As for the galactic barrier, I guess some Federation history has been lost in the intervening 900 years because Kirk & Co with the help of the Kelvin's safely and easily passed through the barrier, and you would think that Federation history would record that fact, and further that the techniques used to safely rraverse the barrier ( and whatever modifications were made to the 1701 to accomplish the feat), would be known in the 32nd century. And there also was the fact that the SS Valiant also managed to penetrate the barrier to enter extra-galactic in the 22nd century and even managed to re-enter the barrier and make it back to Galactic space without being crippled by the attempt. The captain of the Valiant destroyed his ship to prevent an esper that was affected in the same way Gary Mitchell was from being loosed on the Galaxy.
I don't think the information was lost (otherwise, they also wouldn't have known the barrier existed in the first place or what it could do to a ship). I think the writers simply chose to ignore these pieces of info to make things more 'dramatic' for Disco... which is utter nonsense because the hull materials ships use in the 32nd century would be far superior to the ones in the 23rd... and likely offer a 'natural' protection of sorts against all kind of phenomena... the barrier included. Unless it was somehow augmented by the 32nd century.
I was also disappointed that they did a completely different visual representation of the barrier when honestly, the upgrade they did for TOS-R would have worked just fine. One really has to wonder why they feel the need to reimagine the visuals on every single thing in the Star Trek universe even when it's a natural phenomenon that's appeared various times before. I guess this visual effects team really hates TOS.
Well, Disco did jump 930 years into the future... perhaps the barrier when accessed from the ship's vantage point in the galaxy is a bit different compared to the vantage point used in TOS.
One thing I still do enjoy about Discovery and kurtzman Trek in general is that they have gotten away from the Berman era trope of the science and engineering depts being able to accurately predict and everything accurately. I enjoyed the fact that no they didn't manage to 5 light-years from the barrier; that there were elements that the sensor scans didn't account for, and that Stemmons couldn't give an absolutely reliable answer as to how long the ship or the shields would last given the situation.
Absolute precision wasn't always a thing in Berman era Trek either... but when they did, that was one thing I liked about Berman era Trek actually, because their sensors were said to be able to scan down to the subatomic, can scan in real time across lightyears of space (at least in the 24th century).
It seems that use of subspace for technological augmentation effects has been largely dropped by the 32nd century for whatever reason.
Remember that it was mentioned in Ds9 that ships generate a low level subspace field around themselves to lower their inertial mass, allowing ships to achieve high sub-light speeds (at least 75 000 km/s - but higher velocities than that while at impulse were aslo noted).
This also allows a large ship to effectively gain really high maneuvarebility/agility which is usually seen on very small craft... hence why large UFP ships could make 90/360 degree turns very fast/easily.
Whereas in the 32nd century, Saru mentioned that the nacelles were detached from the main hull specifically to improve the ship's maneuvarebility.
This tells me that the 24th century was more advanced than the 32nd... at least in certain respects.
Also, anomalies and certain parts of space managed to shut down Warp drive or other propulsion methods before an intended destination was reached.
The Barrier by itself is anomalous, so that kind of an effect is not new.
I would have preferred the writers stuck with what was established and create a different type of 'struggle' to portray while crossing the barrier... but this is something we cannot expect from Disco writers because, this is actually worse than even the TOS 23rd century... which is really getting on my nerves.
