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Posted by baalke on April 17, 2006, 12:59 pm
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http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/mmb/antimatter_spaceship.html
New and Improved Antimatter Spaceship for Mars Missions
Bill Steigerwald
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
April 14, 2006
Most self-respecting starships in science fiction stories use
antimatter
as fuel for a good reason - it's the most potent fuel known. While tons
of chemical fuel are needed to propel a human mission to Mars, just
tens
of milligrams of antimatter will do (a milligram is about
one-thousandth
the weight of a piece of the original M&M candy).
However, in reality this power comes with a price. Some antimatter
reactions produce blasts of high energy gamma rays.
Gamma rays are like X-rays on steroids. They penetrate matter and break
apart molecules in cells, so they are not healthy to be around.
High-energy gamma rays can also make the engines radioactive by
fragmenting atoms of the engine material.
The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is
funding a team of researchers working on a new design for an
antimatter-powered spaceship that avoids this nasty side effect by
producing gamma rays with much lower energy.
Antimatter is sometimes called the mirror image of normal matter
because
while it looks just like ordinary matter, some properties are reversed.
For example, normal electrons, the familiar particles that carry
electric current in everything from cell phones to plasma TVs, have a
negative electric charge. Anti-electrons have a positive charge, so
scientists dubbed them "positrons".
When antimatter meets matter, both annihilate in a flash of energy.
This
complete conversion to energy is what makes antimatter so powerful.
Even
the nuclear reactions that power atomic bombs come in a distant second,
with only about three percent of their mass converted to energy.
Previous antimatter-powered spaceship designs employed antiprotons,
which produce high-energy gamma rays when they annihilate. The new
design will use positrons, which make gamma rays with about 400 times
less energy.
The NIAC research is a preliminary study to see if the idea is
feasible.
If it looks promising, and funds are available to successfully develop
the technology, a positron-powered spaceship would have a couple
advantages over the existing plans for a human mission to Mars, called
the Mars Reference Mission.
"The most significant advantage is more safety," said Dr. Gerald Smith
of Positronics Research, LLC, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The current
Reference Mission calls for a nuclear reactor to propel the spaceship
to
Mars. This is desirable because nuclear propulsion reduces travel time
to
Mars, increasing safety for the crew by reducing their exposure to
cosmic
rays. Also, a chemically-powered spacecraft weighs much more and costs
a
lot more to launch. The reactor also provides ample power for the
three-year mission. But nuclear reactors are complex, so more things
could
potentially go wrong during the mission. "However, the positron reactor
offers the same advantages but is relatively simple," said Smith, lead
researcher for the NIAC study.
Also, nuclear reactors are radioactive even after their fuel is used
up.
After the ship arrives at Mars, Reference Mission plans are to direct
the reactor into an orbit that will not encounter Earth for at least a
million years, when the residual radiation will be reduced to safe
levels. However, there is no leftover radiation in a positron reactor
after the fuel is used up, so there is no safety concern if the spent
positron reactor should accidentally re-enter Earth's atmosphere,
according to the team.
It will be safer to launch as well. If a rocket carrying a nuclear
reactor explodes, it could release radioactive particles into the
atmosphere. "Our positron spacecraft would release a flash of
gamma-rays
if it exploded, but the gamma rays would be gone in an instant. There
would be no radioactive particles to drift on the wind. The flash would
also be confined to a relatively small area. The danger zone would be
about a kilometer (about a half-mile) around the spacecraft. An
ordinary
large chemically-powered rocket has a danger zone of about the same
size, due to the big fireball that would result from its explosion,"
said Smith.
Another significant advantage is speed. The Reference Mission
spacecraft
would take astronauts to Mars in about 180 days. "Our advanced designs,
like the gas core and the ablative engine concepts, could take
astronauts to Mars in half that time, and perhaps even in as little as
45 days," said Kirby Meyer, an engineer with Positronics Research on
the
study.
Advanced engines do this by running hot, which increases their
efficiency or "specific impulse" (Isp). Isp is the "miles per gallon"
of
rocketry: the higher the Isp, the faster you can go before you use up
your fuel supply. The best chemical rockets, like NASA's Space Shuttle
main engine, max out at around 450 seconds, which means a pound of fuel
will produce a pound of thrust for 450 seconds. A nuclear or positron
reactor can make over 900 seconds. The ablative engine, which slowly
vaporizes itself to produce thrust, could go as high as 5,000 seconds.
One technical challenge to making a positron spacecraft a reality is
the
cost to produce the positrons. Because of its spectacular effect on
normal matter, there is not a lot of antimatter sitting around. In
space, it is created in collisions of high-speed particles called
cosmic
rays. On Earth, it has to be created in particle accelerators, immense
machines that smash atoms together. The machines are normally used to
discover how the universe works on a deep, fundamental level, but they
can be harnessed as antimatter factories.
"A rough estimate to produce the 10 milligrams of positrons needed for
a
human Mars mission is about 250 million dollars using technology that
is
currently under development," said Smith. This cost might seem high,
but
it has to be considered against the extra cost to launch a heavier
chemical rocket (current launch costs are about $10,000 per pound) or
the cost to fuel and make safe a nuclear reactor. "Based on the
experience with nuclear technology, it seems reasonable to expect
positron production cost to go down with more research," added Smith.
Another challenge is storing enough positrons in a small space. Because
they annihilate normal matter, you can't just stuff them in a bottle.
Instead, they have to be contained with electric and magnetic fields.
"We feel confident that with a dedicated research and development
program, these challenges can be overcome," said Smith.
If this is so, perhaps the first humans to reach Mars will arrive in
spaceships powered by the same source that fired starships across the
universes of our science fiction dreams.
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Posted by jack.harrison@gmail.com on April 17, 2006, 2:42 pm
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That was posted 17th April
Did it get stuck in your out tray for 17 days Ron?
Jack
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Posted by N:dlzc D:aol T:com \(dlzc\) on April 17, 2006, 8:03 pm
Please log in for more thread options Dear jack.harrison:
> That was posted 17th April
>
> Did it get stuck in your out tray for 17 days Ron?
Today is either the 17th or the 18th, depending on where in the
world you are...
David A. Smith
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Posted by CeeBee on April 17, 2006, 9:02 pm
Please log in for more thread options sci.astro:
> Dear jack.harrison:
>
>> That was posted 17th April
>>
>> Did it get stuck in your out tray for 17 days Ron?
>
> Today is either the 17th or the 18th, depending on where in the
> world you are...
>
> David A. Smith
Woah. I had the distinct impression that it was Monday, April 34. Jack
wasn't the only misguided soul.
--
CeeBee
*** The Cookie Has Spoken ***
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Posted by George on April 19, 2006, 9:35 am
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> That was posted 17th April
>
> Did it get stuck in your out tray for 17 days Ron?
>
> Jack
That would mean that it is two days old, not 17.
George
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