Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NASA Researching Antimatter Engines

Posted by michael on from the improbability-drive-coming-soon dept.

dbolger writes: "CNN has a story about how scientists at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama are researching ways to use antimatter to fuel missions to Mars and beyond within the next 50 years. It very light on technical details, but does give an interesting look at current and future potential uses of antimatter."

5 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. There Something Wrong With This picture! by msolnik · · Score: 5, Funny

    There is something definately wrong with the picture on cnn.com. This picture looks very wrong someone must have been thinking bad thoughts at the time.

    1. Re:There Something Wrong With This picture! by cliffy2000 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Looks like the Ambiguously Gay Duo's spaceship...

    2. Re:There Something Wrong With This picture! by dkoyanagi · · Score: 5, Funny

      "to boldly go where no man has gone before..."

  2. Yes, but ... by J.D.+Hogg · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought you needed a reactor core with dilithium crystal to make a matter-antimatter reaction possible. Can NASA produce dilithium crystals yet ? and visors for the reactor core technicians ?

  3. Re:If I could have a $ for every NASA research.... by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...and even the robotic probe missions are using what most geeks (and /. readers) would consider archaic. I mean, 16 bit processors are finally being used for many missions and 8 bit processors are still common.
    You don't want 256 bit, billion gate gamma-ray lithographied GaAs processors in space.

    You'd rather have something reliable whose traces will not be overwhelmed by particle bombardment in Space.

    That's why NASA uses prehistoric microprocessors (when it uses any).

    And commercial Clarke-Orbit communication satellite are even more "primitive": no microprocessors at all. Just discrete wired logic.

    Because it's a fucking long way to press the "reset" button if the processor hangs...