Matter-antimatter Annihilation Rockets
It is clear on the basis of the above calculations that a relativistic rocket would likely need to be a rocket that is fueled by antimatter. Other antimatter rockets in addition to the photon rocket that can provide a 0.6c specific impulse (studied for basic hydrogen-antihydrogen annihilation, no ionization, no recycling of the radiation) needed for interstellar space flight include the "beam core" pion rocket. In a pion rocket, antimatter is stored inside electromagnetic bottles in the form of frozen antihydrogen. Antihydrogen, like regular hydrogen, is diamagnetic which allows it to be electromagnetically levitated when refrigerated. Temperature control of the storage volume is used to determine the rate of vaporization of the frozen antihydrogen, up to a few grams per second (amounting to several petawatts of power when annihilated with equal amounts of matter). It is then ionized into antiprotons which can be electromagnetically accelerated into the reaction chamber. The positrons are usually discarded since their annihilation only produces harmful gamma rays with negligible effect on thrust. However, non-relativistic rockets may exclusively rely on these gamma rays for propulsion. This process is necessary because un-neutralized antiprotons repel one another, limiting the number that may be stored with current technology to less than a trillion.
Read more about this topic: Relativistic Rocket
Famous quotes containing the words annihilation and/or rockets:
“How can anyone be interested in war?—that glorious pursuit of annihilation with its ceremonious bellowings and trumpetings over the mangling of human bones and muscles and organs and eyes, its inconceivable agonies which could have been prevented by a few well- chosen, reasonable words. How, why, did this unnecessary business begin? Why does anyone want to read about it—this redundant human madness which men accept as inevitable?”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)
“The Thirties dreamed white marble and slipstream chrome, immortal crystal and burnished bronze, but the rockets on the Gernsback pulps had fallen on London in the dead of night, screaming. After the war, everyone had a car—no wings for it—and the promised superhighway to drive it down, so that the sky itself darkened, and the fumes ate the marble and pitted the miracle crystal.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)