To The Stars Academy

To The Stars Academy

Type	Organization
Also known as	To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, TTSA
On the Timeline	22 events, 1972–2022

To The Stars, founded in 2017 as To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science (TTSA), is a San Diego-based company. Its co-founders were the Blink-182 and Angels & Airwaves musician Tom DeLonge, the parapsychologist Harold Puthoff, and the former CIA officer and author Jim Semivan.^[1][2] It has entertainment, aerospace and science divisions. It produces music, books, television and films, and promotes research into UFOs and other fringe science.^[1] It played a central part in bringing the US Navy's UAP videos and the Pentagon's AATIP programme to public attention from late 2017.^[1][4][5] Its finances, its exotic-materials project and its research claims have drawn heavy criticism.^[1][3]

Founding and finances

TTSA was launched in October 2017 as a public benefit corporation. DeLonge, its president and chief executive, said public interest in "the outer edges of science" had "always been suffocated by mainstream ideology and bureaucratic constraint".^[2] Its entertainment division was formed by absorbing DeLonge's earlier media company, To the Stars, Inc.^[1]

• Crowdfunding. In September 2017 the company began offering $50 million of stock through a Regulation A+ equity crowdfunding campaign. Rolling Stone reported that it had raised more than $200,000 by the October launch.^[1][2]
• The deficit. SEC filings showed that by October 2018 only about $1 million of shares had been sold. The company had an accumulated deficit of $37.4 million at 30 June 2018, largely from a stock incentive plan for its employees.^[1][3] The filing warned of doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern. Ars Technica's Eric Berger mocked the venture, and Vice also questioned its sustainability.^[1][3]
• Risks. The company told investors its research might fail to produce results in areas such as beamed-energy propulsion and telepathy. Vice wrote that much of it rested on "highly speculative theories that toe the line of pseudoscience".^[1]
• Rebrand. In 2022 it shortened its name to To The Stars.^[1]

Puthoff described the science division's goal as "imagine having 25th-century science this century", with an "electromagnetic vehicle" among its possible projects.^[1] Luis Elizondo insisted that "none of us at TTSA consider ourselves 'Ufologists'". He said most of the team came from defence and intelligence backgrounds.^[1]

The Navy videos

In December 2017, the month The New York Times reported on AATIP, TTSA became the first to share Navy videos of pilots encountering unidentified objects. It said it had obtained them "by leveraging its team's access", and Live Science later reported they may not have been officially cleared for release.^[5] The videos were promoted by Elizondo, a former Pentagon counter-intelligence official who said he had run AATIP and who had joined TTSA.^[1][4] TTSA published them in its online database, the "Virtual Analytics UAP Learning Tool" (VAULT).^[1] They were the 2004 "FLIR1" video from the USS Nimitz encounter and two January 2015 videos from the USS Theodore Roosevelt group. TTSA released the third of these months after the first two.^[4] See the Gimbal and GoFast videos.

In September 2019 Navy spokesman Joseph Gradisher said that "the Navy considers the phenomena contained/depicted in those 3 videos as unidentified". The statement was first reported by John Greenewald of the Black Vault.^[4] In April 2020 the Navy formally declassified and released the same footage.^[1] With help from the former intelligence official Christopher Mellon, the company also arranged classified congressional briefings with the pilots involved.^[1] In July 2019 DeLonge said TTSA had spent eighteen months briefing the Senate and several committees, helping to "glue" the Defense Department, intelligence community and Congress together.^[11] See TTSA Senate briefings. Elizondo said in 2020 that he had met lawmakers in a secure room about UAP.^[13] He left the company in late 2020.^[1]

The ADAM project

TTSA's Acquisition & Data Analysis of Materials (ADAM) project set out to study what it called "potentially exotic materials" said to come from UFOs. The aim was to reverse-engineer them.^[1] Steve Justice, TTSA's chief operating officer and a former head of advanced systems at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, said their structure and composition were "not from any known existing military or commercial application". He admitted they came from sources with "varying levels of chain-of-custody documentation".^[1] An SEC filing shows the company paid $35,000 for items including "six pieces of Bismuth/Magnesium-Zinc metal" and a piece of aluminium.^[1]

• Provenance. The samples had previously been held by the ufologist Linda Moulton Howe. In 2004 she claimed they became a "lifting body" under electromagnetic radiation. TTSA said this was unsubstantiated.^[1] A 2012 letter from Puthoff said earlier tests had not shown an alien origin or any anomalous result.^[1]
• EarthTech. An August 2018 statement of work engaged Puthoff's own EarthTech International to study the materials.^[9] See TTSA–EarthTech contracts.
• Criticism. Critics said there was no evidence the materials were otherworldly or scientifically important. The American Chemical Society panellist Richard Sachleben called claims of unidentifiable alloys "quite impossible". The chemist May Nyman said any university could identify such a metal within hours.^[1] The chemical engineer Chris Cogswell suggested the bismuth/magnesium-zinc pieces might be slag from an industrial process.^[1]

The Wikipedia account dates TTSA's announcement of the materials to July 2019.^[1] The timeline published with Michael Shellenberger's 2024 congressional testimony dates the launch of the project to July 2018.^[8] The earlier version of this article also said "chemists consulted by Vice" criticised the samples. The critics named in the sources read here are quoted in the Wikipedia account, not attributed to Vice.^[1] See A.D.A.M. project.

