STAR TREK Galaxy class starship as a passenger/cruise liner?

[Hobbes]

In one of the Mirror episodes of ST:TNG they explain that the ship is now carrying hundreds of soldiers to an outpost for a war instead of a few crew with their families. This suggests that room can be found for more people with some remodelling of the interior.

the Enterprise-D has a normal crew complement of ~1000 and has room for thousands of passengers (5000?).

[jcf]

Transparent roof panels wouldn't do much for the passengers, not much to see at warp and if under
impulse power the stars too far apart to see much
of anything, unless you're within a solar system. Space is mindnumbingly vast.
Viewing screens on walls and ceiling would be more
logical. That way close-ups of interesting things seen
along the way could be shown.

[zenrat]

Unllke the Enterprise NCC-1701 (as seen in The Original Series) the Enterprise NCC-1701D had windows that you get to see on the screen.  You see them in Picard's ready room, in the cabins of the more senior crew (rank still has its privilege), and in Ten Forward (the bar situated on deck ten at the front of the saucer section).
They don't seem to have any form of window covering which i think is something i'd require rather than having all that black nothingness out there looking in at me.

[scooter]

Unllke the Enterprise NCC-1701 (as seen in The Original Series) the Enterprise NCC-1701D had windows that you get to see on the screen.  You see them in Picard's ready room, in the cabins of the more senior crew (rank still has its privilege), and in Ten Forward (the bar situated on deck ten at the front of the saucer section).
They don't seem to have any form of window covering which i think is something i'd require rather than having all that black nothingness out there looking in at me.

Smart materials as part of the transparent aluminum matrix?  Much like Transitions (tm) type lenses, but on a larger scale.  Along with UV and radiation blocking properties.

As for why we never see it in the shows...it just doesn't look "cool".  Except at the beginning of Star Trek 2009, when they polarized the viewscreen

[kerick]

Unless those stars are extremely bright you wouldn't see much in room lighting anyway. Just like in our houses, if the lights are on inside it's pretty hard to see anything outside. If you turn the lights off then you can see stuff outside. But then you can't have guests falling down in the dark so not much point in even having windows. Maybe a viewing deck like a planetarium.

[Rick Lowe]

There is more than one reference to a 'Promenade Deck' in the series/books/comics, so why not a number of them, or a really enlarged version of the existing? A ring-shaped one all around the circumference of one deck maybe?

And with screen technology, why not have large windows anyway, that way you could see views of planets you're orbiting, nebulae, etc and they can always be used as massive viewscreens if the occasion demands it.

Depends what the passengers' desires/priorities are, but you could have a number of Arboreta on board.
There again, a few holodecks could fill that niche, too.

WRT enlarging the saucer hull, have you seen the pics of shipyards enlarging or modernising cruise ships?
- cut the superstructure off
- cut the hull in half, into forward/aft sections
- insert a new chunk in, to lengthen the hull
- insert half a dozen new decks-worth of superstructure
- reattach the old superstructure on top.

Bingo, you've doubled the size of the vessel, for a fraction of the co$t of a new one.

Something similar is easily doable for a saucer section.Too much mass for the existing Engineering hull? Strengthen the Shielding/Structural Integrity Fields and/or add another Warp Nacelle (or two) and Bob's Your Uncle!

[zenrat]

...and boost the inertial dampeners, and ramp up the Heisenberg compensators.
I love Star Trek technobabble with its names rooted in real science.
 

[Rick Lowe]

...and boost the inertial dampeners, and ramp up the Heisenberg compensators.
I love Star Trek technobabble with its names rooted in real science.
 

True, I had forgotten them... not a good look if your paying passengers turn into red/green/mauve smears...

The scenes with Geordi and Scotty had a level of their very own.