3 ms·

> ideal spacecraft fuel If you're ok with the looming threat of total annihilation. I suppose at least it will kill you faster than your neurons can communica

by amelius 8mo ago

> ideal spacecraft fuel If you're ok with the looming threat of total annihilation. I suppose at least it will kill you faster than your neurons can communicate so you wouldn't even notice.

crooked-v 8mo ago
If you're on a spacecraft you're sitting on a tank of rocket fuel anyway. It's the same problem, just slightly less total.
- amelius 8mo ago
  Except rocket fuel lines are often leaking, and the most common cause of launch delays. With antimatter the tiniest leak will annihilate your ship.
- sigmoid10 8mo ago
  Average human threat perceptions simply aren't useful here. People will also make wild assumptions about what kind of catastrophic thing could happen in aviation and then happily enter their car to drive somewhere without a thought in the world. In fact noone thought about designing gasoline fuel tanks in a safe way before we had cars. Not even really until people started burning. If we're already thinking about transporting antimatter safely today, this kind of technology will probably have an even better track record than planes.
- queuebert 8mo ago
  Antimatter reactions are about a million times more powerful than conventional combustion. They surpass even nuclear explosions in energy release. That means even a small mishap becomes a large mishap.
  - ComputerGuru 8mo ago
    You can carry exactly (or roughly) as much energy in the form of antimatter as you would energy in the form of fuel.
    - amelius 8mo ago
      The problem is that a tiny leak will eat away your spacecraft, thereby making the situation worse.
      - ComputerGuru 8mo ago
        A very different problem then the one I proposed an answer to, no?
  - adrian_b 8mo ago
    Nuclear energy is limited to a little less than 1% of the energy release possible with antimatter, per mass. The practical limit for nuclear energy is about 5 to 10 times less than that, because the theoretical limit corresponds to the transmutation of hydrogen into iron, coupled with the capture of the entire energy, which will not be achievable any time soon. But there is an essential difference between nuclear energy and antimatter energy. Nuclear energy is stored in our environment and you just have to exploit it. Antimatter energy is a form of energy storage, so you need some other form of energy to make antimatter. The energy efficiency of making antimatter is many orders of magnitude worse than the factor of less than 100 that exists between nuclear energy and antimatter energy and the mass of the confinement device needed for storing antimatter is also orders of magnitude greater than the mass of the stored antimatter. For now, there is absolutely no hope of ever using antimatter in practice for storing energy. Such a thing could be enabled only if some technologies that we cannot imagine would be invented. Despite the great technological progress of the last couple of centuries, it is hard to say that there have been many inventions that have never been imagined before. After all, already 3 millennia ago the god Hephaestus did his metal smith work with the help of intelligent artificial robots.
  - AngryData 8mo ago
    Yeah but when you are talking about energy levels in the nuclear bomb range, the threat to the passenger stops going up. If im in a craft with 1 Hiroshima bomb of energy and another guy is in one with a million tsar bombs worth of energy, we would both be obliterated before we knew anything was wrong no matter how small of a mishap.
teiferer 8mo ago
> If you're ok with the looming threat of total annihilation. Don't you have that problem with any energy-dense fuel? It's just that it doesn get more dense than that, so you can be very space and weight efficient. It's like everybody saying that a hydrogen car is a rolling bomb because of the energy stored in the hydrogen. Well, sure, but gasonline has just as much energy stored. Which is the whole point of fuel. To store energy. It's not like you are bringing 100x as much energy with you just because it's hydrogen. So that doesn't make an ICE car any less of a bomb...
- im3w1l 8mo ago
  Volatility and energy content are not necessarily related.
  - thaumasiotes 8mo ago
    They are; something with no energy content can have no volatility either.
- Tadpole9181 8mo ago
  Surely you understand there's a difference? Liquid gasoline does not spontaneously explode like an action movie. You can put a match in the fuel tank and (presuming infinite oxygen availability) it'd just start a small fire. Heck, may even just give a little puff and then put out the match. Antimatter in any sufficient fuel quantity, the moment it breaks confinement, will completely annihilate and release ALL it's energy in a single moment, setting off a chain reaction to the remaining antimatter. It's like sitting on an armed nuclear bomb, where you rely on electrified, highly sophisticated containment equipment never failing a single time for months to years... In a radiation-heavy environment known for causing sophisticated electronics to have errors. And, yes, hydrogen cars were looked at critically because of the perception they can Hindenburg (I'm unsure if it's true or not). Which is a good example because you don't particularly see any hydrogen blimps anymore - we made them illegal because they're dangerous.
  - SoftTalker 8mo ago
boxingdog 8mo ago
[dead]

by amelius 8mo ago

> ideal spacecraft fuel If you're ok with the looming threat of total annihilation. I suppose at least it will kill you faster than your neurons can communicate so you wouldn't even notice.

