Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

karov · 2005-05-22 03:30:12

In "Drilling by light" posting it was played with idea laser/particle beam to be used heat to be injected in the core of the already chilled out small mass worlds as Moon or Mars in order volcanism and natural planetary magnetism to be restarted.

The problem is that tremendously deep shafts should be drilled and kept open against the pressure of the surrounding material mass tending to collapse the vertical tunnels.

Deep bombing should be better option.

The Earth`s overall geothermal energy amount is 6x10exp27 Joules. This heat keeps it molten almost entirelly except the crust. Mars has ~10 times smaller mass than Earth. Lets conserrvativelly assume that we need to inject about 1/60 of the total Earth energy in order to restart the intensive volcanism and , perhaps this way global magnetism of Mars, and all this energy should be released in points just over the molten martian core or somewhere in the lower mantle.

10 E 26 Joules are comparable to one third of the total energy output of the Sun per one second,

~4x10exp15 J is the energy output of one megatone H-bomb.
To put in 10 E26 J you`d need at least 25 x 10 exp10 or 250 billion 1 megaton nuclear bombs.

Imagine something like "subterine" - independent ship-like or TBM-like vertical drilling device, provided with its own drilling system, very efficient cooling system, included own energy source, etc -- able to penetrate at least 1000-2000 km deep in Mars or Moon ( between 1/3th and 1/1th :-) of the body`s radius), and every such device able to haul down 1 Gygatonne H-bomb. Such bomb should weight in order of hundreds of metric tonnes fusing material. You still should build and sink 1000-2000 km deep down into the planet at least 250 000 000 pieces of such deep charges -- not impossible by very expensive and complicated task, for even mature self-replicating machinery.

The mass/energy equivalent of 1000 kg matter is 9x10 E19 J. For yielding the necessary 10 E26 Joules you`d need to depose ~500 000 tonnes of antimatter. One tone per mole / subterine means only 500 000 devices. The confined on board antimatter could be used to heat the drill , so the device to sink by its own weight through the rocks, melting them as hot needle in bee wax.

Now the prices of the antimatter production are enormous - $ many-quadrillions US per kg, but in future it is possible SUSY and other theories elaborated to decrease the cost 10 E10 times - close to the theorethical minimium of the energy budget of 50% mater - 50% antimater. Produced in space half million tonnes of amat could be achievable and regulary supply...

Earthfirst · 2005-06-20 13:18:42

The way to heat a planet back up is to hit a lot, in the venus moon post. It was proposed to have a small astoride impact venus at very high speeds to create a moon and release water from the mantil. As a side effect the impactor penitrated almost to the cores center. As a side effect the surface down to core trun liquid. This has a effect of making a moon, bring subsurface water to the surface and blasting away many bars of atmosphere. Also the is tilted to greater angle close to earths angle. Spin is increased to to 23 hour day and night. On Mars a smaller hit could easily reheat mars and gas out many bars of water, nitrogen, and CO2. The surface may be a molten sea of lava. But once it cooled the be a thin crust, more colling would allow water to condense out to form onceans. With a small new moon around mars there will be tides. And the angle mars would be stable like earths is due to its moon. Solar blinds could helps Mars cool of in a few thounsand years. For millions of years after Mars will be a dynamic planet like the earth. With plate tectonics, tides, completle mineral and gas cyles will help keep a stable like on the earth. Once Mars has cooled down with a thin crust and oceans terrafornimg of earth life can start. Bateria and algea will creat oxgen. The solar shade could be open to let light back to mars once it has cooled enough for liquid water to exist in oceans. This would a new mars with new terrean, but it could support life for billions of years with out man help to controle the climate on the old mar would need to be stable. Life could evlove long after man has lost interst in mars.

karov · 2005-06-21 01:25:21

Yes, giant impacts are may be the best technology to re-heat a planet, also to get rid of thick crust, to liberate sealed water from the depths, to increase the axial rotation rate, etc... The problem here is that small asteroid even hauled with great speed doesn`t work well to change the orbital and axial dynamics - speeding , say 1 000 000 times less massive body to 1000 times bigger velocity, gives us the same kinethic energy yield, but still the momentum exchanged via the impact is 1000 times smaller. Hiting Mars or Venus with impactor of manageable size ( up to ~100 km diameter - there are plenty of such asteroids in the close Main Belt ), with speed of several hundreds or thousands of km/s is within the even nowaday technological ( but not economical ) range - just use Orion-type nuclear pulse rockets -- this woun`t change much the rate rotation of the bombarded body, but still could be used to melt it in significant degree or entirely, to splash out moon-forming quantity of debris, etc.

