Reply To: Fusion Oil

[QuantumDot]

vansig wrote: Seeing as no one has, as yet, found a way to make or contain antimatter in sufficient quantity to use it for propulsion, let’s plan to go with something that has a chance of being feasible sooner.

That may not be true. people have been able to make fairly large abouts of positrons with a petawatt laser, and some think or claim to be able to store positronium with is a positron electron pair orbiting each other for years instead by using electromagnetic fields to increase the size or there orbits so that they don’t hit one another. And with the recent production of a BEC made of positronium the accusal handling of it to do work is improving.

But its still all between 4 and 2 in the technology readiness level, and none of it is efficient or ready for practical work in space.

production of positrons
https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2008/NR-08-11-03.html

since the dpf would produce a beam of charged particles you could place undulators there instead of to convert it to a free electron laser and maybe you could then used chirped pulse amplifiers to but it in the petawatt range

storage of positronium
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0504_060504_antimatter_2.html

bec positronium
http://www.physorg.com/news191868695.html

other sites
http://thefutureofthings.com/articles.php?itemId=33/64/
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=11444
http://atomicrockets.posterous.com/?tag=antimatter