Copper cable diameter for large current device
There are two problems with sizing a cable when powering a remote load. The first is cable heating, the second is voltage drop.

As you will only be operating for a few seconds at a time, cable heating (which gives rise to the 10A/mm2 figure for small currents, less for larger currents, in mains applications) will not be your problem.

How much voltage does your thruster need to work, or to work well enough?

An easy to remember rule of thumb for room temperature copper cables is 1m of 1mm2 cable has a resistance of 17mohm. It's a convenient size figure, you can work everything else out by scaling, and it's a lot easier than making sure that you have all the right factors of 10 if you look up the ohms for one cubic metre!

Anyhows, if we start with a current density of 5A/mm2 (just seat of the pants, let's see where we get to) 500A would need 100mm2 cable, which is available as welding cable. 16m (8m there and back) of this stuff will have a resistance of 17mohm x 16 / 100 = 2.7mohm. At 500A, that's a voltage drop of 1.36v.

That doesn't look too bad from where I'm sitting. Will your thruster work well with 1.36 volts less than whatever your battery bank puts out at 500A, less some further drop for a switch? 

If you double your cable area to 200mm2, that's fairly expensive, and only saves you 0.7v drop. Probably not worth doing.

You could halve your cable area to 50mm2, but your drop would increase to 2.7v, possibly prohibitive, I don't know? 

If your thruster draws 500A in normal operation, it will probably require more to start, which will lower the voltage even further. However, I suspect that a thruster is easy to start, the static load is very low, so this additional voltage drop should not be a problem.

Your call for cost of cable versus performance of thruster tradeoff. Of course moving your battery or installing a another closer one will not need as much cable.