BTW, I think it is not necesarry to wait millennia or that it is useless just to sunshade the melted body for cooling - there are numerous techniques for refrigerating , lots of them could be deployed on planetary scale:

Say, turning via impact the whole Martian surface in magma ocean actually gives us enormous energy source. Use kinethic structures carrying the heat through very efficient giant heat machines, utuilizing the temperature gradient between the hot liquid rock 1200 degrees magma and the supercold space in shade, and freezing all the magma in desirable tectonic pattern plates of desirable depth , will give us all the energy for storage in several hundreds of tonnes of antimatter...

karov · 2005-06-21 02:49:17

... the antimatter is probably the best battery for such sourses of energy which are too plentifull and intensive to be harvested in the order of appearance...

Cooling down a molten planet is the most suitable work which needs rapid energy transformation of the excessive heat into usefull and storable form + as a byproduct of the operation the crust to come into usefull soli phase...

http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic … ...1;t=127

If you search the themes from the last year, you`ll see that such technology is applicablee also for fast cooling down to habitability temperature range of the solidified surface of newly formed planets. The Oort cloud has the mass of material if we artificially coalesce it to form from several dozens to several hundreds of new Earths. Storeing the excessive surface hat into antimatter is the way such bodies to bee made habitable within decades and centuries, not millennia and millions of years for natural cooling. A planet coalesced out of the cometary debris of the Oort halo, even could be constructed via orbital ring "elevator" or rather "descender" so the excessive energy to be directly harnessed in amat production, not let to heat uselessly the planetary interior. Such planet formed by gently put down pieces decelerated via the orbital ring and the deceleration energy converted in storable and usefull form, would have multibillion years of energy independence from any star for whole earth-size biosphere and civilization. - http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic … ...1;t=101

The gravitational energy in all its practical manifestations:
- internal "geo"thermal heat,
- orbital velocity
- axial rotation rate...
is literally ENORMOUS and rivals the star photonic power...

Read the "Bombing Triton with Nereide" ( perhaps in titanforming smaller bodies - http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic … ...1;t=109 ), where it is explained how much energy takes to move the bodies into colision course -- actually using http://www.paulbirch.net]http://www.paulbirch.net]www.paulbirch.net orbital rings, the energy could be extractied and stored in 5000-6000 tonnes of amat, which is 4-5 times more than the whole carbon/carbohydrate natural fuel stockpile of the Earth. And how much usefull is the colisional terraforming tech, and how it comes in perfect balance with the antimatter storage.

Also, we could a single time ( cause later the livable temperature range will be normal without the supergreen house effect acting) , cool down bodies like Venus thus extracting but not spending LOTS of energy ... This energy shall be used for the chemical transformations, volatiles export and other planetary engineering works.

Or constantly to deflect much of the excessive solar energy falling on bodies too close to their host star as the newly found earth-like extrasolar planet ( http://www.spacedaily.com/news/extrasol … -05ze.html ) -- keeping their environment human-friendly cool, and the excess constantly turned into industrial energy and amat reserve... ( The excessive gravity of 1.5-2.5 gees, could be easily canceled via elevating new "floor" on 1 gee level ).

CanalBuilder · 2005-06-21 07:02:23

Just wondering, but does anyone know how much antimatter has been produced globally?

Earthfirst · 2005-06-21 12:27:27

Large impacts could be a way to cause born again planets. Small planets like mars, earths moon, and other moons. Lost their heat hast due their smaller masses, surface areas, and smaller radiao active core to provived heat. When you heat a planet you bring it back to life, you use the heat to make anti mater a great fuel. While you speed up cooling the surface so that it is solid again. Better than just letting heat seep into space.
Making earth massed planets from comets would work great, though you have a lot of excess water, the planets would be gobal oceans with mantles of water ice and NH3. The lower mantal would be rork and the core would be ligiuid iron and a center core of heavey metals. Large mires in orbit could the planet with sunlight, or geothermal energy, and micro wave tarnsmitters could beam the energy the mire, whear the micro wave would turned into light to the planet.
Or a artifical sun powered antimatter, or a mini sun of D-D fusion of hyrogen about the size of are moon in orbit around the planet. With all that water you could get the need mass of D hyrogen. On such a planet the church is right the sun does orbit their world.

karov · 2005-06-22 04:31:29

Just wondering, but does anyone know how much antimatter has been produced globally?

