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The Enterprise-D was a Starfleet ship, with Starfleet crew members and their families aboard. Keiko didn't seem to be related to anyone on-board until she married Miles O'brien. So was in Starfleet prior to their marriage, or was she some sort of civilian contractor?

Discuss.

Guinan wasn't in Starfleet, wasn't related to anyone on board and yet she was there before (IIRC) Keiko made an appearance in the show, so I see no problem with Keiko being a civilian contractor. Wasn't she a botanist or something,and later a teacher on DS9? If she's there as a civilian scientist onboard an exploration vessel that makes perfect sense to me.

Memory Alpha says she was a botanist working in the arboretum. Presumably on the Enterprise, her job was picking up funny-looking plants and figuring out stuff about them.

Really it's not much wonder there's civilian scientists on Federation ships-- Starfleet officers can't be trained to do everything, even with the strong not-a-military stance they had in early TNG. They can't be devoted to pure science because they have to put their ship, their mission and the Federation first. So, bring along some civilians who can do the stuff the Starfleet officers don't have time for. Same reason Captain Cook brought along Joseph Banks.

In broader terms, Starfleet almost certainly liaises with civilian institutions and governments to provide the scientific know-wots. Say the Enterprise is about to go on a mission to an unexplored sector, but at the moment it doesn't have, say, a chemist. Picard sends a personnel request to Starfleet HR, HR pulls up a list of available scientists and starts making phone calls. "Hello, is this Dr. [whatever] at the Federation Polytechnic? This is Starfleet, we would like to offer you a short term position on the Enterprise on a mission to..."

An interesting notion that I saw on Reddit just now-- there may be civilian contracting companies that work with Starfleet to provide certain services and personnel that Starfleet either can't supply or doesn't have time/interest in supplying. IRL, as an example, the company Aramark in the US (don't know about overseas) provides cafeteria and food services to various companies. The Trek version might be more like Department of Defense civilian contractors rather than a separate company, but otherwise, it makes sense that there's some way of providing a labor pool directly to Starfleet when needed.

Elheru Aran wrote: ↑2019-07-13 10:42amAn interesting notion that I saw on Reddit just now-- there may be civilian contracting companies that work with Starfleet to provide certain services and personnel that Starfleet either can't supply or doesn't have time/interest in supplying. IRL, as an example, the company Aramark in the US (don't know about overseas) provides cafeteria and food services to various companies. The Trek version might be more like Department of Defense civilian contractors rather than a separate company, but otherwise, it makes sense that there's some way of providing a labor pool directly to Starfleet when needed.

Or they could be the equivalent of employees at places like Australia's CSIRO.

I think the notion of contracting companies or contractors in general is a bit of a misnomer. The shows make clear (until DS9, and even then only at the periphery) that the Federation is a post-scarcity communist state that has given up capital and monetary exchange and personal fulfillment in science and the arts is highly valued and enabled. In that context I think giving up space on a pseudo-military ship (dialogue at times makes clear that Starfleet doesn't imagine their primary mission as military in TNG) to people engaging in either serving other people (Ten-Forward) or pushing forward the bounds of science makes perfect sense.

Straha wrote: ↑2019-07-13 04:17pm I think the notion of contracting companies or contractors in general is a bit of a misnomer. The shows make clear (until DS9, and even then only at the periphery) that the Federation is a post-scarcity communist state that has given up capital and monetary exchange and personal fulfillment in science and the arts is highly valued and enabled. In that context I think giving up space on a pseudo-military ship (dialogue at times makes clear that Starfleet doesn't imagine their primary mission as military in TNG) to people engaging in either serving other people (Ten-Forward) or pushing forward the bounds of science makes perfect sense.

I'm not sure that I agree that the Federation is actually post-scarcity, they're pretty close but I don't think they're actually there yet. Yes, for most things people can probably get what they want without significant delays or effort but we've seen them rushing out hasty refits because they had a scarcity of ships while at war. We know that most civilians don't own their own spacecraft, whether this is due to a lack of demand or a lack of availability is up for debate.

We also know that Latinum and Dilithium are scarce on a galactic level, probably occurring far more rarely than even something like Rhodium and Osmium do on Earth. These are materials used in external trade and in powering starships and as such are very important to the UFP. I'd argue that given their value the UFP can't be truly post-scarcity until these and other useful exotic materials can be manufactured on demand.

I'd also argue that until they start to efficiently use the resources at their disposal, such as capturing 50% or more of the energy of the stars around their major worlds, they'll remain a low scarcity society but fail to reach true post-scarcity.