NASA Researching Antimatter Engines

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."

Comments

From nasa

[hogsback]

There's an older (1999) article on nasa's site with a bit more technical detail.

Re:How to contain it?

[AnalogBoy]

When antimatter is made in the lab, it is stored in something called a "Penning Trap". Indeed, it is a type of magnetic confinement.

More info, here

Re:Cost (in energy) to produce

[RevRigel]

You don't understand thermodynamics. Of course it takes more energy to produce than we get out of it. 2nd law of thermo. For spacecraft, small and light is better. Antimatter, per joule, is the smallest and lightest allowable by the laws of physics as we currently understand them.
The idea is that we can use wind power, solar power, or crude oil generated power to make the antimatter here on Earth, and then take antimatter into space with us. None of those other types of power exist in space (except solar, which doesn't exist for any practical purposes if you start using antimatter propulsion to go to other stars..which is entirely possible when you have an exhaust velocity equal to the speed of light..well, almost, since matter and antimatter produce neutral and charged pi-mesons when they annihilate. the neutral pi-mesons decay into gamma rays that spray in random directions very quickly, but the charged pi mesons don't. so the idea is to shape the exhaust flow by moving the charged pi mesons when an electrostatic or electromagnetic field before they decay).

You're a victim of the same mistaken thinking that the comments about the hydrogen power generation story a few days ago were saturated with.