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I don't think that you can create a good vacuum through explosions. You might get rid of the atmospheric gasses, but you introduce new gasses with each explosion.
The flow of fluid across a pipe naturally creates a vacuum. This principle is used in carburetors. At hypersonic speeds an even better vacuum should be created.
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Is it easier to make a containment Vessel for Anti-Hydrogen?
rather than Anti-Protons.
This hybrid fussion-antiproton drive is worth testing soon.
Someone needs to invent a 1 cu FT containment device.
The amount contained in each Container should be a small
fraction of the anti-matter required to mars trip.
Assume each
container has 1/50th of the anti-matter required by a Mars
trip. While It might be somewhat clumsy, it would be safer.
The anti-protons harversted would not at first need to be
placed at so concentrated an area. Even if One container
failed the amount of energy released in each should never be more than say the equivalent of a 1,000 LB bomb.
Once an on orbit ship is configured for a Mars trip, THEN
you can assemble all the little containers and send them up in
one shot.
If you do it my way you do not need a very large Mars ship
containment Vessel, because each "bit" of anti-matter already has it's containment device.
A good design for a mars ship would naturally have an EJECTION system in the fuel storage area. Once again since the Fuel is in small portions only a small portion is lost if you need EJECT a failing containment device.
The cost building the containment devices lends itself to
ecomomies of so I would expect the Per/Mars ship cost
to go down over time.
Some folks are also forgetting that a Manned Transit vechicle to Mars doesn't need to weigh 500 tons, if there are waiting
facilties on orbit there. For a One-way 30 day transit I think
a 100 ton(the lighter the better) spacecraft with for a crew of 8 should do just fine.
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The biggest problem with using any such anti-matter catylised system within an atmosphere is still radiation. Most practical fusion reactions produce lots of neutrons which are highly penetrating and deadly, and the pions and Gamma radiation from the anti-matter reactions are likewise deadly and highly penetrating. Shielding is heavy, and the best solution is to simply seperate the engine from the rest of the craft. Both of course make an atmospheric craft difficult to impossible. And the potential for contaminating our atmosphere is still there.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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I'd also like to point out that these antimatter-catalyzed systems, while having high Isp like Orion, would NOT have the super-ultra-high thrust like Orion, and probobly wouldn't have enough thrust for ground launch.
Remember the difference between thrust and Isp... you can have a 10,000sec Isp ion engine, but its thrust is so low it could never get off the ground.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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That is why most folks think about flashing through multiple engines in a continuous cycle. It gives you time to "Cool down".
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Nooo, none of the engines of a AMCF rocket would be powerful enough to do the job, and having multiple engines means you need even more thrust to make up for their weight. The ability to get off the ground requires a high thrust-to-weight ratio.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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At the current state of the art our civilization has no way of reliably producing, storing, controlling or using antimatter for anything for at least the next 20 years. So everyone needs to deal with it. Antimatter is NOT a realistic solution to anything.
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The United States is shutting down it only fusion breeder plant in the entire country this Wednesday. It is a test plant that was setup in early 90's, somewhere around 1993. It in the state of Washington. So much for George Bush's support of nuclear power and any serious space program.
Larry,
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Uhhh, there is no such thing as a fusion breeder reactor
And, since there is enough Uranium in the ground for another 200-300 years, a Breeder fission reactor is not a pressing need, especially given the high price of building & operating large fast neutron reactors (most power plants use thermal "slow" neutron reactors.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Uhhh, there is no such thing as a fusion breeder reactor
And, since there is enough Uranium in the ground for another 200-300 years, a Breeder fission reactor is not a pressing need, especially given the high price of building & operating large fast neutron reactors (most power plants use thermal "slow" neutron reactors.
Here a link to science article of what there shutting down on Wednesday. Basically what there going to do is drill a hole in the reactor and drain of the rest of the coolent out. This will turn that billion dollar plant into a piece of junk and it will cost two billion dollars to clean the mess up after they drill those hole. Bechtel will probably get the no bidder contract to clean it up this mess that there CEO George Shultz created. There is another choice, but there not going to do that, it would be to the plant into an idle mode, then crank it down that way. From what I understand, this is just a research plant for studying fusion processes, for enriching different nuclear process and it currently does not generate electric power at a break even level. So it not ready for whole sale implementation to replace fission plants as of right now. But, they do engage in the type of research that is need to continue process of building up a modern society to higher levels of technologies. From what I understand, there are two basic type of fusion process that are operational in the world. One is a Fission/Fusion hybreed breeder and the other is a fusion breeder. But, that about all I know about the subject.
The first link is to the 21st Century Magazine article on the subject and picture of the plant that there shutting down.
