What is torsion propulsion?
The short answer. Torsion propulsion is the idea of moving a craft with spacetime torsion — the twist that matter's spin sources in Einstein–Cartan gravity — instead of throwing mass out the back. It is a research program, not a product: William Alexander Aldred's version of it exists as published design work — a drive-core blueprint released to the public domain on October 30, 2026 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23802958) and a bench rig design published the same day (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23809726). No device has been built. The grades are printed on the releases themselves, below.
In plain words
In Einstein–Cartan gravity, every spinning thing twists the space around it by a vanishingly small amount, and that twist is a real field with real energy. Conventional propulsion pushes against expelled mass. Torsion propulsion asks the design question one level down: concentrate spin — a driven ring, spun fast, inside a container built for it — until the twist it sources is strong enough to hold, center, and ultimately move things. Aldred's physics program is the theory side of that question; the blueprint and the rig are its engineering side, published with their unknowns tabled rather than hidden.
The two published artifacts
The blueprint (Rev C). The drive core of a craft, outside-in: a thermal skin, a cryogenic layer, a ceramic torsion container, a spinning torsion ring, and a plasma core of a heavy superconducting element — determined on October 29, 2026, from published physical properties, as tantalum-181 — spun with electric current and held dead center by the ring. Every dimension is a parameter, not a value: 18 open parameters are tabled as unknowns on the release itself. It was dedicated to the public domain (CC0) as a defensive publication — prior art on a dated record, so the design can never be locked up by anyone.
The Spin Rig. The first build package under the blueprint: a room-temperature spin rig for the torsion ring — the bearing, concentricity, and runout test the ring design calls for (the blueprint's Unknown #15). A 40-page package with parameters, instrumentation, test protocol, bill of materials, and safety case. Its claim grade, printed on it: mechanical feasibility only — that the rig can be built and run as specified. Nothing has been built, spun, or measured.
Grades, printed in full
The design is a paper design study. In the designer's wider machine architecture the rig is the propulsion bench of a single integrated craft — skin, propulsion, navigation, and cooling as one machine. The physics grades stand as the release prints them: the torsion channel is unproven; confinement and on-demand folding are open problems; the bubble channel is unproven and its scale unmet. What exists is the dated, public, checkable record — the theory papers, the blueprint, and the rig — and a program that prints its own limits at the same size as its claims. The work continues.
Blueprint: “The Torsion-Container Blueprints — Open Release,” DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23802958. Rig: “The Spin Rig” build package, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23809726 — supplement to the blueprint. Both CC0, sole author William Alexander Aldred (ORCID 0009-0000-1215-577X).