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Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

i think we're wrong putting so much effort on understanding and proving it on Earth (where it can never practically be used anyway). Just put it into space and turn it on - whatever the nature of the effect if it is present - great, lets use it, and understand it with time, if there is no effect - well, we're done here.

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Orbit is actually a very dynamic and variable place. The Earth’s gravitational fields varies due to asymmetric mass distribution of the continental shelves, mountain ranges and features below the crust. Our atmosphere has an affect on satellites at even thousands of km altitude. The magnetic field is constantly shifting and can affect the orbits of metallic satellites. Then there’s the solar wind. This is why a lot of satellites need station keeping thrusters. Decent thrust would be observable, but very small rates of thrust that are hard to measure at all in the lab could be swamped by these effects and just as hard to measure in orbit, if not more so.

Exactly, rocket science is pretty easy to a physicist but rocket engineering is absolutely not.

My understanding is running this experiment in space would cost >$10m, a very pricey experiment when the expected outcome is negative.

$10m seems … relatively cheap for anything in space?

It seems cheap relative to pretty much anything these days. People pay that much for rare cars, a rich person could snap their fingers and make it happen. I hate to tell people how to spend their money but I wish someone pitched it as an experiment to Elon Musk or Bezos. Just like you said - put it in space, switch it on. Either it works or it doesn't, should be obvious straight away, no?

It sure seems like collectively the world has wasted more than $10m of attention on this concept by now.

Putting another $10m to follow it would be chasing good money after bad, and fall into the sunk cost fallacy.

Since nothing has been proven or disproven yet, we’re really in no different position that before all the experiments began. Might as well spend that money now to end it.

It fits so far out of our theoretical models that it's unfair to say it isn't proven or disproven. There are virtually infinite hypothesis that are neither proven nor disproven experimentally, but because theory states it's impossible we don't consider them worth testing.

Unrelated to the thread topic:

We live in an attention economy. If you read a story, or watch a video, it doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with the content; you're still traffic.

Just viewing content on most of the internet boosts it's signal, and creates value for someone; much less engaging further by commenting, up/down voting, or sharing it. It's a pretty ugly system.

The most surefire way to acquire massive wealth in the 21st century is to get convince people to pay as much attention to your app's notifications as they would an incoming phone call.

Getting a dollar from a million people is a different thing to getting a million dollars from one person.

That's about what Bezos makes in 60 seconds.

We could probable even go fund that

Make it happen!

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