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penning_tr … nning_trap

http://yarchive.net/space/exotic/antima … orage.html

http://www.matter-antimatter.com/antima … torage.htm

http://64.233.183.104/search?]http://64 … 104/search?
q=cache:x2SnGZ17JjsJ:www.rpi.edu/~kollap/Antimatter.pdf+antimatter+storage+perspective&hl=bg

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:rD … ...d&hl=bg

karov · 2005-06-22 04:34:21

Oops! The production:

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:rD … ...d&hl=bg

karov · 2005-06-22 05:40:12

Large impacts could be a way to cause born again planets. Small planets like mars, earths moon, and other moons. Lost their heat hast due their smaller masses, surface areas, and smaller radiao active core to provived heat. When you heat a planet you bring it back to life, you use the heat to make anti mater a great fuel. While you speed up cooling the surface so that it is solid again. Better than just letting heat seep into space.
Making earth massed planets from comets would work great, though you have a lot of excess water, the planets would be gobal oceans with mantles of water ice and NH3. The lower mantal would be rork and the core would be ligiuid iron and a center core of heavey metals. Large mires in orbit could the planet with sunlight, or geothermal energy, and micro wave tarnsmitters could beam the energy the mire, whear the micro wave would turned into light to the planet.
Or a artifical sun powered antimatter, or a mini sun of D-D fusion of hyrogen about the size of are moon in orbit around the planet. With all that water you could get the need mass of D hyrogen. On such a planet the church is right the sun does orbit their world.

Yes, like in the very early days of the SolSys:

1. Wetting Mars via merger with Europa or Calisto: http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/lar … ...10.html

In "Imperial Earth" A.Clarke supposed that the dwellers of Titan, would like to merge some day the rest of the smaller but big enough to be round statelites of Saturn in order after the impacts to have better, more handable and warmer and more geologically active places to deal with.

Pluto recombined with Haron will give us much better site. Or the posted link to bomb Triton with the conveniently counterrotating Nereid. Deorbiting the Moon to Earth ( regard it as giant hydroelectric waterdam) will give us about 10exp30 J and it is not necesary to be done in cathastrophic manner, but incrementally as slower as necesarry...

Like the forming of the Earth-Moon or Pluto-Charon system...

Recombining the masses ( + the orbital motion energy) in new objects is the way to have warmer-wetter places to colonize.

This way we could colonize even interstellar bodies - merging bodies billions of kilometers apart will give us the whole energy to terraform ( + later: artificial - deuterium suns or concentrated light - soletaS` illumination) even lunar or martian size bodies several light years away from any fusor/star... We could harness the hyperdynamo of the pulsars to provide with biocompatible form and quantity of energy their second-generation planets AND BIGGER HABITATS...

The trik is the colision to release less energy than the gravitational binding energy of the system target-impactor in order the bidoes to merge in signle body, not to be scattered in pieces. Using slower deposition techniques ( like the mentioned use of orbital lifts to dump down the materials) is better when you create a planemo from scratch using dust or cometary pieces. Then the geothermal heat would be much more modest coming only from secondary gravitational contraction, chemical differentiation, radioactive decay, etc.
=========================================

2. About the icy crusts of the newly formed from cometary material big planets - no problem: Keep the ice crust solid, cover it with foamed rock and other termal insulating materials and nest on top normal ~300 K warm environment - like giant terraformed iceberg... Warm-cold-warm-hot the layers from top to the bottom. Leave openings and enjoy oceans hundreds of km deep if you like.
==================================

3. And DEFFINITELY to pass the excess heat of some planetary crust or atmosphere through kinda heat machines to utilize the extra energy, which presence is an obsticle to your attempts for colonization is the best way, than simply to dissipate it uselessly in space. ( The same way one could utilize the vast energy stockpile comming from the of-axial rotation of the magfields of planets like Jupiter and just POURING Io and Europa with deadly particle radiation levels - to turn it in huge industrial/terraformal sourse and simultaneously to cansel the radiation hazard -- When you have something in harmfull excess - just turn it in usefull form. If comes too fast, condense it in storable form).

