New Kickstarter funding research into 5% c antimatter sail concept

[Aethon]

 

 

The method requires smaller amounts of antimatter than other designs, and purports to be within our technological capabilities.  

 

In depth articles:

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=36504

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=36511

 

<Link removed by moderator>

 

 

[KSK]

'Smaller amounts' of anti-matter is still milligrams of the stuff and from the Kickstarter:

"For the purpose of interstellar missions, the quantity of antimatter is too large to store as charged elementary particles.  Therefore, we propose to transport the antimatter initially in the form of antihydrogen (an antiproton with an orbiting positron)"

If people want to put their money into speculative research then I applaud them. If people back this in the expection of producing a working engine let alone a working interstellar probe, then I think they're going to be sadly disappointed.

[Steel]

The thing that worries me about this is that it doesn't seem to say (from my quick skim read) anywhere what the money is going to be used for... well, that and the fact that $200,000 will get you precisely nowhere with a project of this scale

Edited October 19, 2016 by Steel

[p1t1o]

A kickstarter....that includes the manufacture of useful amounts of antimatter...

As far as serious attempts at furthering space travel go, this seems like running-before-your-eyes-finish-developing-properly (forget "walking") or more pessimistically, a scam.

Things like this seem quite popular/fashionable lately, what gives?

 

On slightly closer inspection, it seems like an enthusiastic physicist wants to privately further what initial research has been done so far. $200,000 isn't going to get very far but I dont think they are proposing to get to another star just on that. However, I cant see any milestones or goals. The originator, Garald Jackson, appears to have some sort of tech company and antimatter is "close to their heart" or some such.

I wouldn't rule out a scam, but if it isn't I suppose I dont begrudge people the right to fund their own/other people's private research, it is a worthy topic after all, if a bit "reachy". But then I suppose, "a kickstarter to fund research into advanced antimatter containment techniques" (or some other enabling technology) sounds a lot less sexy than "Interstellar travel".

 

http://www.hbartech.com/

<Link removed by moderator>

[Kryten]

Has any space-related kickstarter over a few K been successful?

[Kobymaru]

4 hours ago, KSK said:

"For the purpose of interstellar missions, the quantity of antimatter is too large to store as charged elementary particles.  Therefore, we propose to transport the antimatter initially in the form of antihydrogen (an antiproton with an orbiting positron)"

Ok, then how is the antihydrogen stored?

As soon as antimatter (wether its positrons or anti-protons or antihydrogen) touches *any* matter, they annihilate. There cannot ever be such a thing as an antimatter containment bottle. Conceptually. The only conceivable way to store antimatter it is in a magnetic or electric field, but that only works for charged particles.

He talks a lot about his magic antimatter containment bottle in this article: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=36511 , but nowhere does it say how it actually works.

Either this is a scam, or the author is highly delusional. I lean towards the former.

[KSK]

Neutral hydrogen still has a magnetic moment so you can, in principle, trap it in a magnetic field. See this 2007 article in the CERN Courier for example. The bit I'd question (after the difficulties involved in actually making enough of it) is whether you could store antihydrogen at a high enough pressure to give you any significant advantage over just storing antiprotons (which I presume could only be stored at reasonably low pressures due to electrostatic repulsion.)

The authors do appear to be reputable physicists - see here for details. Admittedly, that's from their own company webpage but there's enough verifiable information in there that I'd be surprised if somebody somewhere hasn't done a bit of fact checking, particularly given the publicity that this Kickstarter has had. I haven't looked terribly hard but I haven't found any 'zomg fake physicists and their crazy kickstarter' type articles.

So I'm leaning towards delusional rather than scam  More kindly, I'm leaning towards 'wildly optimistic' rather than 'delusional'.

[p1t1o]

Just spitballing - would research into "in-situ" generation of antimatter be a worthwhile alternative to storage solutions?

I gather that today it requires monstrous amounts of machinery and energy, but then our best containment methods hold amounts measured in individual particles and containment times measured in minutes... I could be wrong/innaccurate/behind the times, but it would have to be improved by many, many orders of magnitude to enable use as propulsion. Conversely, if we improve manufacture by many, many orders of magnitude, it may solve the storage problem. It depends which one is more challenging I guess.

Make any sense?

 

NB: some material on the storage of anti-hydrogen:

http://alpha.web.cern.ch/penningtrap

 

[todofwar]

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Just spitballing - would research into "in-situ" generation of antimatter be a worthwhile alternative to storage solutions?

I gather that today it requires monstrous amounts of machinery and energy, but then our best containment methods hold amounts measured in individual particles and containment times measured in minutes... I could be wrong/innaccurate/behind the times, but it would have to be improved by many, many orders of magnitude to enable use as propulsion. Conversely, if we improve manufacture by many, many orders of magnitude, it may solve the storage problem. It depends which one is more challenging I guess.

Make any sense?

