[ArrogantBustard]

The pylons for the engine nacelles were made from unobtanium, carefully alloyed with adamantium ... they were, therefore, infinitely strong in both shear and tension. No need to worry about the engines ripping off. (That was the goofiest SciFi spaceship design I've ever seen).

In fairness, the cell-phone does have a very short range, and IS95 CDMA includes several measure to basically turn the phone off when it's not actually transmitting.

The Iridium handsets are a better analogue of the STrek communicators. Anybody know how long they last?

[redheadtoo]

(That was the goofiest SciFi spaceship design I've ever seen).

The reason given for placing the warp engines at the end of a nacelle was that the engines actually warped space and thus had to be kept away from the starship. In a later episode of STNG it was shown that warp travel was actually causing environmental damage to space.

[kezekiel]

That was the goofiest SciFi spaceship design I've ever seen

How about all those "space fighters" built with wings on them... and obviously not for use in atmosphere because of all the hard edges.

[gridlock]

Iridium is still Line-of-Sight, even if the line is straight up. Kirk's communicator could reach a starship even if it was on the other side of the planet. Of course, those styrofoam rocks are pretty transparent to radio waves. Maybe those entire planets were made of that stuff...