It seems to me that you are not talking about violations of physical laws, but violations of the rough, but wrong, approximations of physical laws that people use in some contexts.
It doesn't seem startling or interesting that people continually find ways around rules that are not rules.
Right they’re not violated, but my point is that they’re almost never the impassible barrier that people make them out to be.
It’s not that the rough approximations are wrong it’s that people focus too much on one or two ways of doing things (using atmospheric air as a reaction mass to fit my first example) until someone creative and knowledgeable enough finds a new way to do them (rockets then.)
You might think you can rely on something as simple as thermodynamics but if you are you’re going to have to be absolutely anal about where you draw the system boundary. People are really really good at getting work out of nearly anything. Don’t forget the planet is warmed by the sun and that you can just walk outside and use that for work.