NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program: full transcription
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Get the guide: $8 instant download →In 1996, a team of government, university and industry researchers proposed a program to seek the ultimate breakthroughs in space transportation: propulsion that requires no propellant mass, propulsion that can approach and, if possible, circumvent light speed, and breakthrough methods of energy production to power such devices.
Because the breakthrough goals are beyond existing science, a main emphasis of this program is to establish metrics and ground rules to produce near-term credible progress toward these incredible possibilities.
Experiments and theories were discussed regarding the coupling of gravity and electromagnetism, vacuum fluctuation energy, warp drives and wormholes, and superluminal quantum tunneling.
The Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project was a research project funded by NASA from 1996 through 2002. During its six years, this program was funded with a total investment of $1.2 million. The project ended in 2002, when the Advanced Space Transportation Program was reorganized and all speculative research, below Technology Readiness Level 3, was cancelled.
This transcription covers the program’s founding charter, its stated methodology for pursuing goals beyond current physics, its specific research scope, and the record of its closure. The full NASA Technical Reports Server archive includes additional workshop proceedings, funded project summaries, and Marc Millis’s complete final assessment across fourteen research topics, available in the full source documents linked below.
Document: Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Research Program, Marc G. Millis. NASA Technical Reports Server, NTRS ID 19970009634.
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