The other thing to consider is transient VS permanent population.
Since ESD is a primary port of entry to the sol system perhaps getting numbers for the average daily population fot the largest port of entry in the US and adjusting those calculations for the known size of the port for the known size of the starbase.
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I think I agree that 40% uninhabitable space is too low an estimate.
Heck, between docking bays and multiple kinds of storage facilities, I'd guess they're using up pretty darn close to 30% of the volume just for that stuff.
And even in the "habitable" space, they're not stacking people on top of each other and certain areas like atriums and pools will have more depth and thus more space per person.
And I would tend to agree that the ESD population is going to be highly transient. Few, if any, are going to live there on a permanent basis when there's a whole planet just one shuttle trip away. But a lot of people are going to be passing through... at least as many as permanent staff and probably a lot more.
For the sake of argument, I'd suggest the day to day population is something like 30% permanent staff, 20% long-term transients and residents, and 50% short-term transient.
In other words, 30% of the people work there. They don't live there and don't need quarters, but with a round-the-clock staff level they're there every day. They mainly need work space and food service.
20% of the people actually live on the station or are temporarily quartered there. They need a lot more space than the normal staffers do.
50% of the people are there for 24 hours or less. They are just passing through and using the facilities, including hotel and food services. But with the constant churn of travelers, that percentage of the population is probably the same throughout the day. These people circulate throughout the public areas of the station all the time and the public areas probably have a fairly high population density. You could almost lump these in with the staffers -- 80% of the population is always moving around.
It's a busy, busy place...
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I think I agree that 40% uninhabitable space is too low an estimate.
Heck, between docking bays and multiple kinds of storage facilities, I'd guess they're using up pretty darn close to 30% of the volume just for that stuff.
And even in the "habitable" space, they're not stacking people on top of each other and certain areas like atriums and pools will have more depth and thus more space per person.
e ESD population is going to be highly transient.
Would atriums and pools have more depth than in a city? Or what do you mean with that?
Not to forget that they have Holodeck technology now - they can get a dozen or so persons in a small suite and make them feel like they are visiting a different planet.
We know how much typical Starfleet personnel has in space on ships like the Enterprise. I would not expect them to have more on a space station. I think that fits with typical apartments and flats found in cities and large skyscrapers.
I think in the end the magnitude is all that we really need to consider - is it about a few 10,000, a few 100,000, a few Millions, a few ten Million or a few 100 Million.
Seems its about a few Millions.
Now, when do we get the Sim City mod for building and populating Starbases?
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All of which is irrelevant depending on what we're comparing it to. When you measure the population density of a city, no one says "But 10% of that is streets, 5% is Water storage, etc." Same with boats. If we're measuring population density, it's measured as it compares to the whole.
While this is true, the pop density of the whole probably does break down to the sum of the weighted averages of the population density of individual areas by function. Since population density is an average for the whole city, the amount dedicated to certain functions is going to either be reflective of or prescriptive for what you can do with individual sections.
That is to say that if I fill 30% of a city's buildings with solid concrete, the population density of the city should probably decline. Likewise, if the population is too dense, I can't put in a race track without somehow lowering the population density of the city.
With 944990460m2 of usable space, I'm going to conservatively estimate 19,500 humanoids/km3 and maybe 26,500/km3 if we want to get into transient populations, emergencies, etc.
man this is one hell of a nerdy thread, even for the STO forums.
...And? Did you come all the way out here to say that?
OT: I'm not much for stats and such myself, but I think ESD should have a fairly high population density, particularly given the war. Lots of troops passing through, and lots of people wanting to be somewhere they can get on an evac ship sharpish if the Undine attack Earth. I see it as a combination military base and airport - with maintenance facilities too.
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I have linked the blueprints for my favorite, one and only, Galaxy and for the Constitution class starships. I hope you saw the blueprints already. The grandeur of the main shuttle bay, four gymnasiums, holodecks, cargo bays, fuel thanks, computer cores that run through several decks, main deflector, saucers third photon torpedo launcher that not so many know about (they will demand it now in galaxy beef tread :P) and so on
We saw a small fraction of the things above listed and they were not in scale (they did not had you) and I do not recall that I ever saw main shuttle bay on screen.
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Something to think about here, after reading several pages of this post some things to keep in mind are ESD isnt as much a floating city as it is a massive floating office/apartment building. with it's own internal infrastructure. The comparisons to Aircraft carriers or the Galaxy are the most apt here, but one major detail seems to have been left out... the bulkheads... How thick are the walls? It could make a big difference in internal usable volume.
