Swinging nacelles?

[Teaos]

I doubt you could not notice something like that.

[Mikey]

Perhaps there's some sort of system to prevent one nacelle rising if the other doesn't?

Yes, that's it. An active safety system that somehow wouldn't be damaged by the thing that damaged the nacelle mechanism in the first place. [/sarcasm]

[Sionnach Glic]

Sorry, was I assuming competance on behalf of Starfleet again?

[Nickswitz]

Yeah Rochey i think you were
and thats just wrong

[Sionnach Glic]

Sorry, I'll make sure that doesn't happen again.

[Mark]

And so another Tribble dies

[Captain Seafort]

Good riddance to the furry pests.

[Sionnach Glic]

Hey, it's not like there ain't plenty more where that came from!

[Tiberius]

My idea....

The nacells swing up when at warp, but are flat at impulse. The impulse engines are positioned on the swining parts of the pylons.

Maybe the impulse engines are at the correct position for impulse flight when the pylons are flat, but to get the warp nacelles to the correct position for warp flight, they need to be higher. So the nacelles have to swing up. This would make sure that the engines (warp or impulse as the need be) are in the correct position relative to the ship's mass.

[Captain Seafort]

It's needlessly convoluted and complex - you'd be much better off putting the impluse engines somewhere else (even on outriggers), and using fixed nacelles.

In other words, it's Voyager to a T.

[Teaos]

Since it is semi canon and sorta makes sense I like the "Warp pollution idea"

[Sionnach Glic]

But no other ship built around the same time as the Intrepid class has swinging nacelles.

I like the idea that they were some sort of experimental propulsion system, designed to give the ship greater efficiency.

[Teaos]

I'd guess they came up with another way of avoiding the pollution that didnt involve swinging nacelles.

[Sionnach Glic]

So they continued building the ship class with a completely pointless feature?

[Teaos]

Well it was already part of the design, so they had a choice of replacing the nacelles with what ever new thing they made to stop the pollution or keep building the swing arms.

The arms arent really a big deal so they could of just thought "Screw it, we'll keep the arms"

Also I don't believe we ever saw a Intrepid built after Voyager.