 

NB: some material on the storage of anti-hydrogen:

http://alpha.web.cern.ch/penningtrap

 

The problem is, if you are creating and releasing antimatter you run into the same problem as VASIMIR. Chemical propellants are great because they carry their own energy source and you essentially ditch the empty batteries as you go. Ion drives are great because they get much higher ISPs, but you need to power them externally. This solution uses a very high energy storage system to propel itself, so I think it's more akin to a chemical rocket than an ion drive, but if you start needing to produce the antimatter as you go than you've just created an even more powerful and more power hungry version of VASIMIR. If you have the means of producing that much energy, just rig up an LHC type accelerator and start hurling protons at .99C out the back of your ship. 

[p1t1o]

2 minutes ago, todofwar said:

The problem is, if you are creating and releasing antimatter you run into the same problem as VASIMIR. Chemical propellants are great because they carry their own energy source and you essentially ditch the empty batteries as you go. Ion drives are great because they get much higher ISPs, but you need to power them externally. This solution uses a very high energy storage system to propel itself, so I think it's more akin to a chemical rocket than an ion drive, but if you start needing to produce the antimatter as you go than you've just created an even more powerful and more power hungry version of VASIMIR. If you have the means of producing that much energy, just rig up an LHC type accelerator and start hurling protons at .99C out the back of your ship. 

Ha! Yes!

However, I dont know the minutia of how AM is produced, so I was wondering if reducing those horrendous power+machinery requirements was anywhere near as plausible as producing a large amount pre-launch and a method of reliably storing it long-term.

Because as it stands, we need to reduce the power and machinery costs significantly anyway, if we ever want to stand a chance of manufacturing any useful amount at all.

 

 

[todofwar]

8 hours ago, Steel said:

The thing that worries me about this is that it doesn't seem to say (from my quick skim read) anywhere what the money is going to be used for... well, that and the fact that $200,000 will get you precisely nowhere with a project of this scale

$200,000 is allot of money for a lab. It won't get them to the point of building a probe, but it will fund the next round of testing. Thing is, this is like step 3 of 1000 steps. They just want to know if hitting a sail with positrons will work like they think it will work. So, a kickstarter is a weird way to go. More and more scientists are reaching out to crowd source funding for their work, it speaks to the sad level of funding for basic research we have out there. 

[Steel]

23 minutes ago, todofwar said:

$200,000 is allot of money for a lab. It won't get them to the point of building a probe, but it will fund the next round of testing. Thing is, this is like step 3 of 1000 steps. They just want to know if hitting a sail with positrons will work like they think it will work. So, a kickstarter is a weird way to go. More and more scientists are reaching out to crowd source funding for their work, it speaks to the sad level of funding for basic research we have out there. 

It's not a lot if we're talking antimatter production. Also I'm pretty sure a lot of labs will spend more than this having their equipment calibrated each year.

Edited October 19, 2016 by Steel

[Spaceception]

7 hours ago, Kryten said:

Has any space-related kickstarter over a few K been successful?

The solar sail from the planetary society got a few million, and will be deployed next year.

[todofwar]

7 hours ago, Steel said:

It's not a lot if we're talking antimatter production. Also I'm pretty sure a lot of labs will spend more than this having their equipment calibrated each year.

It looked to me like they already have much of the equipment. Maybe the actual antimatter is generated at some kind of user facility like a synchrotron or something? That money can pay personnel costs and travel costs. And it really is what you'd expect for a low end research grant.

[Shpaget]

I was unable to find their estimate on how much antimatter they think they need for the mission (and testing).

Also, what are the power requirements for the containment thing?

And how do they plan on taking a small amount of antimatter out of it?

[p1t1o]

15 hours ago, Steel said:

It's not a lot if we're talking antimatter production. Also I'm pretty sure a lot of labs will spend more than this having their equipment calibrated each year.

Some will pay more than that just to keep a single instrument turned on!

[monophonic]

Having finally actually read how it is supposed to work one question came to my mind: Why is antimatter needed at all for that propulsion mode? Wouldn't making the "sail" out of ordinary U235 and shooting regular neutrons at it work the same? Or are they trying to sidestep the issue of needing large amounts of a weaponisable isotope?

[p1t1o]

35 minutes ago, monophonic said:

Having finally actually read how it is supposed to work one question came to my mind: Why is antimatter needed at all for that propulsion mode? Wouldn't making the "sail" out of ordinary U235 and shooting regular neutrons at it work the same? 

Good question, Im not sure. But to hazard a guess, I'd say that in order to capture a neutron that has sufficient energy to cause a fission, the sail would have to be significantly thicker? Reading the material, a certain amount of attention is given to the thin-foil nature of the uranium layer and the light weight of the system as a whole. This is still going to be a low-thrust/high-Isp solution, so extra mass is a big no-no.

35 minutes ago, monophonic said:

Or are they trying to sidestep the issue of needing large amounts of a weaponisable isotope?