Also just because you have headroom on the decks (Taco said something about 6m deck height) it doesnt mean people would be standing on top of each others shoulders. without doing the math I think the figure of 75000 to 150000 is a reasonable population given all of the uninhabitable areas.
I didn't read the whole thread, so this might have been discussed already, but one question to consider, is are you going off the canon diameter (3.8 km at its widest point) or the actual in-game size?
The reason I ask is because in-game, you have large ships like the Odyssey and Galaxy inside Spacedock. The former is over a kilometer in length, and the latter is what, 800m wide? Now, keep in mind that in the few instances we've seen Spacedock itself, it's actually been a fairly small station. Take for example shots with the Excelsior, which is around 185m wide. Even assuming we have a bit of clearance, that means the doors themselves are around 200m wide at most. That means that there's no way the larger ships (Akira, Galaxy, Sovereign, Nebula, Odyssey, etc) would ever fit inside ESD, unless ESD has been expanded or replaced.
The second option is to go with in-game sizing, which clearly shows ESD being able to contain a Galaxy's width. Starbase 74 was clearly shown to have the dimensions necessary, but used the same basic shape as Spacedock (the same model was used, despite the difference in size between the two stations). Based on estimations from the door size, the station would have a maximum diameter of 8,781m, and a total height of 13,000m (although only 10,000 or so is interior space). Estimations from DITL suggest the population in a station this size would be around 85,000 crew and another 120-240k civilian / visitor.
Even so, you have to consider that almost the entire upper section (the mushroom part) is the open docking area, and the doors appear to be at most 20-40 meters thick (meaning the rest of the exterior hull is around the same thickness). That means crew work and recreation areas are limited to the much smaller central core areas, which also house the reactors and fabrication areas.
For comparison's sake, keep in mind that DS9 (which also had a lot of open space, and a diameter of around 1500 meters) had a total capacity of around 7,000, but typically carried closer to 2000 (500 crew, and around 1500 civilians). ESD itself is at least twice the size (even including the more open area), so would arguably have at least twice the capacity. However, if you go with the larger (upgraded?) size equal to Starbase 74, then it could easily be closer to that 100k number.
Yeah which makes me hesitant over my own estimate.
The Las Vegas Convention Center is the largest single level convention center with about 3,200,000 sq ft (300,000 m2) which is room for about 200,000 people.
The Las Vegas Convention Center is the largest single level convention center with about 3,200,000 sq ft (300,000 m2) which is room for about 200,000 people.
Ok, so that would be a density of 1 person for every 1.5 meters, that's pretty packed in, which is normal for a temporary convention, but probably not applicable to a day-to-day militaryish installation.
If you apply it Taco's latest area estimate of 944,990,460, you get 629 million!
Is that limiting the population to habitable areas? Because you should really only be calculating the area of those areas, then the population based on the available living / working space. People obviously can't live in the reactor core, or the fabrication area, or the docking bay (which is a large percentage of the station's area).
I think we should determine percentages of where everything is and then work from that. By dividing up what everything is, we'd be able to get a better picture of where things would be and then you could easily decide how much or how little people actually live on ESD.
We mostly seem to be in agreement that the mushroom of ESD is there strictly for docking purposes. This area wouldn't be used for any other purposes for that. So we would need to cut it out of any figures. Most people seem to be of agreement that this would need to be roughly 40% of ESD's size to properly dock a lot of ships. So we'll cut out 40%.
You also need to have the cores itself for ESD. Its got to keep ESD running at all times. You would want to be able to eject these cores if something bad happened, so it would be at the very bottom of ESD. I put cores as you would need more than one core for running purposes and or backup. I'd estimate its size to be roughly 15% of ESD. For those who have that picture of ESD, I'm counting the bulb at the bottom as the reactor area (which no one would live in), and that first cylinder above it. That cylinder is like where the engineering crew would be housed.
You need the cargo holdings, repairs and barracks (security, guards, whatever) to be close to the ships. In between the big mushroom and small mushroom is where they likely are. So how big is that area? This area seems to be about 10% of ESD. While I'm not about to divide the 3 up into proper percentages (at least here), cargo would likely take the priority, with repairs being next, followed by the barracks.
