Starship = Submarine

[Don-Okay]

I don't buy the fact ships are made spacey for crew moral. Star fleet is a military, the officers and crew should be able to live with greatly diminished space. Given holodecks and food replicators their living standards are already much higher than ours.

[kostmayer]

I agree, thought Federation citizens are probably used to a higher standard of living than us.

[Captain Seafort]

Star fleet is a military, the officers and crew should be able to live with greatly diminished space.

"Should be" being the operative phrase. The central problem with most Fed ships is that they try and combine multiple mutually exclusive roles into a single hull - science vessel, interstellar luxury liner and warship. Its only with the later models like the Defiant and Nova classes that they start to specialise (or rather, are forced to specialise by the Borg and Dominion).

[Don-Okay]

So a dedicated Ambassadorial class?

[Captain Seafort]

Most of them aren't a dedicated anything - they're a jack of all trades and master of none.

[Graham Kennedy]

A person from 300 years ago would think today's Navy ship accommodation was like a hotel. What would you say if he told you that the ships were not real Navy ships because of the way the crews lived compared to him?

[Don-Okay]

From what I have seen of accommodations in modern naval subs they are not a hell of a lot better than old naval standards.

[Captain Seafort]

A person from 300 years ago would think today's Navy ship accommodation was like a hotel. What would you say if he told you that the ships were not real Navy ships because of the way the crews lived compared to him?

I'd point out that the personal living and storage space available to an individual hadn't changed much, if at all. The main difference is the addition of dedicated cleaning and eating facilities, which facilitate hygiene and therefore drastically reduce non-combat casualties.

[Graham Kennedy]

Oh? I've seen the amount of living space people had on old ships. It was FAR less than people get today.

[Don-Okay]

Depends on which old ship and which modern ship you are comparing.

[Tyyr]

Ummm, back in the old days you had a hammock, that you had to roll up and stow. Today at least you have a cabin you share with a few guys, a permanent bed, some storage space, and you weren't sleeping on top of a cannon. The closets you could get to those old style are on a sub and our guys today still have it better on subs than they did on big ships of the line back in the day.

[McAvoy]

Wait.... military ships or luxury ships?

Because I sleeper on a steel bed 3 feet wide by 6 six feet long with a locker underneath about a foot deep in a bunk three deep. Not to mention this was with 200 other guys. I never had a cabin. Only high ranking officers get wardrooms.

Up until WW2 sailors slept in hammocks in the Galley where they ate and slept.

[Captain Seafort]

Because I sleeper on a steel bed 3 feet wide by 6 six feet long with a locker underneath about a foot deep in a bunk three deep. Not to mention this was with 200 other guys. I never had a cabin. Only high ranking officers get wardrooms.

Were they arranged such that you'd have a six-man cabin if you defined "cabin" as "two stacks of bunks plus a six-foot by three-foot deck space with a curtain at each end"? I suspect that's the sort of arrangement Tyyr's thinking of. Also, I thought the bunks were narrower than you describe, so there's been a slight increase in personal space since the days of sail.

[Tyyr]

Not meaning cabin as in you have your own. Cabin as there is a designated room where several men sleep which is not also part of their action station.

[Teaos]

It is my understanding that some models of Subs have people literally sleeping in anywhere there is 6 feet of horizontal space.