Vacuum to Antimatter-Rocket
VARIES (Vacuum to Antimatter Rocket Interstellar Explorer System) is a proposed space propulsion system that would use large solar arrays in order to power for lasers of high intensity. The concept was proposed by Richard Obousy, who is the cofounder and president of Icarus Interstellar, a research organization about interstellar studies.
The main problem of antimatter rockets is the amount of energy and cost neded to produce antimatter. Antimatter is one of the most expensive substances on Earth: about $62.5 trillion a gram. VARIES could solve this issue.
The lasers aboard VARIES would produce protons and antiprotons directly from the vacuum of space through the Schwinger pair production. The collected fuel would be stored and later used as fuel to accelerate the spacecraft. The same process of collecting antimatter from space would be used to return to Earth.
The Schwinger effect is a predicted physical phenomenon whereby matter is created by a strong electric field in which electron-positron pairs are spontaneously created in the presence of an electric field, thereby causing the decay of the electric field.
Recent experimental advances raised hope that lasers could soon achieve intensities closer to the order needed for VARIES, which would likely be in the Petawatt range. Pions formed from the annihilation would have to be directed for thrust by magnetic nozzles, which could be superconducting magnets. Antimatter could be stored as non-neutral plasmas or as a neutral gas.
The main problem of antimatter rockets is the amount of energy and cost neded to produce antimatter. Antimatter is one of the most expensive substances on Earth: about $62.5 trillion a gram. VARIES could solve this issue.
The lasers aboard VARIES would produce protons and antiprotons directly from the vacuum of space through the Schwinger pair production. The collected fuel would be stored and later used as fuel to accelerate the spacecraft. The same process of collecting antimatter from space would be used to return to Earth.
The Schwinger effect is a predicted physical phenomenon whereby matter is created by a strong electric field in which electron-positron pairs are spontaneously created in the presence of an electric field, thereby causing the decay of the electric field.
Recent experimental advances raised hope that lasers could soon achieve intensities closer to the order needed for VARIES, which would likely be in the Petawatt range. Pions formed from the annihilation would have to be directed for thrust by magnetic nozzles, which could be superconducting magnets. Antimatter could be stored as non-neutral plasmas or as a neutral gas.
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