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/A … anford.pdf
The next four links are a web cast on the subject of shutting down that plant. The first two links are the fast connection and the down load if you want to save it.
http://asx.ljcentral.net/wms/eir/tls/20 … _en_hi.asx
ftp://ftp.ljcentral.net/wms/eir/tls/200 … _en_hi.asf
These two are the modem links and down load link.
http://asx.ljcentral.net/wms/eir/tls/20 … _en_lo.asx
ftp://ftp.ljcentral.net/wms/eir/tls/200 … _en_lo.asf
For anybody that interested.
Larry,
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My impression has always been that the greatest benefit from building breeder reactors would be to reduce the amout of radioactive waste in the form of used-up fuel rods from non-breeders which are routinely encased e.g. within glass blocks and buried, in what are currently considered out-of-the-way places, for eons to come. In that sense, perhaps the need for them is pressing after all.
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No, a Breeder reactor doesn't make use of nuclear waste, its main purpose is to make more fuel from the worthless and harmless Uranium-238. There are already fuel reprocessing facilities in France and Japan that take used fuel rods and extract whatever leftover useful fuel is left.
Since there is plenty of Uranium and Plutonium fuel with the advent of recycling spent rods and from leftover nuclear bombs, there is no justification for an expensive Breeder reactor at the moment.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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The CERN facility will be open in 2007. If the GRID system works (another version of SETI@Home) they will be able to find out more things about Antimatter may be increasing the efficiency of creating it.
"...all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by."
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I sometimes wonder about anti-matter as a power source. Of course producing it will always be horendusly expensive, even with increased efficency, and we currently have no easy way to store quanties of it. So using it for power would seem impossible.
However, we can excect at least an order of magnitude increase in efficeincy of production (still terribly expensive) and long term portable storage methods do not appear to be to tricky to create. I sometimes wonder if anti-matter might become a viable form of power for space travel before fusion does. Certianly there is no problem in converting it back into energy. It might happen that we solve the problems of anti-matter transport before we solve those of fusion.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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Depends on how much destruction there would be if it leaked. If the antiprotons are just used to initiate other nuclear reactions, then you may not need that much.
Trucking it all over the country probobly isn't going to happen, or at the least won't be easy, since the storage ring would have to either have a constant energy supply or be a cryogenicly cooled superconductor.
I heard it would cost about $ 8 million per nanogram of anti-Matter and the only way to get its true power is to use pure antimatter rockets, USA's Fermilab has given scientists great info,
the Euro's CERN antimatter factory is producing anti-particles but in the next while we could only really think of using anti-matter for initiating nuclear reactions. European CERN will expand in the next while it is thought they will succeeded very well in producing anti-atoms of hydrogen, and also anti-deuteron nuclei, made out of an antiproton and an antineutron, this may come after the expansion and new CERN Particle accelerators
'first steps are not for cheap, think about it...
did China build a great Wall in a day ?' ( Y L R newmars forum member )
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Is there actually a table that has the figures of what a certain size Antimatter produce? The closest i could find was this
"...all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by."
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The amount of energy per gram of anti-matter is actualy both a simple and complex question.
Simply Matter-Anti-matter reactions produce the energy equivelence of the matter anihlated. Via E=MC^2 that's 1.8e17 J/kg that's about 2 orders of magnitude (100 times) more energy then released by fusion (2.6e15 J/kg) and about 10 orders of magnitude more than gasoline and most other chemical fuels (4.2e7 J/kg). Making anti-matter by far the highest energy density fuel we have ever produced and since it relises total conversion of matter, quite possibly as high a energy density that can practicaly exists.
However M/AM reactions produce alot of kinds of energy that is simply very hard to contain and control, and thus very hard to convert into usefull energy. About 1/3 of the reactions energy is released in the forms of Pions traveling at signifigant fractions of the speed of light. Pions interact very weakly with normal matter and are therfore very hard to contain, especialy at the speeds they are traveling after an M/AM reaction. Another 1/3 of the reaction energy is high energy gamma radiation which is also difficult to control, though not as bad as the Pions. The last 1/3 of the energy is other muons which are more easily controled. So at best most anti-matter engines are only going to be able to utilise perhapce around 50% of the total energy created, still pretty good.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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@Austin
You can use Lead or other Heavy stuff to be around the engine. That will reduce the intensity of the Gamma Radiaton.
Btw Antimatter is THE Holy Grail for scientists.
http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/213.web.stu … atter.html
http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/213.web.stu … dcore.html
The only problem with that is getting a superconductor to handle extremly high temperature and beign able to mass produce 1,000 metric ton of antimatter.
Well one can hope one day.
"...all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by."
