Controlled Antihydrogen Propulsion for NASA’s Future in Very Deep Space

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0410511

From: Michael Martin Nieto [view email]

Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 15:24:57 GMT   (124kb)

To world-wide notice, in 2002 the ATHENA collaboration at CERN (in Geneva,
Switzerland) announced the creation of order 100,000 low energy antihydrogen
atoms. Thus, the concept of using condensed antihydrogen as a low-weight,
powerful fuel (i.e., it produces a thousand times more energy per unit weight
of fuel than fission/fusion) for very deep space missions (the Oort cloud and
beyond) had reached the realm of conceivability. We briefly discuss the history
of antimatter research and focus on the technologies that must be developed to
allow a future use of controlled, condensed antihydrogen for propulsion
purposes. We emphasize that a dedicated antiproton source (the main barrier to
copious antihydrogen production) must be built in the US, perhaps as a joint
NASA/DOE/NIH project. This is because the only practical sources in the world
are at CERN and the proposed facility at GSI in Germany. We outline the scope
and magnitude of such a dedicated national facility and identify critical
project milestones. We estimate that, starting with the present level of
knowledge and multi-agency support, the goal of using antihydrogen for
propulsion purposes may be accomplished in ~50 years.

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