Most Babylon 5 starships run about 1,000 to 2,000 meters, while the Battlestar Galactica is 1,445 meters long. Even a dreaded Borg Cube is only about 1,500 meters, while the famous Doomsday Machine, which was slicing up planets 10 years before the Death Star was born, comes in at only 2,700 meters. Navy Nimitz-class carrier at 330 meters). In contrast, most Star Trek ships seem like faster-than-light midgets at less than 500 meters long (not hugely bigger than a U.S. The 19,000-meter-long Star Wars Super Star Destroyer is joined by the 18,000-meter Ragnarok-class Titan from the EVE online game and the 10,000-meter Eternal Crusader mobile Chapter Fortress from the Warhammer 40K tabletop miniatures game (Loechel’s chart doesn’t even include the Death Star). Or, perhaps writers of naval science-fiction suffer from naval dwarfism. One conclusion from Loechel’s chart: Hollywood science-fiction screenwriters and video game designers are megalomaniacs. supercarriers aren’t just awesome because of their firepower these ships are also as long as football fields. A 2,000-ton ship-of-the-line was reckoned more powerful in a Napoleonic fleet action than a 900-ton frigate likewise, 20th-century naval powers raced to have mammoth battleships and cruisers, because larger ships could carry bigger weapons and thicker armor. A Star Wars Executor-class Super Star Destroyer, one of the largest ships on Loechel’s chart, is 19,000 meters long (or 11.8 miles, because the Empire would be evil enough to reject the metric system).Ī starship size chart may be the ultimate in geekery, but the notion that size reflects naval power is not. It shows a Star Trek Constellation-class starship, of which the Enterprise is the most famous progeny, being only about 300 meters long.

Loechel has created a size comparison chart of ships from nearly 40 sci-fi TV shows, movies, and video games.

Because the starship Enterprise battling an Imperial Star Destroyer would be like a flea attacking an elephant, if Dirk Loechel is right. If Captain Kirk had to fight Darth Vader, he’d had better hope that size is not everything.

Starship size chart