Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Kelvin Enterprise You Need To Know
5. Accidental Aesthetics
About those bussards... the blue-glowing nacelle caps of the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise are yet another departure from peviously established Star Trek aesthetics and, as it turns out, a total accident.
For the entirety of the design process for Star Trek (2009), the Enterprise's bussard collectors were rendered in a fiery, orange-red glow, consistent with the way they appeared in Star Trek: The Original Series. The film's production designers did play with the actual design of the nacelle caps, turning the illuminated section into a glowing energy field rather than a simple glass dome like in The Original Series, but maintained the ship's original color scheme well into the production of visual effects.
Late in the process, while ILM was rendering the black hole sequence at the end of the film, several frames were color inverted, showing the ship with blue instead of red bussard collectors.
According to the ILM team, this was a fluke, but one everyone agreed the color fit the new Enterprise's look better than the original orange nacelle caps. The ship's design was overhauled to include the "blue-ish white tornado" effect and the only vestiges of the red bussard collectors exists in concept artwork and a few pieces of merchandise which were produced before the color change was made.