For example the total mass of the Venusian atmosphere is 4.8 x 10 exp20 kg or about 10exp22 moles, with average temperature of about 750 K. That means the average speed for CO2 molecule is about 650 m/s in 750 K - the speed of one CO2 molecule is about 250 m/s in ~100 K temperature, the last is reasonable temperature of the Carnot`s heat machine heat sink. The total energy which we conservativelly could extract from active cooling the Venusian atmosphere to about 100 K ( behind a planetary sunshade presumably) is 10exp22 moles x 6.23 x 10 exp 23 molecules x the kinethic energy change of a single CO2 molecule from 650 to 250 m/s squared divided on two... One CO2 molecule has mass of 73 x 10exp(-27) kg.

This is roughly 455 x 10exp18 J of usefull thermal energy. Equal to the energy of anihilation of 5000 kg of matter/antimatter, or to all the energy consumed by the world in 2001...

The "geo"thermal or atmothermal stockpiles are small compared with the kinethic gravitational energy, but in shear amount are not for neglecting.

karov · 2005-06-22 05:49:57

... and about Venus the figures should be multiplied on 200 times the upper 2500 kg of antimatter produced out of the excess heat, to include into the account the necesarry cooling of the upmost at least 100 meter thick layer of rock to ~300 K...

Earthfirst · 2005-06-22 08:41:19

Using heat engines to venus down would work great. But as the planet cools down the % effeincy would go down due to less difference in temperature. The amount of thermal energy in jupitor must be huge. Temps at the core must be very high, also the amount of D hydrogen in jupitor must be high too. Lots of energy is in that planet just weating to be used.
I would hit calisto into Mars rather than Europa because europas if has oceans would be a good place to seetle in for life.

CanalBuilder · 2005-06-22 10:55:22

I checked out the world's leading producer of anti-matter to see what they said. They confess to creating tens of thousands of anti-hydrogen atoms. So that is, in effect, zero anti-matter production.

After Dan Brown's books "Angels and Demons" they've produced a website whcih explains that this work of fiction is a work of fiction. It also explains briefly why anti-matter con not be used as an energy source.

Their words are at http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Conten … ...en.html on the internet, which they invented.

karov · 2005-06-27 23:49:28

Yes, it is hard to produce and store antimatter -- but the article should be regarded also much in its political and mass consciousness forming sence.

See:
http://www.engr.psu.edu/antimatter/Pape … A_anti.pdf

"The current antimatter production rate is between 1 and 10 nanograms per year, and this is expected to increase dramatically with new facilities at CERN and Fermilab. With current technology, it is considered possible to attain antimatter for $25 billion per gram (roughly 1,000 times more costly than current space shuttle propellants) by optimizing the collision and collection parameters, given current electricity generation costs. Antimatter production costs, in mass production, are almost linearly tied in with electricity costs, so economical pure-antimatter thrust applications are unlikely to come online without the advent of such technologies as deuterium-deuterium fusion power." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter … Antimatter

and

"Dr. Robert Forward has shown, based on his findings in a study of antimatter production, that if a dedicated antimatter factory were built now, it could be approximately 6000 times more efficient than Fermilab's and CERN's antimatter production facilities (bringing it up to a grand 0.01% efficiency). The theoretical maximum efficiency for antimatter production is 50% (it is not 100% because every production of an antiparticle is accompanied by the production of its normal-matter twin), so there is even more room for improvement." from http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/213.web.stu … ...re.html

So, now we have efficiency of electricity utilisation in antimatter production as low as 0.00017 % and the cost is 1000 times more compared with the available energy density in one fill of Shuttle chemical fuels.

After building dedicated antimatter factory ( with the existing technology) and according to Robert Forward the efficiency is 6000 times higher, the cost of the antimatter will beat the chemicals costs 6 times -- and this is at efficiency of only 0.01%

The theoretical maximum is of course 100% counting in the normal matter counterpart byproduct...

