds better use of space.

I believe that, with this iteration of Star Trek, although placed in the place and time of TOS, we can’t compare ship scales and styles with those of a 1960’s tv show or subsequent series. When we see the this show’s iteration of the Constitution Class, and after last night’s episode I’m fairly certain we shall, it will be comparably impressive to the Discovery and put Discovery’s apparently extraordinary scale in context but again, it will be in the context of this show, not TOS,TNG, etc. We may have to accept that the folks writing Discovery either did not consider the scale of the of their ships in context with TOS or did not feel compelled to conform with those constraints.

I think if they stuck with the early design from the first teaser, put TOS necelles on it, gave the hull a bright grey finish, and made the saucer the same size as the constitution it would fit canon perfectly.

Just more fuel for Discovery being a separate universe from prime.

Samuel thank for that: "Potentially Silly is spot on"

Always reckoned the Discovery was about this size. It has to be if you analyse the size of the windows and bridge, plus deck spacing etc.

For the 90% of the people who subscribe to this channel, the length converts to 2462 feet, or roughly 800 yards. You're welcome. :-) It would be a nice nod in future for major measurements to be presented in both gauges , especially since the vast majority of Star Trek fans are in the United States and still use the Imperial system. Metric is unknown to 90% of Americans, not because they are unintelligent, merely because it is no longer taught, and frankly they don't need it. So while I realise in the future Starfleet is using metric ( although often even Spock used miles), using completely foreign measurements that have no bearing or understanding in most fans' minds and doesn't give them any understanding of size since they have no idea of the increments you're using nor what to relate them to fails to communicate the essential information in videos like this one. They don't know a thousand metres from 1000 kilometres in many cases, so when you can please just throw out the conversions for the main dimensions, to be kind.

The Federation was still relatively young and the necessary resources would not be available for a ship the size of Discovery. Star fleet would be pushing it to just build the initial Constitution class fleet. Economic constraints were not taken into consideration for Discovery.

There are zero sexy qualities to the Discovery. Trying to find the perfect angle for a beauty shot, is like trying to pick up a turd by the clean end. The worst thing about it, is not how ugly it is, but by how lazy the design is. Shaka, when the walls fell.