that you lack imagination or that you are afraid to imagine "how something new could be constructed".

You said that:
The ion drive was already an established scientific fact, with researchers the world over pounding away at it.

Who thought of the idea and when? A viable ion drive was not available until many years after the idea was mentioned in the star trek program, who developed it and were they aware of the star trek program?

Such imaginings as "warp core, impulse power, matter/antimatter, and trilithium crystals" point to -- nothing at all.

Ideas abound and experiments have been done on electrically generated plasma engines that "pulse" on and off at regular intervals, such a system could be called an "impulse engine".
It is a known fact that combining matter and antimatter gives off a large quantity of energy. If we only had the technology to manufacture, store and combine antimatter in a rocket engine we would have a rocket that could accelerate to very high speeds.

And there are far better propulsion methods than a beam of light.

Are you sure? (Is that what you said about the ion engine before it was operational?) Light has the fastest "speed" we know of, if it was possible to use it to accelerate a space ship, then perhaps the space ship would attain a speed close to that of the light.

Do not study Star Trek engineering too closely, for you will become lost in non-science.

Don't worry, I know how to separate fact from fiction.

I'm not afraid to "study" fiction in order to see various ideas, then I can formulate facts that may be derived from those ideas but can be proven by any scientific method or experimental evidence.

Some very interesting "imaginings" can be found at:

http://spectech.bravepages.com/Deep%20Space%20Propulsion%20Hub.htm

Johannes