Summary of the potential antimatter production methods:
" Current antiproton production techniques rely on high-energy collisions between beam particles and target nuclei to produce particle and antiparticle pairs, but inherently low production and capture efficiencies render these techniques impractical for the cost-effective production of antimatter for space propulsion and other commercial applications. Based on Dirac's theory of the vacuum field, a new antimatter production concept is proposed in which particle-antiparticle pairs are created at the boundary of a steep potential step formed by the suppression of the local vacuum fields. Current antimatter production techniques are reviewed, followed by a description of Dirac's relativistic quantum theory of the vacuum state and corresponding solutions for particle tunneling and reflection from a potential barrier. The use of the Casimir effect to suppress local vacuum fields is presented as a possible technique for generating the sharp potential gradients required for particle-antiparticle pair creation." from http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=2& … ...&q=http

So, there is LOOOOOTS of room for improvement, as you see entirely new methods are proposed and shown...

...and storage - http://www.hbartech.com/niac_sail1_fina … _final.pdf

RickSmith · 2007-03-04 00:05:40

Hi everyone.
Interesting links Karov, thanks.

One way of getting radioactives / antimatter deep into Mars is to make a teardrop shaped container out of tungsten (which has a melting point well above that of rock).

Bury it deep, pack some insulation above it, and have the fission or antimatter reaction heat it above the temperature of rock but below the tungsten's melting point. As the rock melts it settles (gaining a bit potential energy). It's a little heat pill aimed at the core. You likely would get a mini volcano erupting magma and gasses especially if you use the same hole for several of these things.

If you used antimatter, you would want to have some system to slowly leak it so things remain at the right temperature. But that should not be a deal breaker.

Warm regards, Rick.

samy · 2007-03-08 17:59:49

Does the rock's melting point not go up as you go deeper? As a function of the pressure? Will the rock's melting point always be lower than the tungsten container's?

RickSmith · 2007-03-10 14:39:32

Hi Samy.
Good question. I do not have the state diagrams for Tungsten at various temperatures and pressures. However Tungsten has a very high melting point 3422 K where as most rock (basalt) melts around 1475 K. It also has a very high density: 19.3 g/cm^3, where as basalt typically 3.011 g/cm^3. (I picked basalt as more typical of mantle rocks than most common rocks.)

In fact, the melting temperature for Basalt may be too high. In the mantle there are mixtures of minerals which tend to lower the melting points.

It seems to me likely that the tungsten 'power pellet' could be kept below its own melting point but high enough that it could melt (or at least soften) the rock around it. Another question is how quickly the heat would be carried away. If it is a smart power pellet it would watch its own skin temperature and dial back the heat producers as the temperature gets close to tungsten's melting point under local conditions.

But the short answer is that I don't know. I GUESS that it would be able to get pretty deep.

Warm regards, Rick

RickSmith · 2008-02-10 16:50:18

Hi everyone.
My interest is in near future terraforming but I thought of another way to heat up the Martian guts that is a far, FAR future possibility.

Either make neutronium (impossible now) or a Boise Einstein condensate out of Lithium (possible now). Neutronium is unstable unless you get sun sized masses and the B-E condensate is unstable at high temperatures (tho as it gets more massive it becomes more stable).

Make either of them the mass of a small mountain.

Wrap them in a package to keep them safe. Perhaps a diamond cage wrapped inside a tungsten teardrop. (Impossible with current technology.) Call these packages, 'volcano pills'.

Drop on ground where you want a volcano.

Massing the size of a mountain but only a couple meters across, they crush the ground beneath them and sink into the ground. As they sink they release potential energy that turns into heat. Hopefully they will last long enough to reach the area of the core. Will they rip thru the bottom of our hyper strong cage because of friction of the rock? Preventing this is left as an exercise for the student.

Design them so that by the time they reach the core, they break down. This will be in the form of a powerful explosion heating the core. If a volcano pill, turns back into lithium, the iron / nickel is more dense and so it will sink forcing the lithium upwards. As the denser iron sinks it releases potential energy creating heat.

You might wonder why we are getting potential energy twice here. Basically a huge amount of energy was stored in the hyper dense material, and it is released at the core of the planet. Forcing a less dense material under the iron takes energy. Basically, it takes energy to compress a substance and we are getting that energy back. The point of this is it forces the heat, deep inside the planet.