The small mushroom is likely where most of the traffic would be happening. It would also need to be half the size of the bigger mushroom to accommodate the moving traffic and what would be the bulk of the daily visitors. You would have your shops, sick bay, shuttle bay, administration and whatever other offices you can think of here. There would be very few living quarters in the small mushroom, mostly reserved for foreign dignitaries and probably a second barracks closely by them.
The final area that I haven't mentioned would be anyone who actual lived on the station otherwise. Though this would likely still be divided up into two parts. The first part being people who lived on the station for a brief period of time or crew on shore leave (weeks, months & bi-yearly) to people who live there full time). A third barracks would likely be installed here to maintain order which would also work for the engineering crew's barracks too.
So there you have what's probably the divide.
For TL;DR people of the above:
40% for Large Mushroom = Ships Only
10% for Cargo/Repair Crews/1st Barracks
20% for Small Mushroom = Foreign Dignitaries/2nd Barracks/Hotels
15% for Cylinder = Residential/Shore Leave/3rd Barracks
5% for Small Cylinder Above Reactor Core = Engineering
10% for Reactor(s) = Core(s) Only
For actual living crew space percentages:
3% for Repair/Cargo Crews and it wouldn't really be luxurious.
9.5% for Barracks divided up by 2 for 1st, 5 for 2nd, 2.5 for 3rd.
12.5% for Residential and Shore Leave.
5% for Engineering
Add in 2% for Foreign Dignitaries, since we've got a lot of planets.
So you'd likely need 32% for actual living quarters, with an extra 7% that could be converted from cargo holdings and 13% from the small mushroom if emergencies are required. Which would bring the number to 52% of the station is possible for living space.
This doesn't however taken into consideration of possible facilities and daily things to make people happy, so that 32% would probably be a max capacity type of number, with real number being like two thirds that. So the amount of people on the station the full time would be around 20 to 21% of the actual station.
Ok, so that would be a density of 1 person for every 1.5 meters, that's pretty packed in, which is normal for a temporary convention, but probably not applicable to a day-to-day militaryish installation.
If you apply it Taco's latest area estimate of 944,990,460, you get 629 million!
Keep in mind though, that Square Footage typically doesn't include walls.
So the amount of people on the station the full time would be around 20 to 21% of the actual station.
Since I like applying other people's figuring to mine and Taco's, let's play this out.
Let's say 20 percent is day to day used space by people as you suggest. Apply that to Taco's 5,669,942,760 cubic meter total volume (i looked back and it did look like he was calculating total volume of the model) we get 1,133,988,552 cubic meters of usable space.
So, apply my earlier calculation of one person per 840 cubic meters to that and we get 1,349,986 people.
Well thanks for all of your contributions to this thread.
We've successfully narrowed down ESD's potential population to somewhere between 15,000, and 700 million!
Well thanks for all of your contributions to this thread.
We've successfully narrowed down ESD's potential population to somewhere between 15,000, and 700 million!
Okay... one of your BOFFs appear in the club... idk, sitting down somewhere. You can get shipboard missions from them, like holodeck malfunctions or alien ship infestations. It starts out like "Oh, captain, I'm glad you're here. When I took a sonic shower this morning, purple goo started spraying out. The engineers have no idea what happened?"
Since I like applying other people's figuring to mine and Taco's, let's play this out.
Let's say 20 percent is day to day used space by people as you suggest. Apply that to Taco's 5,669,942,760 cubic meter total volume (i looked back and it did look like he was calculating total volume of the model) we get 1,133,988,552 cubic meters of usable space.
So, apply my earlier calculation of one person per 840 cubic meters to that and we get 1,349,986 people.
Thank drogyn, that's awesome. I think that's actually a very reasonable number to have.
That's a lot more reasonable, but still feels a bit big. I dunno.
It only feels like a big number until you think about something. Its only big if you think of it as all humans.
Thing is of that population maybe 1/4th to 1/3rd of that would be human and living on the station. 1/3rd would like be main Federation races. 1/4th would be newer Federation races. While the rest would unaffiliated.
Of those 1/3rd humans (just to be nice), that's roughly 500,000 people living there that are possibly human. Slash off about 2/5ths choosing to still live on Earth (for whatever reason). So take 200k off of that number.
So its very likely that we're sitting at 1.15 million.
HOWEVER~!
And this is so important that I shouted. Actually, my apologizes. Not intended.