crooked-v 8mo ago

If you're on a spacecraft you're sitting on a tank of rocket fuel anyway. It's the same problem, just slightly less total.

amelius 8mo ago
Except rocket fuel lines are often leaking, and the most common cause of launch delays. With antimatter the tiniest leak will annihilate your ship.
sigmoid10 8mo ago
Average human threat perceptions simply aren't useful here. People will also make wild assumptions about what kind of catastrophic thing could happen in aviation and then happily enter their car to drive somewhere without a thought in the world. In fact noone thought about designing gasoline fuel tanks in a safe way before we had cars. Not even really until people started burning. If we're already thinking about transporting antimatter safely today, this kind of technology will probably have an even better track record than planes.
queuebert 8mo ago
Antimatter reactions are about a million times more powerful than conventional combustion. They surpass even nuclear explosions in energy release. That means even a small mishap becomes a large mishap.
- ComputerGuru 8mo ago
  You can carry exactly (or roughly) as much energy in the form of antimatter as you would energy in the form of fuel.
  - amelius 8mo ago
    The problem is that a tiny leak will eat away your spacecraft, thereby making the situation worse.
    - ComputerGuru 8mo ago
      A very different problem then the one I proposed an answer to, no?
- adrian_b 8mo ago
  Nuclear energy is limited to a little less than 1% of the energy release possible with antimatter, per mass. The practical limit for nuclear energy is about 5 to 10 times less than that, because the theoretical limit corresponds to the transmutation of hydrogen into iron, coupled with the capture of the entire energy, which will not be achievable any time soon. But there is an essential difference between nuclear energy and antimatter energy. Nuclear energy is stored in our environment and you just have to exploit it. Antimatter energy is a form of energy storage, so you need some other form of energy to make antimatter. The energy efficiency of making antimatter is many orders of magnitude worse than the factor of less than 100 that exists between nuclear energy and antimatter energy and the mass of the confinement device needed for storing antimatter is also orders of magnitude greater than the mass of the stored antimatter. For now, there is absolutely no hope of ever using antimatter in practice for storing energy. Such a thing could be enabled only if some technologies that we cannot imagine would be invented. Despite the great technological progress of the last couple of centuries, it is hard to say that there have been many inventions that have never been imagined before. After all, already 3 millennia ago the god Hephaestus did his metal smith work with the help of intelligent artificial robots.
- AngryData 8mo ago
  Yeah but when you are talking about energy levels in the nuclear bomb range, the threat to the passenger stops going up. If im in a craft with 1 Hiroshima bomb of energy and another guy is in one with a million tsar bombs worth of energy, we would both be obliterated before we knew anything was wrong no matter how small of a mishap.

teiferer 8mo ago

> If you're ok with the looming threat of total annihilation. Don't you have that problem with any energy-dense fuel? It's just that it doesn get more dense than that, so you can be very space and weight efficient. It's like everybody saying that a hydrogen car is a rolling bomb because of the energy stored in the hydrogen. Well, sure, but gasonline has just as much energy stored. Which is the whole point of fuel. To store energy. It's not like you are bringing 100x as much energy with you just because it's hydrogen. So that doesn't make an ICE car any less of a bomb...

im3w1l 8mo ago
Volatility and energy content are not necessarily related.
- thaumasiotes 8mo ago
  They are; something with no energy content can have no volatility either.
Tadpole9181 8mo ago
Surely you understand there's a difference? Liquid gasoline does not spontaneously explode like an action movie. You can put a match in the fuel tank and (presuming infinite oxygen availability) it'd just start a small fire. Heck, may even just give a little puff and then put out the match. Antimatter in any sufficient fuel quantity, the moment it breaks confinement, will completely annihilate and release ALL it's energy in a single moment, setting off a chain reaction to the remaining antimatter. It's like sitting on an armed nuclear bomb, where you rely on electrified, highly sophisticated containment equipment never failing a single time for months to years... In a radiation-heavy environment known for causing sophisticated electronics to have errors. And, yes, hydrogen cars were looked at critically because of the perception they can Hindenburg (I'm unsure if it's true or not). Which is a good example because you don't particularly see any hydrogen blimps anymore - we made them illegal because they're dangerous.
- SoftTalker 8mo ago

boxingdog 8mo ago

[dead]