Its 3 times lighter than carbon though brittle which is why it is alloyed with other metals or incorporated into graphine/monocrystaline diamond laminates. Urrr, or something. https://www.worldofmolecules.com/elements/beryllium.htm

I tried to post this on my phone at lunchtime but lost the post due to entering the password wrong. DOH Phones!

When I first saw TOS I thought that the nacelles were probably just "empty" flasks with low grade vacuums in them. I thought that the lights of the end caps were due to plasma as if they were vacuum tubes or neon lights.

TOS was the show with: intelligent (plasma?) that was warp capable, could love you and keep you immortal. So why couldn't the warp nacelles be mostly empty space?

I was disappointed by the plodding nature of the tech in the technical manuals. The tech just seemed so 20th Century. They use fusion RCS quads instead of frame dragging for attitude control. The impulse engines are just rockets instead of slapping space so hard that it slaps back. If you do it rapidly enough then you get thrust.

And the warp fields are made by metal coils. Turns out that the insides of a warp nacelle look like the insides of a vacuum cleaner. To me, there's nothing futuristic about that.

Even the nacelles on my blog have too much mechanism in them but that's because I wanted the cool look of vacuum tubes so I did a fairly literal take on them.

I wrote a screed here explaining the model and the tech it uses but it's too much Trek for a Halo forum. So I've cut a couple of hours of typing :-(

Oh well, off to bed, catch you guys on the flip side...