hydrogen/chemical rockets are extremely wasteful

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nec208

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To make 1 gramme of Anti-matter would cost the entire GDP of every nation on the planet, it is the most expensive substance known to mankind at this time.

Storing it is irrelevant if you can't afford to make it in the first place!


Where is your source? Do you not know they are smashing atoms and doing experiments every day?

The particle accelerators would cost too much to do experiments that no experiments would be done.
 
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Valcan

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nec208":2063p6qm said:
To make 1 gramme of Anti-matter would cost the entire GDP of every nation on the planet, it is the most expensive substance known to mankind at this time.

Storing it is irrelevant if you can't afford to make it in the first place!
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Dont think it would cost THAT much however it is very costly. Also storring it is a problem when you consider how volitile it is. When you think that a good bit of the stuff would destroy every inch of say chicogo or some other city who wants it there
 
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rubicondsrv

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nec208":e3ttlf6d said:
To make 1 gramme of Anti-matter would cost the entire GDP of every nation on the planet, it is the most expensive substance known to mankind at this time.

Storing it is irrelevant if you can't afford to make it in the first place!


Where is your source? Do you not know they are smashing atoms and doing experiments every day?

The particle accelerators would cost too much to do experiments that no experiments would be done.

making the antimatter isnt the problem.........storing it is......
 
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Ruri

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For near term chemical rockets or air breathing chemical engines like SABRE and scramjets will probably be the only viable means to get off the planet.
But a lot can be done to make them cheaper as fuel is not even 1% of the present cost of getting into space.
RLVs would be a game changer just re flying the hardware and flying it ten times more often could cut costs by 90%.

NTRs and VASIMR can revolutionize the LEO up part of space travel by eliminating the need for large disposable chemical stages like the Ares EDS.
 
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nec208

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Once again we have demonstrated the fact there is nothing so invincible as willful ignorance

Explain what I got wrong or do not understand than call names here.When I'm first year kid in collage taking Physics than you do that when I get it wrong or do not understand some thing.
 
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EarthlingX

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This is how antimatter is stored, if that helps :

cerncourier.com : Keeping antihydrogen: the ALPHA trap
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Suppose, as the villain of a story, you absolutely needed to transport a macroscopic amount of antimatter, for whatever sinister purpose. How would you go about it and could you smuggle it, for example, into the Vatican catacombs? The truth is that we will probably never have a macroscopic amount of antimatter for such a scenario to ever become reality.
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So let’s look at what is possible in experiments with antimatter today, leaving the speculation to aficionados of sci-fi and NASA. If you wanted to take antimatter to the offices of your national funding agency, you might consider taking some antiprotons, since most of the mass-energy of an antihydrogen atom is in the nucleus. This might be tempting, since our charged-particle traps are certainly deeper than those for neutral matter or antimatter. ATRAP and ALPHA initially capture antiprotons in traps with depths of a few kilo-electron-volts, corresponding to tens of millions of kelvin. But, density is an issue. A good charged-particle trap for cold positrons has a particle density of about 10[super]9[/super] cm[super]–3[/super]. Antiproton density is much smaller, but we’ll be optimistic and use this number. So to transport a milligram of antiprotons – of the order of 10[super]21[/super] particles – you would need a trap volume of 10[super]12[/super] cm[super]3[/super], or 10[super]6[/super] m[super]3[/super]. That means a cube 100 m wide, which will not fit in your luggage. Incidentally, a milligram of antimatter, annihilating on matter, would yield an energy equivalent to about 50 tonnes of TNT.

So, what about transporting some neutral antimatter? Neutral atom traps certainly have higher densities. The first BEC result for hydrogen at MIT reported a density in the order of 10[super]15[/super] cm[super]–3[/super] for about 10[super]9[/super] atoms in the condensate. This is better, but still far less than a milligram, even if you can get the atoms from a gas bottle. The size of the trap is now down to 10[super]5[/super] cm[super]3[/super], which is more manageable. Note, however, that the BEC transition in this experiment was at 50 μK – far below the 4.2 K that we hope to achieve with antihydrogen. Unfortunately, to get really cold and dense atomic hydrogen requires using evaporative cooling – throwing hot atoms away to cool the remaining ones in the trap. This implies damaging your lab before you send the surviving, trapped anti-atoms to their final, cataclysmic fate. And don’t forget that the total history of antiproton production here on Earth amounts to perhaps a few tens of nanograms in the past 25 years or so. Unfortunately, the antiproton production cross-section is unlikely to change.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sqYh8puZ-I[/youtube]
 
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MeteorWayne

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Try reading it:

"Unfortunately, to get really cold and dense atomic hydrogen requires using evaporative cooling – throwing hot atoms away to cool the remaining ones in the trap. This implies damaging your lab before you send the surviving, trapped anti-atoms to their final, cataclysmic fate. And don’t forget that the total history of antiproton production here on Earth amounts to perhaps a few tens of nanograms in the past 25 years or so."
 
