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

One of the most hotly debated questions in science fiction is "Kirk or Picard?," but these arguments usually don't factor in their ships, likely because, by all accounts, the Enterprise-D is far superior to Kirk's NCC 1701. Starfleet made a lot of progress in the time between making these two ships (from the years 2245 to 2363), but what exactly is it that makes The Next Generation's Enterprise so dissimilar?

Some differences had to do with the technology available at the time, but also how the ships were designed to function. The two Enterprise's were created over one hundred years apart and for very different purposes. In general, Kirk's ship is geared more towards quick exploration from planet to planet (their five-year mission), and Picard's ship is better at long-term diplomatic tasks.

This list will be looking at the biggest differences between NCC 1701 and NCC 1701-D, and how these differences affected the operation of both ships as well as their crews' everyday lives.

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.