are you saying that gene roddenberry never did magic mushrooms while creating the star trek universe?
Suppose for a second it did work. Don't you think the American military would have occupied all sites immediately, to secure those technologies for the US, and prevents the soviets from gaining it? We'd never have gotten another "star trek" episode after the pilot
Except plasma technology does work (perhaps not to the scale used in ST for it's impulse drive) but it's early days yet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_propulsion_engine Keeping things vague isn't always a bad thing, in terms of storytelling for example do we really need to know how the jump drive works in nBSG? Would it enhance the story if we were told? But at the end of the day it's a work of fiction.
I would state that plasma propulsion featured in the show was not a workable science, but it was stated spatial fields such a warp field was more likely to show up in the future. I honestly believed in Plasma technology and found warp field to be daunting, but plausible that plasma technology could yield warp field research. EDIT: Contained reaction that has minimal loss... and not a thruster type plasma engine is a warp nacelles concept. I believe it uses polarity. I could be wrong. A hollow tube filled with plasma, with a shunt of plasma through the center... you can ionize sections of the hollow tube rapidly with electricity. so you do this to create a inductance of polarity on each stage in sequence generating thrust... like a magnetic train. you launch yourself apparently however that works, because the induction keeps the surge of active point of plasma going.
It works in Bennie Russell's imagination. Then quote the traveler himself and it all makes sense TRAVELLER: You do understand, don't you that thought is the basis of all reality? The energy of thought, to put it in your terms, is very powerful.