Talk:Field propulsion/GA2

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Nominator: Very Polite Person (talk · contribs) 17:17, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: ToadalChaos (talk · contribs) 20:42, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

This article was already GA-nominated once recently, and in my review of that nomination I raised several issues. Some were addressed, some compromises were found, but many issues linger.

To summarise the discussion from that review:

• I argued the article should be renamed to Propellantless Propulsion.
  • My main concern is that several technologies that were never labelled "Field Propulsion" in the literature are here classed as such. Since the literature provides no clear and consistent technical definition of what "Field Propulsion" actually is (in contrast to Propellantless Propulsion), the line of what belongs on the FP page must be defined by what is explicitly labelled as such in the literature.
  • The wording in the article and the redirect from Propellantless propulsion to this page adds to the confusion, imo.
  • The main reason I am so concerned with the exact scope of what "Field Propulsion" encompasses is that in recent years, the term has gained much traction in UFOlogy and pseudoscience circles (for instance the books Hitler's Flying Saucers or The Antigravity Files). There are also a number of startup websites with AI-generated imagery and, imho, very little actual credibility. There is indeed some legitimate engineering literature that uses the term "Field Propulsion", but I believe the article in its current state lends undue weight to the topic (e.g. mentioning Kepler) and misrepresents how mature/concrete the theories are (most of the technologies mentioned have never been labelled as "Field Propulsion" in the literature and therefore do not belong here).
• The page's author, Very Polite Person (talk · contribs), disagreed with the renaming suggestion. A compromise was reached: I would write a separate page on Propellantless Propulsion, and material not explicitly categorised as "Field Propulsion" by the literature would be moved to Propellantless Propulsion.
  • The new page is currently a userspace draft which I will do my best to get in publish-able shape ASAP.

The following technologies are mentioned on this page but I remain unconvinced that they belong here (I have not found any sources actually classifying them as Field Propulsion; at most some calling them propellant-less):

1. Solar sails and related concepts (eg laser-propelled sails)
2. Space tethers
3. Maglev trains
4. Lightcraft
5. Plasma waves and magnetospheric plasma
6. Electrohydrodynamic aircraft
7. Magnetohydrodynamic naval propulsion
8. Magnetic and electric sails

Note that this list may not be exhaustive.

--ToadalChaos (talk) 21:45, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Does this article reflect an actual category that is in common use, or is it more of a bunch of otherwise unrelated technologies glued together even though they are not considered to be "field propulsion" by anyone in the field?

In particular, I see one technology that I am personally familiar with as an electronics and hydraulics engineer: The drive system of the ship Yamato-1. I have personally seen the Yamato-1 thrusters at the Ship Science Museum in Tokyo and have read several papers on them. Fascinating stuff, but so far not practical.

The basic idea behind most ships and boats (sailboat and sailing ships being a notable exception) is "apply force to water. Water goes this way. Ship goes that way". Same with most aircraft (sailplanes and gliders being a notable exception) except with air.

Propellers, ducted fans, jet engines, Jet Ski motors, and even rowing with oars all use the same basic principle. The nature of the air pump or water pump varies, but not the basic drive principle.

The Yamato-1 was basically a giant Jet Ski. It pumped water out of a tube. See [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV-VAjrh1dI ]. The difference was the nature of the pump. Instead of an impeller it used a Magnetohydrodynamic drive. Interestingly, Field propulsion links to Magnetohydrodynamics but not Magnetohydrodynamic drive, even though that is an often used term. (Both pages were linked to in User:Very Polite Person/draft/Field propulsion. so maybe it just got lost along the way.)

I can find zero sources -- reliable or not -- calling the drive system of the Yamato-1 "field propulsion".

Another dubious inclusion is the mention of maglev trains. That's just a standard Linear motor. All electric motors propell something with a (magnetic) field, but nobody calls them "field propulsion"s

What really struck me is what was left out: The many fringe sources talking about UFOs using "field propulsion". This is largely driven by Bob Lazar describing the field propulsion system he says UFOs use in the 2019 Netflix documentary Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers.

In my opinion, if someone runs into the phrase "field propulsion" somewhere on the Internet and comes to Wikipedia to read about it, the odds are very high that they ran across it on a site talking about UFOs and not one talking about any of the topics currently in this article.

I suggest rejecting this article for GA status for now, and sending it back with instructions saying that to achieve GA status There must be [1] at least one reliable source explicitly calling something like the Yamato-1 drive "field propulsion" before it can be included, and [2] That there must be at least a brief section mentioning the significant usage of the term by the UFO community and pointing out the fringe nature of those claims. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:00, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Are there any reliable sources that mention this in the UFO context? All of the sources you linked are WP:FRINGE themselves. It seems an utterly non-notable unrelated topic.

