With the renewed assessment procedure ASPS began to look for new investors. Despite the thought of the skeptics, who forecasted the inadequacy of the procedure to find potential financiers, on September 17^th 2004 the Association received a letter from the Italian Ministry of Defense.

Written by Admiral Lucio Accardo, who was at the time in charge of R&D department of Defense,  the letter contained an invitation to held a demonstration of PNN. The Admiral made available structures and equipment to ASPS. For this reason, plus the fact that Accardo was the first to believe in their procedure, the Association decided to held the first part of the demonstration (ballistic pendulum) for free.

On the left: Admiral Lucio Accardo during PNN Roadshow in Rome

Since the procedure considered the opportunity for ASPS to seek for more than one investor at a time, it got in touch with two other companies: Boeing and Marconi Dynamics. This last company signed, on December 9^th 2004, a letter of intent in full observance of the assessment procedure, starting a collaboration that is still valid nowadays. ASPS never released the details of the agreement but we know that the collaboration resulted in the creation of a joint team ASPS-Marconi called Wave Propulsion Engine, in short WPE. The aim of the team was the industrialization of PNN. A website that should had contained information about WPE was created, but it doesn’t exist anymore.

Meanwhile the contacts with Boeing and Ministry of Defense were continuing: ASPS held a demonstration of WPE at Sheraton Hotel in Rome on May 3^rd 2005. At the event were present representatives of Boeing (Leo Dadone), Ministry of Defense (Adm. Lucio Accardo), Marconi Dynamics (the name was not revealed) and Italian press (Repubblica and Il Sole 24 Ore). In this occasion ASPS presented the new prototype P26MR05, two times more powerful than P10F02. We don’t know if the exhibition brought to ASPS additional funding, because the Association never released any detail. If I remember correctly (I can’t find the source) Laureti said that Ministry of Defense declined the offer due to lack of funding.

From the left: Emidio Laureti and Leo Dadone

However, the life of WPE and its related website was very short: in October 2005 ASPS managed to strengthen the thrust of P26MR05 by a factor of 8. In that moment the Association realized that the physics behind PNN was another world: I suppose they’ve decided to postpone the goal of industrialization to investigate this uncharted branch of the physics; this explains why we can’t find anything about WPE after May 2005. Eight years later ASPS presented TDS VF2, the thruster from another world 450 times more powerful than P26MR05. Along with the new thruster came the need to redefine the law of inertia, but this is another story.

A note about Marconi Dynamics: its name is a cover to keep secret the real one. Anyway it’s not difficult to trace it back but, since ASPS wants to maintain the secret, I can only say that once again the English have foreseen the revolutionary potential of an Italian invention.

Stay tuned!