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Given the small amounts involved, it's worth the money just to figure out the source of experimental error. NASA isn't giving money to random kooks off the str

Given the small amounts involved, it's worth the money just to figure out the source of experimental error. NASA isn't giving money to random kooks off the street, these are actual physicists in labs doing the work.

waterlesscloud 11y ago
Not only is it not random kooks off the street, it's the Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory, a group NASA set up for the express purpose of exploring exotic and unlikely propulsion concepts. They've done a small experiment on this particular concept and gotten interesting results. It would be utterly baffling if a group set up to explore such things explored them and then quit when they got interesting results.
scott_s 11y ago
Steuard is too polite to point this out himself, so I will do it for him: he is a physics professor. That the amount of money is small is a measure of how incredibly unlikely he thinks any useful result would come from the experiments.
- syncsynchalt 11y ago
  Thank you for the pointer, I have a bad habit of not noticing usernames anyway. That said I still think my argument is valid, if you are seeing an incorrect result in a simple experiment it's still worth lab time figuring out which of your instruments or equipment is introducing it, even if you have 0.00% confidence that it's anything special or interesting.
- Intermernet 11y ago
  Steuard himself would hopefully point out that although being a physics professor grants his opinion a greater weight than those of us who are less informed, to claim that he is automatically correct would be fallacious. Politeness in this regard is preventing appeals to authority. I personally disagree. The money has been allocated to a section of NASA designed to research exactly this sort of theory. Pulling funding from these people would be like telling Ernest Solvay to put away his wallet.
  - scott_s 11y ago
    I am not saying he is automatically correct. I am saying that one should consider his profession, expertise, his level of skepticism, and then reconsider priors.

waterlesscloud 11y ago

Not only is it not random kooks off the street, it's the Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory, a group NASA set up for the express purpose of exploring exotic and unlikely propulsion concepts. They've done a small experiment on this particular concept and gotten interesting results. It would be utterly baffling if a group set up to explore such things explored them and then quit when they got interesting results.

scott_s 11y ago

Steuard is too polite to point this out himself, so I will do it for him: he is a physics professor. That the amount of money is small is a measure of how incredibly unlikely he thinks any useful result would come from the experiments.

syncsynchalt 11y ago
Thank you for the pointer, I have a bad habit of not noticing usernames anyway. That said I still think my argument is valid, if you are seeing an incorrect result in a simple experiment it's still worth lab time figuring out which of your instruments or equipment is introducing it, even if you have 0.00% confidence that it's anything special or interesting.
Intermernet 11y ago
Steuard himself would hopefully point out that although being a physics professor grants his opinion a greater weight than those of us who are less informed, to claim that he is automatically correct would be fallacious. Politeness in this regard is preventing appeals to authority. I personally disagree. The money has been allocated to a section of NASA designed to research exactly this sort of theory. Pulling funding from these people would be like telling Ernest Solvay to put away his wallet.
- scott_s 11y ago
  I am not saying he is automatically correct. I am saying that one should consider his profession, expertise, his level of skepticism, and then reconsider priors.