Thoughts on Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Starfleet Academy's 32nd century Starfleet Ships

Thoughts on Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Starfleet Academy's 32nd century Starfleet Ships

I am not a fan of the 32nd century Starfleet ship designs from Star Trek Discovery and the upcoming Starfleet Academy series.  I get that these are designs from a far future when new technologies and techniques have been developed by Starfleet, but there are a number of things about these ships that just don't work for me.

Overall Esthetics

I know that these are designs from the 31st and 32nd centuries when technologies have evolved and changed over the centuries and new technologies have been developed and discovered (see programmable matter).  That said, many of these designs don't look remotely Starfleet.  

The Courage and Eisenberg classes look much more at home as battleships in some alien fleet.  

The Mars Class with it's crab claw looking nacelles(?) is interesting, but again not very Starfleet.  The design would much better fit an alien ship.  

The Dresselhaus class that looks like some kind of office stapler is just ugly.  

The USS Athena from Starfleet Academy doesn't look particularly Starfleet to me either.  If anything, lose the big "wings" (nacelles?) and it could work better as a space station (which honestly would make more sense to house the academy than a ship). 

The Saturn Class (the "ring ship") is definitely different, although I'm not really sure what such a ship could be used for, especially with that seemingly impractical ring design and the huge void space inside the ring.  

On that note...

Negative Spaces and Separated Sections

The hug negative spaces in the design of ships like the Saturn class, the 32nd century Constitution class, and the 32nd Century Intrepid Class seems very odd to me.  Personally i seems like a waste of valuable space  as well as a tactical and structural vulnerability.  This design trend started with the USS Vengeance in Star Trek Into Darkness and is also seen in the USS Discovery itself.  Unfortunately it shows no signs of stopping.  Most if not all of the 32nd Century Starfleet ships (and even the Discovery after it's refit) feature separated warp nacelles (i.e. completely detached from the rest of the ship).  I know it looks cool and advanced, but I don't see how its practical from a physics standpoint or even safe (the nacelle pylons transfer energy from the warp core to the pylons).  Also seems like it would be way to easy to lose a nacelle (or two) and become stranded.  I'd prefer to have them hard connected to the ship.  And I don't buy that have them detached somehow makes the ship more maneuverable.  Some of the 32nd century ships (32nd century Constitution, 32nd Century Intrepid) even have the primary and secondary hulls detached.  This seems even more impractical.  If all power fails and the ship finds itself adrift (as we've seen myriad times in Trek), transporters would be inoperative and there would be no way to move between the primary and secondary hulls.  Such a potential safety issue is something that I don't see Starfleet overlooking.

Class names

Let me get this one out of the way since this this is ultimately a small complaint: ship class names should not reused.  This just causes confusion.  The 32nd Century Intrepid class-no.  I agree with Star Trek Online on this one, if you really want to honor the legacy of the Intrepid class and in particular it's most famous ship the USS Voyager, make its descendant class the Janeway Class.  So much more fitting for a USS Voyager NCC-74656-J.  Ditto the 32nd Century Constitution Class.  Not this was never said to be the official class name, it was only an off-hand remark by Lt. Owosekun.  Kirk Class would fit nicely.