Sci-Fi Crew Complements

And how writers tend not to understand them

Meet the Imperial Lancer-class frigate This is a 3D model of one of my favorite Star Wars ships.

It’s 250 meters long (820 feet), 57 meters (187 ft) at its widest point (stern cannon tip to cannon tip) and 60 meters (190 ft) at its tallest point (also stern cannon to cannon). You might not have noticed the 6-foot human figure standing on top.

Take a moment to look at that figure compared to the size of the ship. Big ship, but not immense. This frigate is roughly the length of a WWII battleship, but without the same habitable deck space and square footage, and yet, official specs for this class of ship list the crew at 810.

810?!?

Maybe somebody can explain to me how 810 of those figures can pack themselves into a ship this size without simply becoming shoulder-to-shoulder sardines. Even if we account for two thirds of the crew being off-duty at any given moment, with one third of them hotbunking, there’s just not enough room for so many. And more to the point, how could a mechanized spaceship need them? It’s not like they have to man the rigging. It’s not like they need to pump out the bilges. There’s no massive capstan that needs turning to weigh anchor; no need for any masts to be turned into or away from the wind, etc. Ships like these are operated by control panels in clean-room workspaces. It simply wouldn’t require a shift of 266 people at a time to keep one of these going. There honestly wouldn’t be enough for them all to do.

Clearly, the folks who developed the Star Wars fleet didn’t have much clue about how highly advanced ships work.

Or did they???

These smaller ships didn’t exist in early canon, when Star Wars was brand new (I was there, I remember). We only knew about the og ISD.

These iconic white wedges are a mile long, with oodles of square footage. So when we’re told they carry 50,000 guys, we might initially offer the ‘maybe so’ nod. But let’s look a little deeper.

That number includes a full scale landing force of what we in this galaxy call Marines. Marines don’t help operate the ship. What they do is train train train. They’re there for making war, and it makes sense to carry thousands of them. But that being said, the full complement of a mile long Star Destroyer is also grotesquely excessive: 10k officers alone, 28k enlisted, and almost 10k Marines (er, stormtroopers). That’s 50k people aboard a ship that’s mainly taken up by its immense engine reactor (take a look at the cutaway schematics sometime). There’s just not enough room, And that’s especially true once you factor in the AT-AT walkers and other ground assault vehicles requiring hangar space and maintenance bays while they sit on standby. Plus the fact that those 10k Marines have to keep training. They’re not just lying in their bunks waiting for a war. They’re endlessly working on their warcraft. And training requires field simulation battle space, practice ranges, massive quantities of gear, huge volumes of ammo (even if it’s blanks) and so forth. As big as a mile-long wedge might seem, it’s simply not THAT big.

I want to take a moment here to mention that no military mobilizes a force with 1 officer to every 3 enlisted. That’s not in any way cost effective. Unlike what we’re so used to seeing in science fiction, officers aren’t the operative crew on a ship’s bridge. Officers are the management. They oversee what enlisted crew are doing as they handle the ship. It’s not an ensign or lieutenant manning the helm, it’s a petty officer. So, a ratio of 7-to-1 enlisted to officers is more standard and much more economical. That would put a star destroyer’s officer corps at 4k instead of 10k. It’s a start. Alrighty, military economics rant over.

Getting back to the Lancer, we’re not looking at a ship that carries any kind of landing force. There wouldn’t be any Marines aboard despite the spec sheet listing 40 ‘passengers’ (well-armed ones). The role of this ship as stated in canon is to shoot down enemy fighters so the big ships don’t have to. That means these ships are all about their gun turrets, and little else. Everybody aboard remains onboard all the time. The ship is always fully packed.

So, just no.

Fleet designers don’t get it. Full scale capital ships carrying thousands of guys, ok I guess. To a point. But modest little frigates carrying near a thousand peeps? Nope.

To be fair, canon also states the Lancer can be operated by a minimum crew of 375. But even this is excessive. Just look at how narrow that ship is. There’s not enough deck space aboard for that many folks. Not with living quarters, even if all they are is barracks. Not even if it’s just 125 staff per shift. The question becomes a simple, “Why?” Why would this tiny ship need that many people to make it go? True, Star Wars is techno-basic, but it does still have tech. Namely, computer systems. This small, computer-assisted ship doesn’t need 125 pairs of hands to keep it functioning. For whatever reason, the people who worldbuild science fiction fleets don’t get this.

To prove it, let’s galaxy-hop franchises over to Star Trek and find the same glaring problem.

The refit Enterprise (my favorite mainstream ship of all time) was a meager 305 meters long, or 1000 feet. (Btw, this is a canon factoid I’ll be debunking in an upcoming article.) To break it down, the Enterprise with all its strangely laid-out deck space, is about the length of a WWII aircraft carrier, but with much, much, much less square footage. A large span of that length is taken up by the unoccupied machinery space of warp nacelles. And yet, she’s said to carry about 400 people. This is needless.

Personally, my sci-fi mind reckons a ship like the Enterprise-A to carry a crew of about 200 rotating through 3 shifts of 60-65 each. This would include not only the sailors operating the ship, but also the lab techs doing research. Unlike with Star Wars, the Star Trek universe makes use of advanced computers and robotics/automation/AI, so this is likely as many people as you’d need. Probably even an excess. The department requiring the largest on-duty staff is Engineering, and they probably only need between 4 and 6 people during standard operations. Every other department would use fewer than that. What in the world would 133 people per shift be doing aboard a largely AI-enabled ship with only 220 meters (720 feet) of habitable space...especially when so much of that space is taken up by Engineering?

It seems like sci-fi’s fleet builders aren’t keeping in mind how actual humans spend time or what the human psyche requires in order to remain functional and effective. Spaceships that spend months on patrol away from ports of call have to provide the humans aboard with sufficient personal and recreational spaces for them to be willing to enlist and re-enlist. They have to be given reasonable incentive to not resign. It’s not like today’s navy where ships are always in contact with the sailors’ home world and they get shore leave. Today’s sailors can also go on deck and reacquaint themselves with weather and sunlight. Even submarines occasionally surface and provide shore leave in foreign ports, unlike the entirely artificial, enclosed and inescapable environment of a ship in space. One has to provide crews with enough space to want to keep doing their job. Otherwise, the fleet stands to lose its entire staff after every patrol.

In my own fleet, mile-long ships only carry 900 crew, and every single person, from the captain all the way down to the greenest corporal or steward gets their own individual quarters — a personal space that allows them to feel sovereign over themselves and their chosen career. Rather than sharing their space with others like overgrown orphans in a dorm room, these are grown adults making respectable life choices. Take a look at my Starbarians saga here.

Welcome to the space age.

-Orr out

If you’re enjoying these Sci-Friday outtakes, you might find my space opera series right up your alley. Naya and her peeps are already neck-deep their adventure. Come on in!