![]() ![]() Fusion-powered rockets would use hydrogen as propellant and would harvest hydrogen while travelling through space using a large trap like scoop.įusion rocket engines would use magnetic field containment similar to VASIMIR but the reaction chamber in which the plasma is contained would be replaced by a Gas Dynamic Mirror (GDM). ![]() We have yet to develop a nuclear fusion reactor but that hasn’t stopped scientists and engineers from looking at fusion as an energy source for interplanetary and interstellar travel. ![]() The magnetic field would concentrate the antiparticles and then to store them within the mini magnetosphere formed around the spacecraft. An antimatter collection system could employ electric current flowing through one or more rings made from high temperature superconductors. To harvest this antimatter resource researchers have proposed a magnetic trap that would orbit a planet to harvest and contain antiparticles (see image below). And other planets that produce lightning storms and have magnetic fields are probably similarly surrounded by rings of antimatter. Recently discovered by PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-Nuclei Astrophysics), a satellite launched in 2006, it seems our Earth is surrounded by a ring of antimatter particles contained by our magnetic field. And it appears to exist in orbit around the Earth. So how do we harvest antimatter, the proverbial lightning in a bottle? Well short of milking lightning bolts for the antimatter they create, a somewhat difficult endeavour, we need to look elsewhere to where antimatter freely exists. Crew habitation and landers are on the right. The antimatter engine appears on the left. The image above is a proposed design for an antimatter Mars rocket carrying a human crew. To shorten the trip we would need 70 grams of the stuff. The voyage would take 40 years travelling at 10% of the speed of light. With 17 grams of the stuff we could send a robotic spacecraft to our nearest neighbouring star, Alpha Centauri. As little as the equivalent of a grain of rice would be enough to fuel a rocket to Mars and back. And those few nanograms cost a fortune.įortunately we don’t need a lot of antimatter to power a rocket to take us to the far reaches of the Solar System and beyond. Today when we produce antimatter it is in minute amounts, a few nanograms. The big problem with antimatter, however, is how to make it in quantities sufficient to fuel a rocket. A kilogram of the stuff would create energy equal to two billion kilograms of hydrocarbon, or more than one thousand times the energy from a kilogram of plutonium or uranium in a nuclear reactor.ĬERN has demonstrated that antimatter can be contained using magnetic and electrical fields in a similar manner to the plasma technology containment used by the VASIMIR rocket engine. When a gram of antimatter encounters a gram of normal matter they experience mutual destruction and in the process generate as much energy as all of the energy stored in the liquid hydrogen fuel of 23 Space Shuttle external fuel tanks. Most recently scientists at CERN in Switzerland set a new world record by capturing anti-hydrogen atoms and containing them for 16 minutes. The Fermi telescope has recorded free positrons in the form of gamma ray bursts that survived 23 milliseconds before encountering electrons and their destruction. How long does antimatter hang around? Not very. NASA’s orbiting Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope has detected in lightning antimatter that subsequently beamed into space using Earth’s magnetic field as a conduit. In fact, about 10% of particles erupting from lightning are positrons. Where can you find antimatter on Earth?– in terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGF) associated with lightning strikes during thunderstorms. This chart displays subatomic particles and their corresponding antimatter opposites. Every particle of matter has a corresponding particle of antimatter. When the two meet they annihilate each other and release energy. For example a positron is the antimatter equivalent to an electron. But antimatter does exist in the form of subatomic particles with properties opposite to those particles that form matter. What is antimatter? The term comes up in so many episodes of Star Trek and other science fiction TV dramas that you may think it is fantasy rather than fact. Now we will look at technologies that may seem improbable at present, some described in science fiction and some that may become science fact if not in the 21st century, then further in our future. In Part 8 of this blog on space in the 21st century we reviewed current and potential technologies to go beyond the limits imposed by chemical rockets in our quest to reach neighbouring destinations in space. ![]()
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