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Antimatter Space Drive
sckienle writes "Space.com has an article on using anti-matter for propulsion in space. It isn't true Star Trek warp stuff, in fact it is a variation on an fusion based pellet design I saw in the late 70's, but interesting concept. The concept is still somewhat of a dream, as stated in the article: 'The real hub is the storage [of antimatter]. There's a lot of technology between here and there.' Later on it also mentions that we can't produce a lot of antimatter efficiently yet. Still it might be worth the effort if the theoretical acceleration proves out." The BBC has a story about studying antimatter in a lab.
It isn't true Star Trek warp stuff, in fact it is a variation on an fusion based pellet design I saw in the late 70's, but interesting concept.
Are you sure those aren't tracers from the bad acid you took back in the late 70's?
I don't think anyone is arguing that antimatter would be just unbelievably useful to spacecraft, but the cost needs to be taken down by something like nine orders of magnitude -- the currently going rate for antiprotons is something like a million dollars per nanogram.
The cooling ring only helps you once you have antiprotons to cool down to antihydrogen. Right now the production of antiprotons itself is just too expensive.
It isn't impossible. By using a strong magnetic field, you could store antimatter in a vaccum without contact with the walls of the container. However, if the field were to fail at all, anhiliation would come pretty quick.
I mean, come on - why not post Linux vx. MacOS X and Emacs vs. vi stories while you are at it.
sic transit gloria mundi
"Later on it also mentions that we can't produce a lot of antimatter efficiently yet."
We'd be able to produce tons of it by now if the frickin' Vulcans didn't hold us back!
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Faster, better, and cheaper than all the other antimatter drives we have already produced?
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
Thanks to movies and television series such as Star Trek and especially Star Wars, most people have no idea just exactly how far another star system is.
The closest star is Tau Ceti, which is 4.7 Light years away, would still take a decade to reach and a decade to return even with a very, very, very advanced anti-matter engine -- a space shuttle with chemical engines, in comparsion, would take 100,000 years to reach there.
Anti-matter still costs approximately 40 quadrillion dollars per gram to make, and storing it and dealing with the gamma rays is quite another thing.
Sorry, sci-fi fans: we will never visit another star system in our lifetimes, and probably not even Mars with the amount of funding that goes to space.
"That is quite possibly the most circuitous way I have ever seen someone admit that something is impossible. Fascinating."
Sorry Mr. Spock, think you missed the point of what he was saying.
"The real hub is the storage," Howe says. "There's a lot of technology between here and there."
What he means is that it's not as simple as a gas tank.
Would it kill them to be a little more precise on:
- the distance from the Sun to the Oort cloud (about 250AU)
- the distance from the Sun to Pluto (about 40AU)
- the ratio of those two distances (apparently about 5)
?--
E_NOSIG
This is the basis for the "containment field" of Star Trek fame.
In a DS9 novel, they talk about transferring antimatter between holding tanks by using tightly confined magnetic field beams and piping the antimatter through their magnetic pipes from one place to the other.
There's a lot of technology between here and there
This is like saying that the only impediment to being rich is all the money you don't have yet.
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Indeed. It's like saying that an exoflop (or op) supercomputer is impossible.
It is. Right now.
However, give us 20 years, then easily you'll have it.
After all, it's just technology between here and there.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
Actually, it's Alpha Centauri at about 4.2 light years.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
By that definition, it is impossible for me to have a burrito. That's true, right now. However, in ten minutes, I can go to the burrito place, and I'll easily have it.
When people say things are impossible, without qualifiers, they mean it's impossible forever.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Actually, you're both wrong. The closest star is the Sun. But that's just me being pedantic.
XML causes global warming.
But I think you'll need to concede my basic point, which is that it is impossible for you to have an antimatter burrito. Especially with current technology.
In a just society, where the wants of the underprivileged are not left unattended-to, in a truly accepting and broad-minded multicultural community where spiritual values and emotional resonance are cherished and rewarded, it's clear that the hierarchically-constrained "male physics" which enforces today's high antimatter prices would cease to obtain.
I invite you all to contemplate the joys and rewards of a non-judgemental, people-centered physics, which takes emotional and spiritual considerations are factored into every equation. With such a "physics of the heart" taught as a scientifically acceptable and morally rewarding alternate truth -- for there are always many mutually exclusive and identically valid truths, especially in matters of radiation -- adequate supplies of antimatter would be within the reach of all! Imagine every child having enough antimatter to dream and to grow, to achieve his or her full creative potential as an individual, regardless of his or her astrological sign!
Is it truly so radical, to contemplate making science the servant of humanistic values, rather than their enemy? Is it really necessary for antimatter, like the so-called "Western literary canon", to be the exclusive province of dead white males? I think not.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
" We'll see antimatter missles :(
.
:)"
:P
Sorry, I think you typed a '(' where you meant to type a ')'
" We'll see antimatter missles
I'm excited to!
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Example: a dude sitting on a sled on a frozen pond, with a sackful of bricks. When he throws a brick off the sled
Te ice breaks and he sinks....thus, never posting about his high school physics class again.
The magnetic containment doesn't have to be electromagnetic. Natural permanent magnets have nearly 0 chance of failure. The little plastic fruits have been sticking to my grandmother's fridge for 50 years now.
-B