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nec208

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The article is irrelevant anti-matter is very hard to make you have to smash atoms at high speed and it only is for second or so the anti-matter and is gone and no one knows how to store it.

It is very costly and even if in 50 or 100 years we can make anti-matter very cheap and can store it and use it like fuel well it will be banned in earth thus it can only be used for deep space .Has size of rock would destory all of New York city.No one will take that chance.

The space elevator or laser propulsion is more probable to bring the cost of space down and access to space in 50 or 100 years .

Well fusion or fission will work but it be more costly and the rocket will have to be very very very very big for the core and shielding thus it will not increase payload by much if not at all.
 
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markododa

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If you create a reusable vehicle that uses LOX/LH2 fuel produced with electrolysis then you don't waste much, since most of the exaust vapor will form clouds and eventually rain down. For example you could use cheap power from nuclear reactors solar power sats or ground solar stations to fuel a fleet of reusable rockets that would with time lower the cost of supporting the fleet to about the same as airplanes today.
 
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EarthlingX

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nec208":3tstal4v said:
The article is irrelevant anti-matter is very hard to make you have to smash atoms at high speed and it only is for second or so the anti-matter and is gone and no one knows how to store it.
The article is very relevant, because it explains how antimatter was stored for the first time, from people who know how to do it and who did it.

Here's another article about it, perhaps more understandable ?

www.newscientist.com : Antihydrogen trapped at long last
17 November 2010

by Kate McAlpine

ATOMS made of antimatter have been trapped for the first time, a feat that will allow us to test whether antimatter responds to the fundamental forces in the same way as regular matter.
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MeteorWayne

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But as the article says, a few ATOMS of antihydrogen have been created and stored for a short while. That's really irrelevant as far as nbeing used as a propellant source.

For example, how much mass is used in the containment structure vs how much thrust can be produced (for a few seconds, and of course, you can't move the atoms from one place to another)
 
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nec208

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MeteorWayne":1nrr97a9 said:
But as the article says, a few ATOMS of antihydrogen have been created and stored for a short while. That's really irrelevant as far as nbeing used as a propellant source.

For example, how much mass is used in the containment structure vs how much thrust can be produced (for a few seconds, and of course, you can't move the atoms from one place to another)

So some how your posts seem to be very pro-anti-matter.I'm just more pessimistic here.
 
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MeteorWayne

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You are not reading my posts correctly, which I thought were quite clear. Antimatter is not a viable propulsion source for centuries at best. If we had managed to save every atom (and even positron and antiproton) of antimatter ever created on earth, store it, and create energy out of it with 100% efficiency, it wouldn't move the spacecraft required even a picometer.
 
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nec208

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MeteorWayne":3cmlb2so said:
You are not reading my posts correctly, which I thought were quite clear. Antimatter is not a viable propulsion source for centuries at best. If we had managed to save every atom (and even positron and antiproton) of antimatter ever created on earth, store it, and create energy out of it with 100% efficiency, it wouldn't move the spacecraft required even a picometer.

Yes the anti-matter they have is way too small and it is gone very fast .They would have to have lots and lots of anti-matter and store it in some kind of container.

But even than it would be banned has a propulsion close to earth , This leads to only laser propulsion or fission has option to take stuff up into space .But they have problems too.

I would think the core and shielding would make it very big fission so payload would be more of problem with fission than chemical propulsion .And people freak out with fission in power station so fission to get up into space people would freak out more.

And well laser propulsion needs gigawatt power well find for the ground if it shines laser beam to the craft well NOT for craft if it shines a laser beam you will need floating power station.there is different types of Laser propulsion . one type people at the ground shine a laser beam to the craft to get it to go up , other type the craft shines a laser beam that heats up the air and the craft goes up.

The last type is pulse laser the craft rides on pulse of the laser going on and off very fast.

Well it is very costly and also 300 feet is the highest we got a craft to go up using laser propulsion.

So if the craft use laser propulsion or pulse laser it be big problem you will need a floating power station.The only laser propulsion will work is ground propulsion .
 
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scottb50

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nec208":nfyrtfj3 said:
MeteorWayne":nfyrtfj3 said:
You are not reading my posts correctly, which I thought were quite clear. Antimatter is not a viable propulsion source for centuries at best. If we had managed to save every atom (and even positron and antiproton) of antimatter ever created on earth, store it, and create energy out of it with 100% efficiency, it wouldn't move the spacecraft required even a picometer.

Chemical rockets are less effective the bigger the rocket, Hydrogen rockets or more efficient and can be transported universally as water, or ice. Even small motors can use Hydrogen more efficiently than any chemical rocket.

Even considering anti-matter is way off target, we have to get there first.
 
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