🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C0IB07.BBL@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>
>Reality check right back at you:  plot human antimatter production capacity
>versus time.  Interesting graph, no?  Sure, it's limited right now... but
>it's growing fast.

This was talked about in a recent issue of Scientific American.  Really
neat stuff.

>
>If we mounted a major effort, we could probably be test-firing antimatter
>rocket engines within ten years.  There are *NO* fundamental barriers that
>anyone has been able to find.  It's purely a matter of scaling up and
>optimizing the hardware -- the existing accelerators are optimized for
>production of Nobel prizes, not bulk antimatter -- and solving assorted
>straightforward engineering problems of handling and storage.  The idea
>has been investigated in depth; no show-stoppers have appeared.
>
>A production setup the size of the Hanford works could make enough
>antimatter to open up the solar system.  Interstellar propulsion is
>harder.  Kilogram quantities are probably going to have to be made in
>space, not so much for handling reasons (although those aren't trivial)
>as because of the sheer amounts of *energy* needed.  It would be a huge
>project, but there's no fundamental problem; we could start designing
>hardware tomorrow if it were urgent enough.

Sounds good to me!

--
Dave Michelson
davem@ee.ubc.ca