I think the thing you guys are forgetting is that while the death and infant mortality rates go down in civilized nations, the birthrates also go down. I would imagine that these factors generally remain comensurate to one another.
my bad, i remember hearing the GNP figure on some tv show. I did some research and now I know that it requires 2000 times as much energy to produce anti-matter than the energy you will obtain from it. However, isn't the issue storing the anti-protons for a long period of time, not so much producing them? If my memory is correct, current technology allows us to store 10^8 antiprotons for about a few days or so. Assuming we could reach 10%C we would have to be able to store anti-protons for about 40 years to reach the nearest star.
Yeah you make a really good point-- that propellant accounts for most of the mass of a spacecraft. If you need to send a spacecraft a given distance with X amount of propellant, you will need X^2 propellant to be able to slow the space craft. But even if you eliminate the propellant all together, the payload still has mass. I think it's fair to say that at least lightspeed is pretty much needed for any serious space exploration outside our closest neighboring stars. According to General Relativity an infinite amount of energy is required to propel any object with mass faster than light. This has been proven in particle accelertators. Particle Physicists can make an electron go 95% speed of light pretty easily. But 99% requires more energy, even more for 99.9%, even more for 99.99, etc, etc onto an infinite number of decimal places, and thus an infinite amount of energy. This is why it is impossible to make anything go faster than light. For this reason, IMO, The ability to alter the ZPF to reduce the mass of a moving object to zero is pretty much needed if we ever want to do any serious space exploration. But anti-matter is certainly a start, but I don't think its the ultimate solution.
I'm not so sure what I think about this. I'm all for increased spending in advanced propulsion research, but it should be done with caution.
"Anti-matter is several years out," Rodgers said
HAHA several YEARS out? yeah right! Currently, it would cost more than the GNP of the United States to merely light a 75 watt light bulb with current Antimatter Power Techniques. (This is what I have heard, maybe this is no longer true, but I don't think anti-matter production techniques have improved that much in the last six months since I heard this).I would say it's more than just a few years out.
The work on anti-matter will be at the level of the atom, so there will be little safety threat in case of an accident, said Harry Gerrish, a chief research engineer at the lab.
Although Anti-matter power techniques may not leave a risk of nuclear fallout which is a major concern with Nuclear Fission, it still involves harnessing a ridiculously large amount of energy. We should be more concerned about a technology like this falling into people with malicious intent in mind, or those who simply don't know what they are doing. I'm sure that once anti-matter technology progresses to a certain level, it will be possible to annihalate the planet with relative ease. Perhaps technologies like anti-matter should be developed only after our society becomes mature enough that it can use and harness technologies such as anti-matter without the risk of destroying itself in the process.
The ultimate form of propulsion technology may not lie in making faster and better propulsion systems, such as antimatter, but the ability to control the mass and inertia of an object moving through space.A relativly new theory of inertia, in which the electromagnetic energy in the Zero-Point Field interacts with the electromagnetic and strong forces of atomswould provide a reason for inertia to happen. Until now we have known that inertia occurs, but beyond the fact that it is directly related with the mass of an object, scientists haven't been able to find the mechanism for it to occur. If these interactions could be controlled, those between the zero-point field and the electromagnetic bonds of atoms, an object's mass could be deminished to zero, and the object could travel at very close to the speed of light with almost no energy propeling it.
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I think the thing you guys are forgetting is that while the death and infant mortality rates go down in civilized nations, the birthrates also go down. I would imagine that these factors generally remain comensurate to one another.
Sounds just like a PGP key, but radio-transmited instead. Pretty ingenious IMO
Isn't the PPC velocity engine 128 bit already????
my bad, i remember hearing the GNP figure on some tv show. I did some research and now I know that it requires 2000 times as much energy to produce anti-matter than the energy you will obtain from it. However, isn't the issue storing the anti-protons for a long period of time, not so much producing them? If my memory is correct, current technology allows us to store 10^8 antiprotons for about a few days or so. Assuming we could reach 10%C we would have to be able to store anti-protons for about 40 years to reach the nearest star.
Yeah you make a really good point-- that propellant accounts for most of the mass of a spacecraft. If you need to send a spacecraft a given distance with X amount of propellant, you will need X^2 propellant to be able to slow the space craft. But even if you eliminate the propellant all together, the payload still has mass. I think it's fair to say that at least lightspeed is pretty much needed for any serious space exploration outside our closest neighboring stars. According to General Relativity an infinite amount of energy is required to propel any object with mass faster than light. This has been proven in particle accelertators. Particle Physicists can make an electron go 95% speed of light pretty easily. But 99% requires more energy, even more for 99.9%, even more for 99.99, etc, etc onto an infinite number of decimal places, and thus an infinite amount of energy. This is why it is impossible to make anything go faster than light. For this reason, IMO, The ability to alter the ZPF to reduce the mass of a moving object to zero is pretty much needed if we ever want to do any serious space exploration. But anti-matter is certainly a start, but I don't think its the ultimate solution.
I'm not so sure what I think about this. I'm all for increased spending in advanced propulsion research, but it should be done with caution.
"Anti-matter is several years out," Rodgers said
HAHA several YEARS out? yeah right! Currently, it would cost more than the GNP of the United States to merely light a 75 watt light bulb with current Antimatter Power Techniques. (This is what I have heard, maybe this is no longer true, but I don't think anti-matter production techniques have improved that much in the last six months since I heard this).I would say it's more than just a few years out.
The work on anti-matter will be at the level of the atom, so there will be little safety threat in case of an accident, said Harry Gerrish, a chief research engineer at the lab.
Although Anti-matter power techniques may not leave a risk of nuclear fallout which is a major concern with Nuclear Fission, it still involves harnessing a ridiculously large amount of energy. We should be more concerned about a technology like this falling into people with malicious intent in mind, or those who simply don't know what they are doing. I'm sure that once anti-matter technology progresses to a certain level, it will be possible to annihalate the planet with relative ease. Perhaps technologies like anti-matter should be developed only after our society becomes mature enough that it can use and harness technologies such as anti-matter without the risk of destroying itself in the process.
The ultimate form of propulsion technology may not lie in making faster and better propulsion systems, such as antimatter, but the ability to control the mass and inertia of an object moving through space.A relativly new theory of inertia, in which the electromagnetic energy in the Zero-Point Field interacts with the electromagnetic and strong forces of atomswould provide a reason for inertia to happen. Until now we have known that inertia occurs, but beyond the fact that it is directly related with the mass of an object, scientists haven't been able to find the mechanism for it to occur. If these interactions could be controlled, those between the zero-point field and the electromagnetic bonds of atoms, an object's mass could be deminished to zero, and the object could travel at very close to the speed of light with almost no energy propeling it.
See Inertia as a Zero-Point Lorenz Force by B. Haischfor further information.