Maybe I missed it - this thread is pretty dense reading (as in it's tough to keep track of the different arguments), but another one I haven't seen much used is that of phase drives. Kinda like wormholes, or other dimensions of space, but operating on different principles entirely. Remember in TNG when Wesley and that time traveler were phasing in and out of the current reality, and his mom Beverly was in another reality? Something like that...so what if you had a phase drive that could put you in another reality, and that allowed for easier transport because of...whatever?
Sounds a bit like the drive in John Scalzi's Old Man's War books, where IIRC one character determined that they weren't actually moving ships at superlight speed to other star systems but shifting to almost-identical realities where the ship was already there.
Though that's another level of theoretical/"magic" tech; if it's possible, it would take a major leap in our understanding of physics, let alone our ability to practically implement it.
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