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starship-design: Re: Lots O Stuff...



Ken wrote:

>>> Even if we're
>>>assuming some pretty amazing technological advances, I find it hard to
>>>imagine storing huge quantities of anti-matter on a ship. I don't know
>>>if this has been discussed already, but I would guess there would be
>>>some sort of theoretical minimum matter/antimatter ratio, just from
>>>containment considerations.  Anyone want to tackle that one?
>
>>A minimum ratio? Why would do you think that?
>
>Given you already have the antimatter, how much can you fit on a ship?
>What IÕm thinking of here is a twofold problem: 1) we have to contain
>the antimatter, and 2) we have to accelerate it with the rest of the
>ship.

Instead of magnetic containment, my thoughts would be to use electric
confinement. That is charge the hydrogen and give the containment walls the
same kind of charge. If there was no decharging, it would need little energy
to maintain.

>I like the 
>photon sphere idea, but my main concern is that for our purposes the 
>photon pressure would probably drive the sphere unstable.  HavenÕt
>looked at any numbers, though...

A rough expression for the pressure could be : U/(4 pi R^3)

So for U=1E24 Joule, and R=1000 metres, one still has pressures that are
much too big.
I'd never done a calculation, the idea of less than 100% reflectivity was
enough to make it unfeasable.

Tim