The Army agreement

On 17 October 2019 TTSA announced a five-year cooperative research and development agreement with the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command.^[1][5] It covered "inertial mass reduction", metamaterials, quantum physics and communications, and beamed-energy propulsion. TTSA would supply its "metamaterials" samples and information on "active camouflage".^[1][5] The Army said no public money would go to the company, but that it would provide at least $750,000 in support and resources. An Army spokesperson called TTSA "an exciting, non-traditional source for novel materials and transformational technologies".^[1][5] Vice wrote that the company "swings between being contenders for military contracts and a UFO research organization".^[1] In August 2019 a TTSA post announcing "technical collaborations" with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Bigelow Aerospace and BAE Systems appeared briefly and was removed.^[12] See TTSA technical collaborations.

Entertainment

The original To the Stars, Inc. was announced in 2014 as a record label. Its first releases were Angels & Airwaves' album The Dream Walker and DeLonge's solo album.^[1] From 2015 it published books, many co-published with Simon & Schuster.^[1] They include the Sekret Machines novels with A. J. Hartley and the non-fiction Gods, Man & War series with Peter Levenda.^[1] Ars Technica's Berger found Sekret Machines: Gods to be a cherry-picking of ancient cultures attributed to alien influence.^[3]

The company's first major screen project was the History Channel series Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation (2019–2020), which featured several of its former government staff.^[1][5] It later produced DeLonge's directing debut, Monsters of California (2023), and worked on Sekret Machines projects with Legendary.^[1]

DeLonge's advisers

Before TTSA was founded, DeLonge said he was being guided by senior "advisors" from government and industry. In January 2016 he met virtually with Air Force Major Generals Neil McCasland and Michael Carey, Skunk Works executive Rob Weiss and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Details of the meeting were not released.^[6] See Podesta–McCasland emails. In 2016 DeLonge said his advisers had told him of multiple hidden crashes, and that crash material had been pooled among government and private industry.^[7] He said they helped shape Sekret Machines, which he described as fiction with true concepts.^[7] On a podcast in October 2017 he suggested that his advisers included McCasland, Carey, Weiss, Podesta, Puthoff, Mellon and Elizondo.^[10] See DeLonge on pooled crash material, DeLonge on hidden crashes and DeLonge's advisers on Joe Rogan.

On the UAP Timeline

• Ingo Swann's magnetometer test (1972) (June 1972) — Ingo Swann's remote-viewing test with SRI leads to a CIA contract months later.
• Secret project asks about remote viewing (1973) (27 October 1973) — Puthoff tells Vallée a secret UAP project with an official charter asked about remote viewing.
• Puthoff leaves SRI (1985) (Summer 1985) — Hal Puthoff leaves SRI to explore alternative energy sources.
• Vallée meets D'Amato on secret programs (1992) (22 May 1992) — Vallée writes he met Senate counsel Dick D'Amato about secret programs.
• Las Vegas data-gathering meeting (1996) (28 January 1996) — Military, scientific and corporate figures meet in Las Vegas about gathering UAP data.
• Puthoff on black-budget physics (2002) (2002) — Puthoff tells author Nick Cook there is solid evidence of secret aerospace programs.
• Navy metamaterials research (2014) (March 2014) — A Navy budget document mentions research on metamaterials to control electromagnetic waves.
• DeLonge on pooled crash material (27 March 2016) — Tom DeLonge says his advisers told him crash material was pooled among government and industry.
• DeLonge on hidden crashes (April 2016) — DeLonge says advisers told him of multiple crashes hidden by counterintelligence.
• Sekret Machines (5 April 2016) — DeLonge publishes the novel Sekret Machines, which he says advisers helped shape.
• Christopher Mellon goes public (2016) (9 May 2016) — Former Pentagon intelligence official Christopher Mellon speaks publicly about UAP for the first time.
• DeLonge's research groups (2016) (31 August 2016) — Tom DeLonge says he became involved with groups studying crashed craft and biology.
• DeLonge's advisers on Joe Rogan (26 October 2017) — DeLonge suggests on a podcast that senior officials and executives advise him.
• A.D.A.M. project (July 2018) — To The Stars Academy launches the A.D.A.M. project to study claimed exotic materials.
• TTSA–EarthTech contracts (16 August 2018) — To The Stars hires Puthoff's EarthTech to study potentially exotic materials.
• Eric Davis on underfunded reverse-engineering (30 April 2019) — Eric Davis says crashes happened and reverse engineering is split into small, underfunded efforts.
• TTSA Senate briefings (12 July 2019) — DeLonge says To The Stars spent 18 months briefing the Senate and committees.
• TTSA technical collaborations (2019) (8 August 2019) — To The Stars announces technical collaborations with aerospace companies.
• Elizondo's secure-room meetings (2020) (19 July 2020) — Lue Elizondo says he met lawmakers in a secure room about UAP.
• Puthoff on withheld materials science (11 February 2022) — Puthoff says private companies withhold materials science information.
• Ultraterrestrial hypothesis paper (31 July 2022) — Puthoff releases a paper on the 'ultraterrestrial' hypothesis.
• Jim Semivan's DARPA lab sample (5 September 2022) — Former CIA officer Jim Semivan says material about his experience went to a DARPA lab.

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “To the Stars (company)”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.