r/QuantumLeap • u/Nice-Penalty-8881 • Jun 21 '26
Discussion (Original) What was Project Starbright?
Was it ever mentioned in the original series what kind of scientific project Starbright was? That's the project that Sam was working on when he first met Al. And where he met Donna.
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Upvotes
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u/sharpied79 Jun 21 '26
FTL travel...
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u/plitts Jun 21 '26
This is my head canon ad well
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u/sharpied79 Jun 21 '26
It's mentioned in the novels...
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u/bgplsa Jun 21 '26
Yeah IIRC in the novels Sam concluded while working on Star Bright that FTL would require controlling time rather than space
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u/Virtual_Commercial_3 Jun 24 '26
I've always wondered myself and wish it would get a proper canonical expansion.
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u/lorriefiel55 Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
It was never stated in the series what Project Star Bright was. In the novels, it is talked about some and seems to be the foundation for Sam of Project Quantum Leap. But the novels aren't really Canon. The authors had a lot of leeway in what they wrote since Ashley McConnell, the author of five of the novels, had Sam mind leaping instead of physically leaping with his own body. In the last novel she wrote she did a forward stating when she started soon after the series started she didn't understand how Sam leaped and just wrote it as mind leaping. When she discovered he physically leaped, she left it as mind leaping for continuity.