How Much Antimatter Could Mercury's Equatorial Solar Panels Generate Daily?

[RedDwarfIV]

By reference I meant to a peer-reviewed paper, not a pop-sci news report as there is no explanation in either of these. Either way lots of energy.

That would be good, but I'm afraid my Google skills were not enough to unearth such a paper. In any case, the power requirements were cut by changing the shape of the warp ring to a fatter doughnut, then adding a second ring. IIRC, anyway.

If you accelerate in orbit you change your orbit, so that would need to be taken into consideration. Beyond that presumably most planets would have satellites in orbit so would be able to detect something like this. And destroying something would send some debris your way but if you can divert the bulk (and deal with the subsequent Kessler event) it would be preferable to do so. Or even just dodge, there's no reason why a space station couldn't have thrusters.

Depends on how big the space station is, and how strong it is structurally.

As for accelerating to change your orbit, I know this. The idea was that a spacecraft in a lower or higher orbit than the space station makes an intercept burn. This is exactly what a normal spacecraft would do. The difference comes when, on final approach to the space station, the spacecraft fails to slow its relative velocity and collides with the station. This means a short reaction time for the space station's command crew, and a short amount of time for the space station to do anything about it. If the space station destroys the spacecraft with weapons, then tries to dodge, then it needs to have powerful engines to move it, and be strong enough not to just fold under the force of acceleration. This is not impossible, but would be difficult (especially if you had spacecraft docked to it, because they're not structurally connected. Spacecraft under construction likely would be unable to vacate the station to let it move.)

I think a good solution to that would be to have a ban on direct orbital changes to intercept space stations. Instead, a low-thrust "spiral-orbit" where the spacecraft slowly makes its way in or out in a spiral shaped orbit. That way, relative velocity is minimised, and anyone trying a high relative velocity intercept would be immediately obvious.

 

[Loren]

Destruction of a space station probably would not require much effort. It's not like you will need a high delta V.

Also, look up how we intercept ISS. It's done at a slow rate for a variety of reasons. The two most important are efficiency and safety. So things go slow.

Space craft are not designed like machines on Earth. They are extremely fragile, so it doesn't take much to catastrophically damage a space station with a minimal of force. A bad docking could do that to the ISS and that is why they dock at .03 m/s.

The huge inertia of a SV at even slow speeds is enough to tear a space station apart, so there is no need to approach with a high delta V, just perform a normal intercept and at the last ten of so seconds ignite the main engine and plow through it like a snow plow truck.

It might be more interesting to describe the destruction of a space station as it slowly comes apart, piece by piece.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Reasons like this make me more inclined to think that autopilots that regularly confirm with traffic control that they are in command would be mandatory in a society that featured ubiquitous space travel.

 

[RedDwarfIV]

Reasons like this make me more inclined to think that autopilots that regularly confirm with traffic control that they are in command would be mandatory in a society that featured ubiquitous space travel.

I like that idea.

I'll point out though, the ISS is a pretty fragile structure. It was built in modules, only loosely connected, and it's really very thin. It would probably be possible to build a station capable of handling an impact of 68 tonnes of shuttle, but you would probably need a much better way of transporting the materials up into orbit and a way of assembling them. Either that, or build it on the ground and launch it with ORION.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

The ISS is also pretty small by science fiction standards, the size of an American Football pitch. A much larger station might not be quite so damaged (relatively, the section hit might not be nice to be around).

 

[RedDwarfIV]

The ISS is also pretty small by science fiction standards, the size of an American Football pitch. A much larger station might not be quite so damaged (relatively, the section hit might not be nice to be around).

A larger station would also have the option of having less important things like monopropellant or waste water tanks around the outside as a crumple zone. If it's a wheel-shaped station for gravity, then the habitation areas would be well out of the way of the shuttle docking bay.

 

[mfb]

More fair points. But as far as I'm aware, the power requirements went from "literally all the energy" to "the mass-energy of Jupiter" to "the mass-energy of a Voyager probe"

As absolute value, yes. Unfortunately regular matter (or antimatter, or light, or anything we know) won't do the job, you need something with ... "unusual" energy/pressure-relations. Where unusal means "we have never observed anything like this and we have no idea if it exists at all".

 

[SlowThinker]

Your units don't match. The unit Watt is a measure of power, not of energy. One watt is equal to 1 joule of work performed/energy consumed in one second. So a 100 watt light bulb uses 100 joules of energy per second, 6,000 joules of energy per minute, and 360,000 joules per hour.

1 joule's worth of energy could create about 6.65 x 10¹⁵ antiprotons, for a total mass of 1.11x10^-11 kilograms.

So a terrawatt of power, over 1 years time, could produce about 3x10²⁰ joules, which could create around 6.65 x 10³⁵ antiprotons, or 3,330,000,000 kilograms worth of antimatter.

I'm a bit late to this party, but that figure is sooo way off I just have to show my calculation:
1 TW/$c^2$=0.011 g/sec, or 0.96kg/day, or ~360kg/year (divide by 2 for antimatter only).

For the OP, I'm pretty sure that photovoltaic panels are a dead end. Any serious solar energy capture uses large mirrors and a heat engine. For the purpose of sci-fi, I'd say "large mirrors and the central power plant", and stay away from details.

Also, antimatter is NOT exotic matter. Exotic matter is needed to operate the warp drive. It is hard to produce (it does not exist at all, according to current physics), but also it is not consumed during flight.