The residential area is broken into parts. Residential and shore leav-yes, I mentioned a barracks too, thank you Jeff. Of that, it would probably be a highly favorable split in favor of shore leave, residential, with the barracks getting the short stick.
Again, I'm not a numbers guy. Especially when I've drank some prescription cough syrup that should've knocked me out by now. But let's just say like 400k is for shore leave, with 200k counting towards a statistical average.
This would then give 3 different types of averages to use. The first average would be the actual people living there, 750k. The second average would be the statistical average, 950k, with the movement average being 1.15m.
That looks much better in my opinion. So what would you use as a true number? Depends all on what you want to do. Each one would work for a different reason.
...honestly, I would be utterly grateful if someone with the ability to go through those numbers and do a better job of it would. The number I choose to use are just to show my point. I'd rather this be well though-out than simply "right".
ESD is also the "Gateway" to the Federation. We tend to all forget this simply because its in front of our (human) home world. Thanks to the Academy, Headquarters and a lot of other facilities being here, there would be a lot of people want to be on Earth or at least near it.
A lot of different people would be needed here. Though we've got universal translators, you want cullturalists to understand different cultures and be there to make things as smooth as possible for others. Dignitaries or otherwise.
You'll have many different planets trying to showcase what they bring to the Federation as well. Risa would definitely have some sort of thing to showcase its beautiful world and why you want to live there. You'd have different shops, restaurants, and everything else that you could imagine being here. By being on the station it would them to maintain contact.
There would also be scientific holdings that would be temporary homes for experiments before moving elsewhere. Probably nothing serious that could go wrong, but you'd need capable people to do that.
And finally, if ESD was a military facility, I could then see those numbers being lower than what has been presented. But to showcase the Federation and what it strives to be, a place for all to be welcomed and to live. What a better place than where people continually move through.
Since its now one hour later than when I started this post, I think I'll stop here.
Well thanks for all of your contributions to this thread.
We've successfully narrowed down ESD's potential population to somewhere between 15,000, and 700 million!
Edit: ESD is 5.5km tall (roughly)
Thanks for listening to our feedback and its a very good conversation we've got going here. I'll admit I wasn't all intrigued by the opening post, simply thinking it was you just wondering out loud or what literally kept you up all night once just because some people think that one thing and boom its like "OMG, I can't stop thinking about it"... And now I'm rambling, but what I was getting at, is that this has become very entertaining and fascinating.
I thank you highly taco for bringing it up and for everyone else who has been keeping this civil. Let's keep up the great work!
@forthegamer: The reason I suggested basing population density on a large modern military base - after incorrectly I think suggesting a ship - is because I figured its area and population numbers would actually already include some of the variables you're talking about: people who don't live on base, transient population who are moving in and out, civilians and military together, etc etc.
Another user suggested Naval Base San Diego (which, incidentally, my dad was stationed at in the 1970s!) which is an excellent suggestion. Here's the wikipedia summary:
Naval Base San Diego, sometimes called 32nd Street Naval Station, is the largest base of the United States Navy on the west coast of the United States, in San Diego, California. Naval Base San Diego is the principal homeport of the Pacific Fleet, consisting of 54 ships and over 120 tenant commands. The base is composed of 13 piers stretched over 977 acres (3.95 km2) of land and 326 acres (1.32 km2) of water. The total on base population is 20,000 military personnel and 6,000 civilians.
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Since ESD is a primary port of entry to the sol system perhaps getting numbers for the average daily population fot the largest port of entry in the US and adjusting those calculations for the known size of the port for the known size of the starbase.
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Heck, between docking bays and multiple kinds of storage facilities, I'd guess they're using up pretty darn close to 30% of the volume just for that stuff.
And even in the "habitable" space, they're not stacking people on top of each other and certain areas like atriums and pools will have more depth and thus more space per person.
And I would tend to agree that the ESD population is going to be highly transient. Few, if any, are going to live there on a permanent basis when there's a whole planet just one shuttle trip away. But a lot of people are going to be passing through... at least as many as permanent staff and probably a lot more.
For the sake of argument, I'd suggest the day to day population is something like 30% permanent staff, 20% long-term transients and residents, and 50% short-term transient.
In other words, 30% of the people work there. They don't live there and don't need quarters, but with a round-the-clock staff level they're there every day. They mainly need work space and food service.
20% of the people actually live on the station or are temporarily quartered there. They need a lot more space than the normal staffers do.