Far and away the primary result on Google Books seems to be what this article is talking about, I can't find anything about UFOs, so I don't see much of a problem there. The possible combination of two things is an issue (propellantless propulsion vs field propulsion). PARAKANYAA (talk) 04:10, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

There is a U.S. department of commerce document from 1979 hosted by NASA that goes into a bit of detail about field propulsion and UFOs here. Already cited in the article, it can be used as foundation for such a section. The main issue is that other sources I'm seeing all look to be in predatory journals. Would need a bit of a literature review. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:28, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Alas, pretty much no reliable source cares about the technical details of the engines used by flying saucers. Which means that we can't even mention things that are widely spread by thousands of non-reliable sources. It isn't ideal, but all the alternatives appear to be worse. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:13, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

A major academic blind spot is that things beneath contempt to academics don't enter the academic literature, even if it is widely discussed in the grey literature or click bait. There is a fun paper I stumbled upon Online Conspiracy Theories, Digital Platforms and Secondary Orality: Toward a Sociology of Online Monsters that talks about this a bit. One area I hope to be able to fill in my professional career a bit, but so far lack a good target that is within my specific focus. This seems to be a victim of academics not wanting to discuss things they don't believe are even worth countering, which means we don't have the phenomena clearly documented. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 21:54, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Is that a "blind spot"? That's just what academics do. PARAKANYAA (talk) 23:26, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

This is something I have been frustrated by on occasion.

On the other hand, it is a lot easier to spew nonsense than it is to disprove it in proper academic fashion - and this problem is getting worse in the era of LLMs. It is unfair to place the burden of proof on academics to disprove every delusional LLM-driven ego-trip people go on.

I have this problem at work: we've been getting spammed by some loonie who thinks they've reinvented physics but can't put together a coherent argument or falsifiable statements. None of us wants to waste public money (or their own time) on that nonsense. ToadalChaos (talk) 07:28, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

To your question:

Does this article reflect an actual category that is in common use, or is it more of a bunch of otherwise unrelated technologies glued together even though they are not considered to be "field propulsion" by anyone in the field?

There are some reliable sources that do mention the term. However, this article conflates with "Propellantless propulsion" and other similar-sounding technologies (eg anything to do with electric or magnetic fields). This makes the topic seem much broader than it actually is in the literature.

Hence my proposal to write a dedicated page on "Propellantless propulsion" and cut down the contents of this page to fit actual literature use. ToadalChaos (talk) 07:42, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I have opened a topic for good sources on "Field propulsion" specifically: Talk:Field_propulsion#Explicit_and_reliable_sources.

I will start populating it tonight. ToadalChaos (talk) 07:55, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

That sounds like a good plan. Support proposal to write a dedicated page on Propellantless propulsion. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:38, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I just published a first version of Propellantless propulsion as a standalone page. It's what I'd consider a minimum viable product on the topic, with the intention to expand it further and migrate material from Field propulsion as appropriate (and eventually a GAN??). If you have the time and inclination, any feedback would be appreciated - this is my first full page :) ToadalChaos (talk) 14:27, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

I withdraw this WP:GAN just like we did the last one when when we forked out Field propulsion to become Spacecraft electric propulsion and spilled over still more into Reactionless drive.

Ironic that in a year+ of gathering materials around field propulsion, and my biggest headache for most of it was taxonomy as so much of the language is overlapping and dynamic over decades. So not only did I pull enough material for two articles, now it appears to pulled enough for four total articles. Not bad.

Most of what is in field propulsion can readily copy directly airlifted straight into propellantless propulsion, and then (more irony) field propulsion becomes the smaller of the four articles, propellantless propulsion will become the biggest, and ironically (third time) the most inclusive, where I had drop kicked a number of "prospects" out of my considerations for field propulsion (which will now work better in the broader scoped of propellantless propulsion.

You are 2/2 on good WP:GAN ideas, @ToadalChaos.

So this WP:GAN ends.

Just FYI, you likely need to stand down/aside now for any sort of WP:GAN reviews of field propulsion and obviously not for propellantless propulsion, but I'll help you pull it all together, and I'd be more than happy to see you toss up the future on your own user page for field propulsion too!

For anyone keeping score as an addendum, it seems notability for the FP term/concept was settled back in the 2009 AFD. It's only gotten more notable since, and since notability can't WP:DEGRADE, we don't need to sweat that. See you on the respective talk pages. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 20:05, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi VPP, welcome back.

Indeed, a lot of the material currently on this page should be migrated. I'd be wary of putting everything on Propellantless propulsion though -- as you say, its scope is broader than FP, and I worry the article might become bloated if we put too much detail there. However, most of the technologies there have their own pages, so we can migrate things there, too. The history section in particular is quite extensive but I'm not sure it would fit well on the PP page as is -- the term PP itself is quite new, especially in review literature, so a history section risks becoming a jumble of the separate histories of the respective technologies.

As for the future of the FP page; since I've struggled a bit to find the exact definition/scope of "field propulsion" as a technical term (distinct from "propellantless"), I've started collecting sources that specifically address it as a category and would be directly usable as Wikipedia sources here: Talk:Field_propulsion#Explicit_and_reliable_sources. The intent being to rebuild this article based on those sources. I hope you find it a useful idea, contributions welcome!

I look forward to collaborating! ToadalChaos (talk) 07:18, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.