NASA Engineer Claims New Electric Force Could Revolutionize Spaceflight

Charles Buhler, a veteran NASA engineer and co-founder of Exodus Propulsion Technologies, claims his team has identified a "new force" based solely on electric fields that can generate sustainable directional thrust without expelling mass or burning fuel. If independently confirmed, the advance would transform spacecraft design and the economics of orbital flight. Unlike traditional rockets, which move by reaction, expelling gas or plasma backward, the technology developed by Exodus is based on generating an asymmetry in electrostatic pressure or in the divergence of the electric field over an object.

After more than two decades of research and thousands of simulations, the team built a custom vacuum chamber in 2020 to recreate deep-space conditions. Between 2016 and 2020, prototypes produced tiny forces (one hundred-thousandth of Earth's gravity), but later iterations showed exponential jumps. In 2023, the company claims to have reached the "unity" milestone (1 G), generating enough vertical force (around 10 millinewtons in modules of 30 to 40 grams) to counteract the force of gravity on the test device itself.