alt Hacker NewsNot familiar with the subject so genuine question. HOW would antimatter be used as fuel? There is energy released in matter antimatter annihilation, but where would the force to move a spacecraft come from?
Replies
daveguy • today at 5:24 PM
The always excellent PBS Space Time recently did an episode on antimatter drives:
goda90 • today at 5:04 PM
Use the antimatter as an electricity source to power ion thrusters, maybe?
BiraIgnacio • today at 5:29 PM
my absolutely-non-expert guess is that it would work much like any other fuel? Combine with matter, get a lot of head out of it and use that in the best way we know.
> Various antiproton-powered rocket systems have been proposed. All of which rely on the particles released to supply direct thrust or to heat a working fluid by interparticle collisions or by heating a solid core first [14]. There is also the possibility to use the heated working fluid to generate electricity for electric propulsion systems [14].
> Following Fig. 9, beam core and plasma core configurations can produce direct thrust by directing the charged particles produced into an exhaust beam using a magnetic nozzle. Gas core systems use the energy released from the reaction to heat a gas that is exhausted for thrust. Finally, solid core configuration heats a metal core like Tungsten that acts as a heat exchanger to a propellant that is then exhausted from a regular nozzle.
Not the same paper, but goes into more detail.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266620272...