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A comment on Questions about Nasa's space drive answered. Parent comment

Re:Questions about Nasa's space drive answered by Mandelbug on Thursday August 07, 2014 @08:17AM (#8147285)
What? Of course the apparent affect matters. If the underlying physical principles can be understood, there is a possibility of increasing its efficiency for larger throughput. And if the underlying process isn't understood, there is no way to rule out something that isn't actually producing thrust or some other fluke.

Finally, the whole point of science is to discover things. Not make magic :|

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Re:Questions about Nasa's space drive answered by ep103 on Thursday August 07, 2014 @09:44AM (#8147644)
I think what he means is even if it turned out to just be thermal energy, then that means this device has the capability of directing thermal energy as a viable proportion source, so its still pretty great : )
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Re:Questions about Nasa's space drive answered by jahnu on Thursday August 07, 2014 @08:22AM (#8147303)
I don't mean to suggest it wouldn't be of interest. As you point out it would be of paramount interest to discover the physics behind it. The Pioneer Anomaly, however, was very very small indeed. This effect appears to be many orders of magnitude greater.
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