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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 1 November 2010, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency under its Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It surveys propulsion technologies that include chemical, ion, and nuclear fission rockets, fusion schemes, aneutronic fusion, and antimatter propulsion. It also covers radiation shielding and speculates on research needs over the next 30 years for missions from low Earth orbit to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Alpha Centauri. The document concludes that aneutronic fusion promises to be an important mechanism for future space propulsion.
“Anderson”1 page
UNCLASSIFIED//COP QFFICI0k !JCS ,n.LY Chapter 4: Antimatter Propulsion Although the focus of this report is aneutronic fusion propulsion, another possible propulsion technology involves the use of antimatter. Antimatter is created in certain nuclear reactions and minute quantities have even been collected from particle accelerators and stored for a short time in magnetic bottles. Antimatter has the highest energy density of any material known. When particles of antimatter and matter collide, they completely annihilate and convert their mass into energy according to Einstein's famous equation, E = mc 2 . 10 There are various terrestrial sources of antimatter. Positrons are created spontaneously from high-energy gamma rays as they decay. Any gamma ray with an energy of more than 1.022 MeV can decay by pair production where an electron and a positron are generated. A positron is the antimatter counterpart to an electron and carries a positive charge. Due to the difference in charge between electrons (~-) and positrons(~+), they can be separated by magnetic fields and the positrons stored. Certain radionuclides decay through the emission of an antiproton, a negatively charged antimatter counterpart to a proton. If antiprotons are collected and combined with positrons, stable atoms of antihydrogen are produced. Antihydrogen has been created and stored in magnetic bottles. Up to 1012 antiprotons have been successfully stored for days at a time. Antihydrogen can also be potentially chilled to form liquid antihydrogen or "ice" to use as a rocket fuel. The specific impulse for antimatter rockets (lsp/c) are 1 for electron-positron annihilation and 0.60 for proton-antiproton annihilation. For nuclear fusion, lsp/c is only 0.119, followed by 0.04 for nuclear fission. Antimatter could be used to heat up a propellant gas and expel it through a Laval nozzle to generate thrust. If liquid hydrogen is carried onboard the spacecraft, the electrons and protons in the hydrogen can be annihilated by the antimatter to generate power. Annihilation products can also be reflected or directed by magnetic fields to be ejected as exhaust from the rocket to generate thrust. Antimatter is seen as the only fuel that can potentially accelerate rockets to near the speed of light, providing the potential for human flight to neighboring star systems. 20 UNCLASSIFIED//5O9 QFFICJ0 k !JCS ,n.k>/
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 50 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.