Here is a little more about the pion rocket. There is also a 20,000
pound tank containing the 100,000 pounds of ordinary hydrogen
to mix with antimatter in the form of antihydrogen, This pion rockets
useful
payload is 20,000 pounds.To get more useful payload the pion rocket must
be scaled up. A 600,000 pound pion rocket could carry 40,000 pounds of
useful
payload and accelerate it to 72 percent of light speed in a year. A
6000,000
pound pion rocket could carry 400,000 pounds of useful payload.. The
antihydrogen is stored in the magnetic bottles in the form of
antihydrogen ice. The antihydrogen is zapped by a low power uv laser to
vaporize it a little bit at a time, and ionize it.
Electrostatic repulsion of the negatively charged anti protons causes
them to enter
a superconducting magnetic vacume line which takes them to the
antimatter-matter
mixing chamber in the pion engine. Liquid helium cooling jackets are
used to supercool the magnetic engine, the magnetic mixing chamber, the
magnetic antimatter storage bottles, and the magnetic vacume lines..
The vehicle frame, magnetic nozzle, engine, magnetic vacume lines,
matter-antimattermixing chamber, and magnetic storage bottles are made
of steel.
The rest of the vehicle is made mostly of aluminium metal. There is also
a steel radiation shield around the antimatter-matter annhilation engine
which is part of the 20,000
pound pion engine weight.
Timothy J. Mayes