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Anti-matter
"Mike Dworetsky" > wrote in message news > Joe Snodgrass wrote: > > On Jan 30, 8:02 pm, robertva > wrote: > >> On 1/30/2011 7:27 PM, Joe Snodgrass wrote: > >> > >>> What's the best way to make anti-matter for your rocket engine? An > >>> accelerator. That's why Clarke's spaceship was so long in the 2001 > >>> movie. > >> > >> All this time I thought it has fission powered engines (and general > >> electrical power generation as well) and the long boom was supposed > >> to reduce the crew's radiation exposure. There wold also need to be > >> some serious volume for consumables storage, with two crewmen eating > >> and breathing for the entire voyage. There would also need to be > >> some place to store the air pumped out of that huge bay every time > >> they used a pod. > > > > Unless it were a pulsed engine. You spend a few days building up your > > anti-matter supply and then, PCHOOM!!, fire all of the guns at once > > and explode into space. I'm still working on why you'd want to do > > that, but I do know that one of the Skunk Works' classified projects > > at Area 51 is a pulsed conventional engine. They must like 'em pulsed > > for some reason. > > Thermodynamics still applies; it would take more energy to produce the > antimatter than you would get out of it, because the manufacturing is not > 100% efficient [partly because production results in various particles that > leak away and carry energy]. Better to apply that energy to producing > propulsion directly than producing antimatter. > > A pulsed conventional engine (like the WW2 V1 flying bombs) is very basic > technology, very cheap to manufcture, but remarkably enough, it still > requires a fuel tank to be filled up before launch; they don't manufacture > the fuel on board during flight, in between pulses. In the 1950s, the Pentagon funded a research project, Orion, to build a starship that could be powered by the explosion of a series of atomic bombs, one after the other. A "pusher plate" made of special materials would shield the starship cabin from the atomic explosions, and act as a shock absorber to smooth out the impulses. A dispenser not unlike that in a Coca-Cola vending machine would drop atomic bombs out the spaceship, one after the other. These would explode against the pusher plate, one at a time, propelling the ship forward. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project..._propulsion%29 Orion was cancelled when the U.S. signed the Outer Space Treaty which forbade nuclear testing in space. -- Steven L. |
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