---
title: "Field propulsion"
chunk: 1/9
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_propulsion"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:55:18.670066+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Field propulsion refers to propulsion system concepts in which thrust arises from interactions with external fields or ambient media, rather than primarily from onboard chemical propellant. The idea developed alongside conventional rocketry as a parallel line of thought in which a vehicle would "push off" its surroundings rather than rely entirely on carried propellant. Early ideas grew from studies of radiation pressure and electrically driven motion; later contractor and agency surveys organized advanced concepts under thermal, field, and photon headings. Several related propulsion systems discussed alongside field propulsion in the broader historical literature surveyed here have since been demonstrated in practice, including electrodynamic tethers in orbit, solar sail spacecraft such as IKAROS, and terrestrial applications such as maglev transport, MHD ship propulsion, and EHD thrust devices. In narrower modern literature, related propellant-less propulsion discussions often focus on environment-coupled systems, while the historical contractor and survey literature treated field propulsion more broadly and sometimes grouped related terrestrial electromagnetic propulsion and some beamed-energy concepts within the same analytical framework.
Related research has also examined beamed-energy propulsion, in which lasers, microwaves, or particle beams transmit power to a vehicle from a remote source, and more speculative proposals involving spacetime curvature, vacuum polarization, or zero-point energy interactions. NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program helped reframe the subject around conservation-law consistency, identifiable coupling mechanisms, and experimental reproducibility. Any claimed propulsion method that produces net thrust in a closed system without external interaction would violate conservation of momentum, which follows from the spatial translation symmetry of physical law as expressed by Noether's theorem.
The subject has been treated by national space agencies, academic research groups, and industry organizations, and field propulsion concepts have appeared extensively in science fiction, in many cases predating or paralleling the technical research. The influence has occasionally been direct: physicist Miguel Alcubierre said that his warp metric was inspired by Star Trek terminology.

== Background and history ==

Traditional rocketry has dominated aerospace propulsion in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Conventional rockets achieve motion by expelling mass, most commonly the combustion output from chemical propellants to generate thrust via Newton's third law, which is the familiar rocket launch with explosive flame and smoke beneath it. Field propulsion concepts evolved as a parallel track, proposing instead that a spacecraft could "push off" its surrounding medium, converting environmental energy or momentum into acceleration. In this article, field propulsion is used for propulsion system concepts in which thrust arises from interactions with external fields or ambient media, rather than primarily from onboard chemical propellant, while noting that some later sources instead use the narrower label propellant-less propulsion for environment-coupled systems. In the historical survey literature, however, the category was often drawn more broadly, extending to related externally powered and terrestrial electromagnetic concepts discussed within the same analytical family.
While many proposals remained theoretical, certain environment-coupled systems were eventually demonstrated in space, including solar sails, magnetic sails, and electrodynamic tethers, which couple with external photon, plasma, or magnetic fields instead of expelling onboard propellant. Field propulsion is not a single technology but a spectrum of approaches, ranging from mature concepts that have been tested in flight to highly speculative theoretical constructs.

=== Pre-20th century to the 1910s ===
The earliest field propulsion concepts began evolving prior to the 20th century. In 1610, Johannes Kepler wrote Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo (Conversation with the Messenger from the Stars) to Galileo Galilei, in response to Galilei's own Sidereus Nuncius, describing the idea of winds in space propelling craft like the winds of the seas:

As soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying, settlers from our species of man will not be lacking [on the Moon and Jupiter] … Who would have believed that a huge ocean could be crossed more peacefully and safely than the narrow expanse of the Adriatic, the Baltic Sea or the English Channel? Provide ship or sails adapted to the heavenly breezes, and there will be some who will not fear even that void [of space]...
The physical basis for Kepler's intuition began to emerge over two centuries later. James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated in 1873 that electromagnetic radiation should be able to create pressure on physical surfaces. At the International Congress of Physics in 1900, Pyotr Lebedev presented Les forces de Maxwell-Bartoli dues à la pression de la lumière, reporting experimental measurements of radiation pressure and providing the first quantitative confirmation of Maxwell's predictions with evidence that light exerts pressure on matter. By 1905, Albert Einstein had quantized Maxwell's findings to prove light particles could possess momentum.

=== 1920s-1950s ===