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barrykirk
Guest
Not sure if this post belongs in Freespace or here.<br /><br />Anyway, the biggest obstacle to antimatter based rockets at this point from what I understand is the lack of a good source of antimatter.<br /><br />Just a couple of questions here pointed towards when do people think antimatter based rockets would be feasible.<br /><br />1) What research is being done towards developing antimatter production and storage facilities? Do we expect to have usable amounts of it within 20 years, 50 years, 100 years?<br /><br />2) What research is being done towards developing an antimatter based rocket engine? What do people think it would look like? What kind of thrust levels could be expected? And what kind of ISP could be expected?<br /><br />Yes, I know that with antimatter you could theoretically have a pure photon exhaust for really good ISP, but that would probably be a low thrust option for deep space operation.<br /><br />I'm talking about rockets that can go from the surface to LEO.<br /><br />Just throwing this out.