Star Trek: 10 Biggest Differences Between Kirk's Enterprise And Picard's

10. Size

Although the two starships had very similar designs, the Enterprise-D (Galaxy-class) was much bigger than it's Constitution-class counterpart.

Picard's ship was more than twice as long, measuring in at 641 metres (2103 feet), compared to Kirk's ship at 288.6 metres (947 feet), and was also made much bulkier around weak-spots like the neck and the warp nacelle pylons. Although the number of people on both ships fluctuated, the original Enterprise never had more than 500 people on board (typically around 200), whereas the Enterprise-D consistently housed a little over 1000 people. Both ships were among the largest and most powerful of their times, but, by the 24th century, even ships that were considered small, such as Voyager, were much larger than Kirk's vessel.

Weirdly, in Star Trek (2009), Kirk's Enterprise was redesigned and scaled up to be about the same size as a Galaxy-class due to the size that they made the ship's windows on its 3D model.