10 Largest Megastructures In Star Trek
When you're out in the final frontier, you can either go big or go home.
We've seen some outrageously massive structures in Star Trek from both Humans and aliens alike. The largest of these structures exist on scales that our minds can barely even comprehend, from metres, to kilometres, to astronomical units and beyond.
In this list we're going to count down the largest megastructures seen in Trek so far, and theorise their purposes and origins. Along the way, we'll learn just how truly small we are in the grand scheme of things.
Before we get started talking megastructures, we'd like to say a mega-thanks to Ex Astris Scientia for their list of the biggest artificial structures in Star Trek, which was a very useful resource when putting together our list, and helped us determine the precise sizes of some of the things we'll talk about. Also, just like in their list, we're gonna focus mainly on internal volume rather than length or height when ranking these examples. Otherwise, the list would be full of extremely long, yet pathetically skinny space elevators and other things that don't really measure up.
10. The Whale Probe
Considering it's entirely featureless hull, it's pretty difficult to determine the exact size of the whale probe from The Voyage Home, but it is undeniably massive.
Don Dow, the Effects Director Of Photography on the film has stated that the probe was meant to measure five miles long and a mile-and-a-half wide. However, many fans have noticed that this is way too small to be true, based mostly on shots from the film where the probe can be directly compared to Spacedock One. The Ex Astris Scientia article estimated the probes length at a whopping 50 km from direct observations.
This really makes you wonder why the probe needed to be so large. Was it simply an automated communication device, or could there be an interior, or possibly even a crew of large, cetacean aliens. It seems ridiculous to construct such a massive vessel for a task as simple as saying ‘hi’ to some whales. Regardless, the probes absurd size definitely contributes to its mystique.