The fractured trail of broken rock left behind will make an easy place for volcanoes to erupt.

Drop a few thousand of these volcano pills in an area and I think that it would be likely to increase the temperature of the core, drive out volatiles making the air thicker and create lava flows where you want them.

If the B-E condensate is very unstable, we might have to drop them from orbit to get them deep enough, quickly enough, to do useful work. Since they are much easier to build in zero gee, this might make the whole process easier all the way around.

To repeat, this is WAY beyond our technology. It may be flatly impossible (depends on the stability of these hyper dense materials). But I've never seen the suggestion before and I think that theoretically it should be possible.

Warm regards, Rick.

qraal · 2008-02-11 04:32:14

Hi All

These discussions always seem to turn into a game of "who can tell the biggest whopper"...

To get to the core we want something heavy, but abundant - the recent suggestion of 100,000 tons of molten iron was pretty good. Should melt and shove its way to the core quite well, perhaps even more so on Mars or the Moon.

As for re-energising the Core, just how much heat do we want to add? Suppose we gather a massive deuterium bomb together, wrapped in something nice and explosive - but stable until we get up to ~ 10 GPa pressure. Then set it off - the high ambient pressure would help start and sustain the deuterium fusion, and the deuterium reaction produces a neutron and helium-3, thus heating the iron core via neutron absorption.

As for energy on Venus, the average temperature is more like ~ 630 K when you integrate over the whole of the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide's heat capacity changes substantially over the temperature range of Venus' atmosphere, but roughly 500 GJ per sq. metre is stored in it. That's 2.3 x 10^26 J total, much of which is extractable if we shade the planet. Most would be released in the early phases of cooling, at higher temperatures. If we made the atmosphere over-turn rapidly the energy could be captured via a global thermovoltaic collector. Roughly 2.3 billion kg energy equivalent in extreme, half that with collection system losses.

For comparison Earth's rotational energy is 4.26 x 10^29 J (4.73 trillion kg energy), while it's orbital energy is 2.65 x 10^33 J (29.4 quadrillion kg energy.) Earth's binding energy is roughly ~ 75 MJ per kg (over 4.4 x 10^32 J) - about twice the homogeneous mass binding energy because of the dense core.

As for making antimatter, very intense lasers can cause pair-production, which could be separated via intense magnetic fields. According to one review article I read the researchers aren't far off the energy density needed for electron/positron production, though that's 3 orders of magnitude short of making proton/anti-proton mixes. Positrons would be handy for all sorts of things, including igniting big fusion bombs...

nickname · 2008-02-11 10:21:31

How about Ceres in a retrograde very elliptical orbit at Mars?
The tidal flexing from such a large body should heat the core of Mars.

Ceres in that orbit becomes a water world making it easy to terra form Mars.

What a project it would be to move Ceres to Mars though and make sure it's 100% in the correct place for the correct orbit.

qraal · 2008-02-11 16:56:04

Hi All

Reaction mass? The ice of course, which might substantially dehydrate the place to get it into a Mars orbit.

How about Ceres in a retrograde very elliptical orbit at Mars?
What a project it would be to move Ceres to Mars though and make sure it's 100% in the correct place for the correct orbit.

Would take many, many years. Imagine first dropping the periapsis of Ceres to roughly Mars' orbit, then bringing its apoapsis in closer to Mars' orbit, then probably walking its orbit around until Ceres is in Mars' Hill Sphere, then finally lowering it into the desired orbit. Could be a tough exercise indeed.

nickname · 2008-02-11 19:54:57

qraal,

Hey interesting idea on how to move Ceres.
How about a steam rocket at Ceres ?.
That is a pretty low tech power small option.

I was picturing all the steps you would need to get Ceres to Mars orbit.
Not impossible to do, but i think you are right about it being a long term project.

I think the last little bit as we get real close to Mars would make for two wobbly places as the gravity starts to react on each other unevenly.

We might even be able to use that to move Mars and Ceres towards the sun a bit more.

The view from Mars would be pretty interesting as Ceres approaches.

qraal · 2008-02-13 02:51:17

Hi nickname

Steam is a very tricky reaction mass, but with so much ice it makes sense. Using a nuclear reactor to do the job is probably insufficient. The delta-v would be too low with reasonable reactor core temperatures.

