Here is the NEW starship USS Enterprise

First image of the new starship USS Enterprise was released recently to Entertainment Weekly in November by J.J. Abrams. This new design is kinda ungainly looking.

It looks like a cross between the Enterprise from the first movie and a ship from Star Trek – The Next Generation. And for the life of me, those warp nacelles remind me of the headlight clusters from some 1950s Ford or Chevy automobile! And the engineering hull, while beefier than the original, it just doesn't quite look right. The shuttlecraft bay is still inbetween the two warp nacelle/pylons, but from the angle shown, the rear half of the ship appears to be cut “short” from the original TOS Enterprise. The deflector dish is too far forward, while the main hull pylon (between the saucer hull and the engineering hull) is thicker. Lots of improvements there that were taken from the first movie as well such as the proton torpedo launchers and the side airlocks.

Now all that might appear as criticisms. But to look at it from a modern day engineering angle – this does appear to be a better design than the original. The main problem was weight distribution in the original design. This one seems to have taken care of that by moving the saucer backwards a bit and moving the bulkiest part of the warp nacelles forward in order to have a better stabilized center of gravity.

Ref. ( http://trekmovie.com/2008/11/11/first-full-image-of-new-star-trek-enterprise/ ) and ( http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2008/11/star-trek-first.html )