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http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/213.web.stu … usion.html
Ecological concerns would probably require that ICAN-II be assembled in space. Of course, a precedent for such large scale orbit-based assembly is already being set by the construction of the International Space Station.
and:
The ICAN-II is a viable spacecraft design that could be built within the next two decades. Currently, antiprotons can only be stored for a few weeks and production is very low; but, the problems with the storage and production are engineering problems, not physical problems. Humankind has shown, thus far, that any feats of engineering not expressly forbidden by the laws of physics, will be achieved.
Definitely some hurdles to overcome. Perhaps this type of drive is not as good as one would think.
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Stormrage, Indeed you could (and probably should) surround the reactor with lead or other heavy/dense metals (esp. Tungstun) in an effort to try and contain/control the Gamma radiation. Indeed my favorite anti-matter engine/reactor design (the lightbulb design) relies on this tactic. However, realisticly even with thick dense lead shielding you are not going to be able to capture all of the Gamma radiation, as some of it is Extreamly high energy (practicly cosmic ray's often over or around 1000 keV). Containment of photons of this level of energy is difficult to impossible. Of course a more conventional magnetic containment system is unable to capture the Gamma radiation at all, but may do slightly better at capturing some of the high energy pions.
In terms of safety seperating the crew from the reactor is probably the best bet. Radiation decreases via the inverse square law so distance is generaly more effective than shielding. But even for interstellar drives the rate at which anti-matter would be used is rather small and the radiation released is little more troublesome than that of a more conventional nuclear fission/fusion reactor of the same strength, so I don't susspect that will be a stoping issue.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
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Stormrage, Indeed you could (and probably should) surround the reactor with lead or other heavy/dense metals (esp. Tungstun) in an effort to try and contain/control the Gamma radiation. Indeed my favorite anti-matter engine/reactor design (the lightbulb design) relies on this tactic. However, realisticly even with thick dense lead shielding you are not going to be able to capture all of the Gamma radiation, as some of it is Extreamly high energy (practicly cosmic ray's often over or around 1000 keV). Containment of photons of this level of energy is difficult to impossible. Of course a more conventional magnetic containment system is unable to capture the Gamma radiation at all, but may do slightly better at capturing some of the high energy pions.
In terms of safety seperating the crew from the reactor is probably the best bet. Radiation decreases via the inverse square law so distance is generaly more effective than shielding. But even for interstellar drives the rate at which anti-matter would be used is rather small and the radiation released is little more troublesome than that of a more conventional nuclear fission/fusion reactor of the same strength, so I don't susspect that will be a stoping issue.
I have heard before that it is possible to make mirrors for x-rays and gamma rays (not sure up to what energy) provided the rays hit the mirror at a grazing angle. Such a scheme was suggest for an x-ray lazar or a gamma ray lazar as method for laser trigged fusion. Thus, the crew part of the ship should come to a very sharp point as it approaches the reactor. The walls should be made, with either alternating layers of material to provide many surfaces for the rays to reflect off. Perhaps the layers should have a crystal structure so the lattice boundaries acts as additional layers for gamma ray reflection.
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There is something in the new Infinite Energy mag about un-matter--where the neutrons are normal. Odd.
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There is something in the new Infinite Energy mag about un-matter--where the neutrons are normal. Odd.
Infinite Energy mag eh? Sounds fishy.
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What? Neutrons are the same in both matter and antimatter. Its no secret or revelation...
Building a ship to reflect the gamma and cosmic-class rays produced by a M/AM reaction around the crew cabin would be impossible, because the higher the energy of the incident ray, the more shallow the angle must be to reflect that ray. At these incredibly high energies, the crew cabin would have to be so pointy, that it would be impossible to engineer such a vessel.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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What? Neutrons are the same in both matter and antimatter. Its no secret or revelation...
Building a ship to reflect the gamma and cosmic-class rays produced by a M/AM reaction around the crew cabin would be impossible, because the higher the energy of the incident ray, the more shallow the angle must be to reflect that ray. At these incredibly high energies, the crew cabin would have to be so pointy, that it would be impossible to engineer such a vessel.
Neutrons are not the same in both matter and antimatter, that is a mistake that people make. Although Neutrons have a neutral charge it doesn’t mean that there interchangeable with matter the matter and anti-matter Neutrons. You Neutrons and Anti-Neutrons are just like you have Protons and Anti-Protons along with electrons and Anti-electrons. One theory is that a Neutron is both an Proton and electron together. So if that true, then you would have to have an Anti-Proton and an Anti-Electron to produce an Anti-Neutron and Proton and an Electron to produce a Neutron or otherwise there not same, but are mirror images just like the Proton, Anti Proton and Electron and Anti-electron are mirror images of each other.
Larry,
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