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Re: starship-design: antimatter production
> From: jimaclem@juno.com
>
> Check this one out. Their plan is to use antiprotons to catalyze a
> fission/fusion drive for use within the solar system. They have a paper
> on antimatter production, storage and transport.
>
> http://antimatter.phys.psu.edu
>
Yes, that is really exciting.
The general spaceship design resembles that described
by R.L. Forward in "Martian Rainbow".
The exciting information concerns the properties of antiprotons:
when they cool enough, the ratio of annihilation with the residual
gas in the vacuum chamber drops (unexpectedly) very rapidly !
Does it mean that sufficiently cool antimatter
is rather reluctant to annihilate with the normal matter?
If it proves to be true, storage and handling of the antimatter
would be a lot easier (expect tanks with kilograms of antimatter
hauled over interstate highways ... ;-))
-- Zenon