Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Kelvin Enterprise You Need To Know
7. Multi-cores
Speaking of engineering... the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise appears to be the only Federation starship in the Star Trek Universe to contain multiple warp cores.
(Yes, the USS Voyager from Star Trek: Voyager had two warp cores in its ship's schematics, but only one ever appeared on screen.)
The climax of Star Trek (2009) features the crew of the Enterprise ejecting multiple warp cores to escape a black hole. This sequence was created using existing footage of the ship's engineering section filmed at the Budweiser Brewery in Van Nuys, augmented with CGI which transformed the real life beer tanks into housings for several warp cores.
Later, the warp core plays a significant role in Star Trek Into Darkness when it is depicted as a large, hollow sphere within the ship's hull.
Given that there are no real technical manuals or detailed schematics of the ship that explain why there are numerous cores of varying sizes, we're only left to speculate about the ship's propulsion systems. Suffice it to say, though, the warp drive of the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise seems to be far more complex (or convoluted) than its Prime Universe counterparts ever appeared to be.