50% of the people are there for 24 hours or less. They are just passing through and using the facilities, including hotel and food services. But with the constant churn of travelers, that percentage of the population is probably the same throughout the day. These people circulate throughout the public areas of the station all the time and the public areas probably have a fairly high population density. You could almost lump these in with the staffers -- 80% of the population is always moving around.
It's a busy, busy place...
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Not to forget that they have Holodeck technology now - they can get a dozen or so persons in a small suite and make them feel like they are visiting a different planet.
We know how much typical Starfleet personnel has in space on ships like the Enterprise. I would not expect them to have more on a space station. I think that fits with typical apartments and flats found in cities and large skyscrapers.
I think in the end the magnitude is all that we really need to consider - is it about a few 10,000, a few 100,000, a few Millions, a few ten Million or a few 100 Million.
Seems its about a few Millions.
Now, when do we get the Sim City mod for building and populating Starbases?
Is this close enough?
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While this is true, the pop density of the whole probably does break down to the sum of the weighted averages of the population density of individual areas by function. Since population density is an average for the whole city, the amount dedicated to certain functions is going to either be reflective of or prescriptive for what you can do with individual sections.
That is to say that if I fill 30% of a city's buildings with solid concrete, the population density of the city should probably decline. Likewise, if the population is too dense, I can't put in a race track without somehow lowering the population density of the city.
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...And? Did you come all the way out here to say that?
OT: I'm not much for stats and such myself, but I think ESD should have a fairly high population density, particularly given the war. Lots of troops passing through, and lots of people wanting to be somewhere they can get on an evac ship sharpish if the Undine attack Earth. I see it as a combination military base and airport - with maintenance facilities too.
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I prefer these threads to the same regurgitated ignorance every month.
Agreed, this is the most fun I've had on the forums in a long time.
Thank you for the great work done on the ESD.
I have linked the blueprints for my favorite, one and only, Galaxy and for the Constitution class starships. I hope you saw the blueprints already. The grandeur of the main shuttle bay, four gymnasiums, holodecks, cargo bays, fuel thanks, computer cores that run through several decks, main deflector, saucers third photon torpedo launcher that not so many know about
http://startrekships.tumblr.com/post/30819215707/starfleet-heavy-cruiser-galaxy-class-deck-plans-v2
http://uss-arkansas-states-class.yolasite.com/deck-by-deck-plans.php
Galaxy class tech spec.
http://www.ussenterprise.co.uk/enterprise/entd/entdtech.htm
We saw a small fraction of the things above listed and they were not in scale (they did not had you) and I do not recall that I ever saw main shuttle bay on screen.
Managed to find pictures of shuttle bays 2 and 3.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Shuttlebay_3?file=Shuttlebay_3.jpg
http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121209202934/memoryalpha/en/images/0/0b/GalaxyShuttlebay.jpg
BR,
Miro
0, yes zero very rare AP MK II dual canons
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Also just because you have headroom on the decks (Taco said something about 6m deck height) it doesnt mean people would be standing on top of each others shoulders. without doing the math I think the figure of 75000 to 150000 is a reasonable population given all of the uninhabitable areas.
The reason I ask is because in-game, you have large ships like the Odyssey and Galaxy inside Spacedock. The former is over a kilometer in length, and the latter is what, 800m wide? Now, keep in mind that in the few instances we've seen Spacedock itself, it's actually been a fairly small station. Take for example shots with the Excelsior, which is around 185m wide. Even assuming we have a bit of clearance, that means the doors themselves are around 200m wide at most. That means that there's no way the larger ships (Akira, Galaxy, Sovereign, Nebula, Odyssey, etc) would ever fit inside ESD, unless ESD has been expanded or replaced.
The second option is to go with in-game sizing, which clearly shows ESD being able to contain a Galaxy's width. Starbase 74 was clearly shown to have the dimensions necessary, but used the same basic shape as Spacedock (the same model was used, despite the difference in size between the two stations). Based on estimations from the door size, the station would have a maximum diameter of 8,781m, and a total height of 13,000m (although only 10,000 or so is interior space). Estimations from DITL suggest the population in a station this size would be around 85,000 crew and another 120-240k civilian / visitor.
Even so, you have to consider that almost the entire upper section (the mushroom part) is the open docking area, and the doors appear to be at most 20-40 meters thick (meaning the rest of the exterior hull is around the same thickness). That means crew work and recreation areas are limited to the much smaller central core areas, which also house the reactors and fabrication areas.
