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Building an Antimatter Spaceship
Previous antimatter-powered spaceship designs employed antiprotons, which produce high-energy gamma rays when they annihilate. The new design will use positrons, which make gamma rays with about 400 times less energy.
The NIAC research is a preliminary study to see if the idea is feasible. If it looks promising, and funds are available to successfully develop the technology, a positron-powered spaceship would have a couple advantages over the existing plans for a human mission to Mars, called the Mars Reference Mission.
1 comment:
If we start making semi-regular voyages to Mars, an antimatter-powered craft is going to look more and more desirable. Chances are this -- or something essentially like it -- will get built, but probably not for a while.
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