To create the exotic materials and technologies needed to build star gates and warp drives is the holy grail of advanced propulsion engineering. A less ambitious yet still revolutionary goal is to find a way to accelerate a spacecraft without having to carry a gigantic fuel tank from which to expel fuel. Tethers and solar sails are conventional realizations of the basic idea. There may now be a way to achieve these lofty goals. "Building Spaceships and Star Gates" will consist of three parts. The first part will deal with information about the theories of relativity necessary to understand the predictions of the effects that enable the propulsion techniques, as well as an explanation of these techniques. The second part will cover experimental investigations into the feasibility of the predicted effects; that is, do the effects exist and can they be applied to propulsion? The third part will explore further implications and applications.