For comparison's sake, keep in mind that DS9 (which also had a lot of open space, and a diameter of around 1500 meters) had a total capacity of around 7,000, but typically carried closer to 2000 (500 crew, and around 1500 civilians). ESD itself is at least twice the size (even including the more open area), so would arguably have at least twice the capacity. However, if you go with the larger (upgraded?) size equal to Starbase 74, then it could easily be closer to that 100k number.
Turkmenistan is also an entire country.
Nothing like a good canon fight to get the blood going.
Yeah which makes me hesitant over my own estimate.
The best part is we haven't been fighting. We've been discussing like reasonable people able to reason. I
The Las Vegas Convention Center is the largest single level convention center with about 3,200,000 sq ft (300,000 m2) which is room for about 200,000 people.
Ok, so that would be a density of 1 person for every 1.5 meters, that's pretty packed in, which is normal for a temporary convention, but probably not applicable to a day-to-day militaryish installation.
If you apply it Taco's latest area estimate of 944,990,460, you get 629 million!
I think we should determine percentages of where everything is and then work from that. By dividing up what everything is, we'd be able to get a better picture of where things would be and then you could easily decide how much or how little people actually live on ESD.
We mostly seem to be in agreement that the mushroom of ESD is there strictly for docking purposes. This area wouldn't be used for any other purposes for that. So we would need to cut it out of any figures. Most people seem to be of agreement that this would need to be roughly 40% of ESD's size to properly dock a lot of ships. So we'll cut out 40%.
You also need to have the cores itself for ESD. Its got to keep ESD running at all times. You would want to be able to eject these cores if something bad happened, so it would be at the very bottom of ESD. I put cores as you would need more than one core for running purposes and or backup. I'd estimate its size to be roughly 15% of ESD. For those who have that picture of ESD, I'm counting the bulb at the bottom as the reactor area (which no one would live in), and that first cylinder above it. That cylinder is like where the engineering crew would be housed.
You need the cargo holdings, repairs and barracks (security, guards, whatever) to be close to the ships. In between the big mushroom and small mushroom is where they likely are. So how big is that area? This area seems to be about 10% of ESD. While I'm not about to divide the 3 up into proper percentages (at least here), cargo would likely take the priority, with repairs being next, followed by the barracks.
The small mushroom is likely where most of the traffic would be happening. It would also need to be half the size of the bigger mushroom to accommodate the moving traffic and what would be the bulk of the daily visitors. You would have your shops, sick bay, shuttle bay, administration and whatever other offices you can think of here. There would be very few living quarters in the small mushroom, mostly reserved for foreign dignitaries and probably a second barracks closely by them.
The final area that I haven't mentioned would be anyone who actual lived on the station otherwise. Though this would likely still be divided up into two parts. The first part being people who lived on the station for a brief period of time or crew on shore leave (weeks, months & bi-yearly) to people who live there full time). A third barracks would likely be installed here to maintain order which would also work for the engineering crew's barracks too.
So there you have what's probably the divide.
For TL;DR people of the above:
40% for Large Mushroom = Ships Only
10% for Cargo/Repair Crews/1st Barracks
20% for Small Mushroom = Foreign Dignitaries/2nd Barracks/Hotels
15% for Cylinder = Residential/Shore Leave/3rd Barracks
5% for Small Cylinder Above Reactor Core = Engineering
10% for Reactor(s) = Core(s) Only
For actual living crew space percentages:
3% for Repair/Cargo Crews and it wouldn't really be luxurious.
9.5% for Barracks divided up by 2 for 1st, 5 for 2nd, 2.5 for 3rd.
12.5% for Residential and Shore Leave.
5% for Engineering
Add in 2% for Foreign Dignitaries, since we've got a lot of planets.
So you'd likely need 32% for actual living quarters, with an extra 7% that could be converted from cargo holdings and 13% from the small mushroom if emergencies are required. Which would bring the number to 52% of the station is possible for living space.
This doesn't however taken into consideration of possible facilities and daily things to make people happy, so that 32% would probably be a max capacity type of number, with real number being like two thirds that. So the amount of people on the station the full time would be around 20 to 21% of the actual station.
Or so my two cents figures.
Keep in mind though, that Square Footage typically doesn't include walls.