Perhaps a very large Bussard fusor blasting water into plasma. About 60 km/s exhaust velocity. Jet power would be ~ 30kW per Newton. How many Newtons though? Say we want to accelerate Ceres at ~ 1.0E-6 m/s^2, thus with 9.5E+20 kg of Ceres to push we need a rocket putting out 9.5E+14 Newtons, with a total jet-power of 28.5 exaWatts. Assuming 100% efficiency we want to fuse about ~ 95 tons of Deuterium+Helium-3 per second.

Of course a very high powered solar-beam could produce the energy, though I'm not sure anyone would want a solar laser that powerful shining across so many AU of space from near the Sun. At Ceres orbit a solar power collector would need to be over 500,000 km in diameter to supply that much power.

qraal,
Hey interesting idea on how to move Ceres.
How about a steam rocket at Ceres ?.
The view from Mars would be pretty interesting as Ceres approaches.

As for that view... hair-raising!

nickname · 2008-02-13 15:31:06

qraal,

The numbers to move Ceres are just scary.

I did see an interesting article about altering the spin rate of planets, i thought it was really out of the box idea that might do the trick on Ceres.
Wish i could find the article again.

Basically the idea was a mag launcher fired on an angle that put material nearly into a stable orbit of a planet,
As the impactors return with a very low angle on the other side of the planet they impart much more forward velocity to the planet increasing the spin.

Wonder if you could tweak that idea a bit to move planets.?
Altering the way and the when we de orbit and launch material should give us a small gravitational tug in one direction.
Sure would make a mess out of the object you are trying to move and the power needed would be astronomical.

nickname · 2008-02-20 09:52:55

A little more thought on the mag launcher for a different use.

Using a mag launcher on one side of Mars we could place as many impactors as we like in one spot on the other side of the planet.

The escape velocities on Mars should allow for a mag launcher to get mass into temporary predictable orbits and de orbits.

Not only would this eventually re start the core, it would release masses of gas from the constant impacts helping to thicken the atmosphere.

If we had a polar impact site we would get the best of both at once since the constant impact heat will melt a large area of that pole.
If we use ice from the other pole as the impact mass we really accelerate the atmosphere thickening process.

RickSmith · 2008-02-20 22:08:41

qraal,
Basically the idea was a mag launcher fired on an angle that put material nearly into a stable orbit of a planet,
As the impactors return with a very low angle on the other side of the planet they impart much more forward velocity to the planet increasing the spin.

Hi Nickname,
This won't work.

The launcher is sitting at the equator and launches east. The momentum is conserved so while the projectile (light) is moving east very fast, the planet (heavy) rotates a little faster west. When the particle reaches the other side of the planet the projectile crashes and slows down and the planet regains its angular momentum and speeds up. Net result, zero.

However the the particle was fired off at above the escape velocity, the planet would speed up to counter balance the torque supplies by the escaping matter.

Perhaps speculations on spinning Ceres could be moved to the Ceres thread? It is easier to find posts if they stay on topic.

Warm regards, Rick.

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#1 2005-05-22 03:30:12

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#2 2005-06-20 13:18:42

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#3 2005-06-21 01:25:21

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#4 2005-06-21 02:49:17

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#5 2005-06-21 07:02:23

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#6 2005-06-21 12:27:27

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#7 2005-06-22 04:31:29

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#8 2005-06-22 04:34:21

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#9 2005-06-22 05:40:12

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#10 2005-06-22 05:49:57

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#11 2005-06-22 08:41:19

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#12 2005-06-22 10:55:22

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#13 2005-06-27 23:49:28

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#14 2007-03-04 00:05:40

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#15 2007-03-08 17:59:49

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#16 2007-03-10 14:39:32

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#17 2008-02-10 16:50:18

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#18 2008-02-11 04:32:14

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#19 2008-02-11 10:21:31

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#20 2008-02-11 16:56:04

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#21 2008-02-11 19:54:57

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#22 2008-02-13 02:51:17

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#23 2008-02-13 15:31:06

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#24 2008-02-20 09:52:55

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

#25 2008-02-20 22:08:41

Re: Antimater core deposition - - re-heating the martian guts

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