I think that the people who are actually doing the real work here (i.e. the scientists) all have fairly realistic expectations. The rest of us can party if it makes us feel better, and it won't hurt if the end result is increased funding for science in general. And if nothing happens in the end, well, there won't be any more articles, and in a month everyone except for those genuinely interested will forget it was even there (well, there will also be the occasional science freak posting about it on Slashdot in every future story on space propulsion, but that's what Slashdot is for).

Well, except for all these.

Yes, of course. I don't support this ridiculous notion that we shouldn't try to get something useful out of the experiment just because we can't explain the theory.

Let me guess, you're still bitter from WinME?

Look at what's actually making money. Hint: it's mostly Office, not Windows, and it has been that way for many years now. Why would Office for iOS or Android, say, make any less money than Office for Windows?

Or, say, Azure. It's a money maker, despite playing catch-up with AWS.

Yeah, that's why Code runs on Linux: to let people who use Linux make apps that only run on Windows. Makes perfect sense.

But being in support of common carrier laws, that apply to the whole country, would not be even Left-leaning libertarian. It would have to be collectivism, that was completely voluntary. I'm pretty sure that's not what pro Net Neutrality folk were about.

I guess it depends on who you believe, but there have been climate scientists that have said we are beyond the tipping point, that even if we reduce emissions warming will happen. Ok well if that's true, and if it is true that the warming will be a net harmful thing, then some kind of geo engineering would be necessary. You can't very well say "Reducing CO2 won't fix the problem, but let's do as much of that as we can and only do that and then cry about the problem!"

Well summed-up. The only nuance that might be missing is what they have in common (besides being a waste of time, that is). And that is, whether or not fusta is an equal opportunity troller (across the political spectrum) or only targets Conservatives like DR.

I may post a JE some time soon about modern sleazy web programming tactics I'm noticing, such as on that site.

Only when it comes to God's morality. For example, downplaying the truth that it's much better for children to be raised in a two-parent household of both sexes. But when it comes to their man-made morality, there is no unwavering in for example their belief that it's a truism that more "fairness" = more betterness, ad infinitum.

If Microsoft ends up making money doing applications for Linux, it means that Microsoft has won, as well.

The nice thing about this is that there doesn't have to be a losing party.

Are you saying that you would completely ignore the repeatedly reproducible result of an experiment if there were no good theoretical physical explanation for said result?

I mean, it's your choice, but it sounds extremely stupid. If the thing works, figuring out why it works is definitely a very interesting question well worth devoting resources to, but making it useful doesn't require fully understanding the theory.

Note that this is the fifth experiment so far that has reproduced the effect (and every new experiment tries to account for some explanation that could possibly invalidate the previous one; e.g. for the last one, they ran it in vacuum).

A few physicists have already ripped it apart (and the fact that the physics is unsound is why it took so long for anyone to actually try to properly reproduce it). Basically, the thing may well work, but if it does work, it's very unlikely that the explanation that its inventor has provided is legitimate.

Of course energy has momentum. Photons, in particular, have momentum. That's why there's nothing strange about the experiment as you describe it - you increase the momentum of your rocket, but that increase is exactly counterbalanced by the momentum of the emitted photon. And when that photon hits something eventually, it will transmit its momentum to that thing etc. Overall, momentum is conserved, not just "right now", but at any future point. This doesn't seem to be the case with this engine.

I assume the question was rather whether acceleration (i.e. force) scales linearly with power input. In the experiment, it did not.