Since I like applying other people's figuring to mine and Taco's, let's play this out.
Let's say 20 percent is day to day used space by people as you suggest. Apply that to Taco's 5,669,942,760 cubic meter total volume (i looked back and it did look like he was calculating total volume of the model) we get 1,133,988,552 cubic meters of usable space.
So, apply my earlier calculation of one person per 840 cubic meters to that and we get 1,349,986 people.
That's a lot more reasonable, but still feels a bit big. I dunno.
Maybe we're zeroing in on a good number. I imagine at some point when we come up with a number Taco likes he'll drop in here and announce it
My character Tsin'xing
We've successfully narrowed down ESD's potential population to somewhere between 15,000, and 700 million!
Edit: ESD is 5.5km tall (roughly)
Would nothing be better at this point? :P
I GOT IT
The BEST idea ever to make a club deck useful.
Okay... one of your BOFFs appear in the club... idk, sitting down somewhere. You can get shipboard missions from them, like holodeck malfunctions or alien ship infestations. It starts out like "Oh, captain, I'm glad you're here. When I took a sonic shower this morning, purple goo started spraying out. The engineers have no idea what happened?"
I know, it's the best idea EVER, right? =D
...yeah, I'm gonna go lay down for a while. X_x
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It only feels like a big number until you think about something. Its only big if you think of it as all humans.
Thing is of that population maybe 1/4th to 1/3rd of that would be human and living on the station. 1/3rd would like be main Federation races. 1/4th would be newer Federation races. While the rest would unaffiliated.
Of those 1/3rd humans (just to be nice), that's roughly 500,000 people living there that are possibly human. Slash off about 2/5ths choosing to still live on Earth (for whatever reason). So take 200k off of that number.
So its very likely that we're sitting at 1.15 million.
HOWEVER~!
And this is so important that I shouted. Actually, my apologizes. Not intended.
The residential area is broken into parts. Residential and shore leav-yes, I mentioned a barracks too, thank you Jeff. Of that, it would probably be a highly favorable split in favor of shore leave, residential, with the barracks getting the short stick.
Again, I'm not a numbers guy. Especially when I've drank some prescription cough syrup that should've knocked me out by now. But let's just say like 400k is for shore leave, with 200k counting towards a statistical average.
This would then give 3 different types of averages to use. The first average would be the actual people living there, 750k. The second average would be the statistical average, 950k, with the movement average being 1.15m.
That looks much better in my opinion. So what would you use as a true number? Depends all on what you want to do. Each one would work for a different reason.
...honestly, I would be utterly grateful if someone with the ability to go through those numbers and do a better job of it would. The number I choose to use are just to show my point. I'd rather this be well though-out than simply "right".
ESD is also the "Gateway" to the Federation. We tend to all forget this simply because its in front of our (human) home world. Thanks to the Academy, Headquarters and a lot of other facilities being here, there would be a lot of people want to be on Earth or at least near it.
A lot of different people would be needed here. Though we've got universal translators, you want cullturalists to understand different cultures and be there to make things as smooth as possible for others. Dignitaries or otherwise.
You'll have many different planets trying to showcase what they bring to the Federation as well. Risa would definitely have some sort of thing to showcase its beautiful world and why you want to live there. You'd have different shops, restaurants, and everything else that you could imagine being here. By being on the station it would them to maintain contact.
There would also be scientific holdings that would be temporary homes for experiments before moving elsewhere. Probably nothing serious that could go wrong, but you'd need capable people to do that.
And finally, if ESD was a military facility, I could then see those numbers being lower than what has been presented. But to showcase the Federation and what it strives to be, a place for all to be welcomed and to live. What a better place than where people continually move through.
Since its now one hour later than when I started this post, I think I'll stop here.
Thanks for listening to our feedback and its a very good conversation we've got going here. I'll admit I wasn't all intrigued by the opening post, simply thinking it was you just wondering out loud or what literally kept you up all night once just because some people think that one thing and boom its like "OMG, I can't stop thinking about it"... And now I'm rambling, but what I was getting at, is that this has become very entertaining and fascinating.
I thank you highly taco for bringing it up and for everyone else who has been keeping this civil. Let's keep up the great work!
Another user suggested Naval Base San Diego (which, incidentally, my dad was stationed at in the 1970s!) which is an excellent suggestion. Here's the wikipedia summary:
That kinda sounds like ESD to me