Futuristic propulsion of spacecraft

[Lsos]

The point is you have to keep antimatter caged up and hope that the storage mechanism never fails. The energy we are potentially talking about here is horrendous, if you manage to bring antimatter production down to reasonable prices then you've proposed a system whereby biosphere destroying devices are available for an unreasonable but possible price. Think of it this way: any vehicle fitted with a few grams of antimatter will release a Hiroshima scale explosion when damaged. A few kilograms and you've got the release of >Tsa Bomba scale explosion when damaged.

The potential harm of what you are proposing more than outweighs it's uses IMO.

I don't think antimatter necessarily has to be unsafe. The fact that it's so energy-dense means that it's going to be small and therefore much easier to contain with less things to go wrong. Also, there's no need to contain it inside the spaceship.

I'm visualizing a magnetic "bottle" held a distance away from the spaceship. You can design the bottle so that if the #### hits the fan, the explosion ejects the antimatter away from the rest of the ship.

But this might all be a moot point. If you're out in deep space in a tin-foil spaceship, it might not really matter much if the fuel explodes with a ton or 100 million tons of TNT.

 

[Superposed_Cat]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Spacecraft_propulsion