Antimatter propulsion

**I'm posting this in this NG as this post was rejected by the moderator in
sci.space.tech.**

http://www.space.com/businesstechnol..._031217-1.html

I'm personally not a fan of antimatter propulsion at this time as there's no
safeguarding technology for when the launch or a component during flight
fails. The only way to encapsulate antimatter at this time is through
magnetic containment, which needs power and a complex control system. If
these fail during launch or at any time during the flight the result will be
an explosion which dwarfs that of a hydrogen bomb.

I'm personally not a fan of antimatter propulsion at this time as there's no
safeguarding technology for when the launch or a component during flight
fails. The only way to encapsulate antimatter at this time is through
magnetic containment, which needs power and a complex control system. If
these fail during launch or at any time during the flight the result will be
an explosion which dwarfs that of a hydrogen bomb.



30 milligrams of antimatter won't make that big of an explosion. Certainly not
enough to dwarf a hydrogen bomb. What it can do is produce high energy
densities that could be used to initiate hydrogen fusion on a small scale. Most
of the energy that propells the ship would come from hydrogen fusion.
Antimatter will never be completely safe.

Tom

In article , Dr. O dr.o@xxxxx wrote:
**I'm posting this in this NG as this post was rejected by the moderator in
sci.space.tech.**


Not intentionally. Your message arrived in my inbox in the
middle of a batch of about 40 spams someone sent me
(Free HGH penis extension mortgages now!) to the moderation
mailbox, and I just didn't notice it at the time.

I cleaned out the backlog of cruft, found a bunch of messages
from Thursday onwards that were valid messages lost in the
morass of spam, and have approved them all.


-george william herbert

"Dr. O" dr.o@xxxxx wrote in message
...
**I'm posting this in this NG as this post was rejected by the moderator
in
sci.space.tech.**


http://www.space.com/businesstechnol..._031217-1.html

I'm personally not a fan of antimatter propulsion at this time as there's
no
safeguarding technology for when the launch or a component during flight
fails. The only way to encapsulate antimatter at this time is through
magnetic containment, which needs power and a complex control system. If
these fail during launch or at any time during the flight the result will
be
an explosion which dwarfs that of a hydrogen bomb.

It sounds like antimatter production would have to be done in space,
possibly on an asteroid, for safety reasons. We may have our first O'Neil
colony before we can do that.

Mike Rhino wrote:
"Dr. O" dr.o@xxxxx wrote in message
...

**I'm posting this in this NG as this post was rejected by the moderator

in

sci.space.tech.**



http://www.space.com/businesstechnol..._031217-1.html

I'm personally not a fan of antimatter propulsion at this time as there's

no

safeguarding technology for when the launch or a component during flight
fails. The only way to encapsulate antimatter at this time is through
magnetic containment, which needs power and a complex control system. If
these fail during launch or at any time during the flight the result will

be

an explosion which dwarfs that of a hydrogen bomb.


It sounds like antimatter production would have to be done in space,
possibly on an asteroid, for safety reasons. We may have our first O'Neil
colony before we can do that.




ISTR several science fiction stories where antimatter is manufactured on
Mercury
because of the abundant solar energy.

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

Antimatter can be produced on the ground. A small amount of antimatter can
replace the fuel in the space shuttle. If fact it would take less energy worth
of antimatter to lift the shuttle into orbit, that it would in chemical fuel.

Tom