Given that they want to use significant amounts of antimatter, I doubt any isotope of Uranium is an issue...

Edited October 20, 2016 by p1t1o

[Shpaget]

4 hours ago, monophonic said:

Having finally actually read how it is supposed to work one question came to my mind: Why is antimatter needed at all for that propulsion mode? Wouldn't making the "sail" out of ordinary U235 and shooting regular neutrons at it work the same? Or are they trying to sidestep the issue of needing large amounts of a weaponisable isotope?

U238 is the "ordinary" uranium, not 235.

238 is less radioactive, meaning less impact on probe's sensors.

I doubt that the choice had anything to do with weapons. Kinetic energy of that probe travelling at 5%c is all the weapon you need.

Anyway, anybody willing to ballpark the amount of antimatter they would need? Perhaps something more precise than "orders of magnitude more than all the antimatter ever produced combined"?

[p1t1o]

21 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Anyway, anybody willing to ballpark the amount of antimatter they would need? Perhaps something more precise than "orders of magnitude more than all the antimatter ever produced combined"?

I think that that is going to be very difficult to know accurately at this point, since the kinetic energy does not come entirely (or even largely) from the annihilation of matter. But as a guesstimate I would imagine that it is going to be on the order of grams-to-kilograms, depending mostly on the final mass of the probe, but also on the efficiency they manage to reach with the final design.

For illustration purposes only:

A 1000kg probe travelling at ~5%c has the kinetic energy of 1.2kg of mass-energy. (note that this means that a 1-ton probe of this ilk would require significantly more than (1.2*0.5)kg of antimatter.)

[monophonic]

38 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

U238 is the "ordinary" uranium, not 235.

238 is less radioactive, meaning less impact on probe's sensors.

I doubt that the choice had anything to do with weapons. Kinetic energy of that probe travelling at 5%c is all the weapon you need.

I meant ordinary as in "not needing antimatter or any even more exotic shenanigans." When talking nuclear fission, 235 is the isotope you want. A 238 target needs twice the neutrons for the same number of fissions, and this assumes no unwanted reactions occur.

As to where the weapon aspect came along, fissile materials are highly controlled under various treaties. Mainly the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. From that aspect antimatter might even be easier to work with than U or Pu. Namely no bimonthly ispections or tamper-sealed cameras filming absolutely everything in the lab courtesy of the IAEA.

[p1t1o]

17 hours ago, monophonic said:

As to where the weapon aspect came along, fissile materials are highly controlled under various treaties. Mainly the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. From that aspect antimatter might even be easier to work with than U or Pu. Namely no bimonthly ispections or tamper-sealed cameras filming absolutely everything in the lab courtesy of the IAEA.

I presume this is because you can almost count the number of anti-atoms on the planet (at least in the hands of humans) with your fingers. I would wager that as soon as significant production becomes available, it will very quickly become a highly regulated substance. For one thing, it is already known that with a tiny amount of antimatter, you can make a H-bomb exceedingly small, and without using any fissile material. 

It will not be available in stores.

 

My day job is in chemical regulation as it happens, I would *LOVE* to write a Material Safety Data Sheet for antimatter

Now, what would be the most appropriate firefighting measures....

Handling and storage is going to be a long section...

Penetration time of glove material?

Oral toxicity?

Odour?

 

[todofwar]

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

I presume this is because you can almost count the number of anti-atoms on the planet (at least in the hands of humans) with your fingers. I would wager that as soon as significant production becomes available, it will very quickly become a highly regulated substance. For one thing, it is already known that with a tiny amount of antimatter, you can make a H-bomb exceedingly small, and without using any fissile material. 

It will not be available in stores.

 

My day job is in chemical regulation as it happens, I would *LOVE* to write a Material Safety Data Sheet for antimatter

Now, what would be the most appropriate firefighting measures....

Handling and storage is going to be a long section...

Penetration time of glove material?

Oral toxicity?

Odour?

 

As someone who works with MSDS all the time, it will probably red along the lines of:

Inhalation hazard, may cause irritation and redness. Contact physician if inhaled.

Skin contact hazard, may cause redness or irritation.

Swallowing hazard, do not induce vomiting.

 

Edit: Also, chemspider or scifinder will list at least three sources for it, probably. They seem to always have a commercial source.

Edited October 21, 2016 by todofwar

[p1t1o]

4 hours ago, todofwar said:

As someone who works with MSDS all the time, it will probably red along the lines of:

Inhalation hazard, may cause irritation and redness. Contact physician if inhaled.

Skin contact hazard, may cause redness or irritation.

Swallowing hazard, do not induce vomiting.

 

Edit: Also, chemspider or scifinder will list at least three sources for it, probably. They seem to always have a commercial source.

LOL I write them and that is spot on

" To avoid risks to human health and the environment, comply with the instructions for use."

 

[Spaceception]

Here's the link

 

Edited November 12, 2016 by Spaceception