I mean , yes the physics works , but in real life you wouldn ' t have enough EVA propellant to move a massive spaceship very much at all . So no it probably wouldn ' t work <| sep |> How many simple diseases can ' t we ' cure '? Not many any more . If it was basically undesirable to cure diseases , I ' m not sure we would have cured so many . I assume you ' re only really talking about diseases caused by pathogens or possibly genetic mutations ? Obviously things like mental illness or degenerative diseases aren ' t exactly ' curable ' because they don ' t have some disease causing agent . Pathogen induced diseases we can cure a huge number of them . The ones we can ' t e . g . HIV , a company wouldn ' t want the patent for the dug that cure HIV ? ! You really think that ? ? Blockbuster drugs can be billions in sales every year . One blockbuster , patented drug can comprise doublefigure % of a big pharma company with hundreds and hundreds of products ' revenue . The product I ' m thinking of almost certainly sells less than a cure for HIV infection would and is still billions of dollars a year . There is no way I believe a company that could patent the only cure for a pathogen caused disease wouldn ' t do it . There is so much money at stake . Say it was HIV . It must be billions , trillions ? ! And although it may make some of its own antiretrovirals obsolete , it would make everyone else ' s , too , and they would be selling the only therapy for HIV that anyone in the entire world wanted . Same deal for something like cancer , if not more so . One in 3 of us WILL get cancer ! It ' s such a vastly complex disease that there couldn ' t possibly be a magic bullet preventative so as we get older more and more of us will get cancer , it ' s not an infection that can be wiped out like smallpox , a cure for cancer would perhaps be the most bulletproof , continuously saleable thing anyone could ever invent bar nothing . If 1 in 3 people in the entire world will get cancer . The target market for your patented cancer curing treatment is a third of the entire world . No other product in history has had anything like that customer base , every single one of whom would want your product . I work for a pharma company , quality assurance in a factory so call it conflict of interest or whatever . But I ' ve always thought the idea of this conspiracy from both a biology and a business point of view is completely implausible . I feel like the principle the pharma industry is based on businesswise is people will always be sick and dying of something . The first to patent a cure makes almost unfathomable amounts of money because no one wants to be sick and no one wants to die . once something ' s cured and the first to come up with the cure has made trillions of dollars , the race is on for the next big thing .