Gary Gochnour plasma aircraft patent

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Contents 7
Gary Gochnour plasma aircraft patent
Illustration of a disc-shaped craft in the night sky
Illustration: a disc-shaped craft in the night sky. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.
Date18 May 2006
TopicsPropulsion & physics (topic)
PeopleGary Gochnour
TestimonyShellenberger testimony, p. 162
Year2006 in UFO history
Timeline2006 on the UAP Timeline
Sources8

Gary Gochnour, an Army veteran and independent inventor, filed a series of U.S. patent applications from the mid-2000s for plasma-powered craft whose drawings resemble classic flying saucers. One of them, for a "tubular shaped interstellar space craft", was granted as Patent 8,109,471 in 2012.[1][2]

The 2005 application

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An example of parallax scrolling using three separate 2D layers Photo: NuclearDuckie · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Gochnour's application US 2006/0102795, filed on 25 May 2005 and published on 18 May 2006, was titled "Fusion energy system and plasma propulsion aircraft to produce electricity from a controlled nuclear fusion reaction". It described a multi-purpose electromagnetic, plasma-based aircraft that could fly in the atmosphere, travel underwater or in space, or act as a boring or lifting device, and proposed that three such craft working together could generate electricity by fusing boron-11 and hydrogen. The application was abandoned.[1]

The 2012 patent

Illustration of official papers and files
Illustration: official papers and files. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.

The granted patent, filed on 14 November 2008, describes a tubular plasma-based craft held together and driven by magnetic fields, plasma vortices, a capacitor array, a proton accelerator and plasma guns, which the inventor claimed could draw fuel from planetary atmospheres and reach interstellar speeds. It expired because maintenance fees were not paid.[2]

Context

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Illustration: a jet meeting an unknown object. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.

Patents describe ideas, not demonstrated technology, and patent offices do not require proof that an invention works. According to the testimony, Gochnour's 2015 obituary described him as a "space explorer". UFO researchers have pointed to his filings as examples of saucer-like designs in the patent record, sometimes comparing them with the "Tic Tac" object reported by Navy pilots in 2004, but there is no evidence any craft was built.[1][2][3]

People and topics

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On the Timeline

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Illustration: a disc-shaped craft in the night sky. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.

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References

Further reading

This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.

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