From: Nigel Jacob (nsjacob@julian.uwo.ca)
Date: Mon Jul 21 1997 - 11:10:29 MDT
On Sun, 20 Jul 1997, Dan Clemmensen wrote:
> Unless you find some new laws of physics, your will use the energy
> to power a reaction drive, sending photons in one direction and
> your ship in the other. You will not exceed the speed of light.
> Therefore, you cannot reach Pluto in less than 39 hours (as I recall.)
>
> If you intend to use the energy to accelerate to .5c and then
> decelerate,
> your matter-antimatter drive will need to to use twice the mass of
> the ship. That's a lot of antimatter. Production of that amount
> of antimatter will take several orders of magnitude more energy than
> the human race has generated in all of history.
>
> Conclusion: find some new laws of physics.
>
In fact, an anit-matter drive employing equal amounts of reactable
matter and antimatter is not as efficient as some related alternatives.
The magnitude of the radiated (non-usable) EM flux would mean lots of
shielding, thus incurring payload/fuel ratio problems...to name just just
one basic inefficiency of such a drive system. A far more efficient and
more technically feasible drive would employ a small amount of anitmatter
with a larger amount of thrust material, such as water. The generated
thrust of such a drive is very high and the associated payload/fuel ratio
is also correspondingly high.
Cheers,
Nigel.
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