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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office and dated 2 March 2010. It is one of a series of advanced technology reports produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications program. It looks at using positrons as fuel for air-breathing turbojets, ramjet-assisted missiles, single-stage reusable vehicles and rockets for a manned Mars mission, and it also covers positron production, costs and storage. It concludes that a first positron-powered flight around the globe could be possible within 10 years.
From the source: Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 3/2/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD examines positrons as a possible fuel for advanced aerospace propulsion, arguing that antimatter offers extraordinary energy density and could, in principle, support applications ranging from long-endurance aircraft and missiles to single-stage launch vehicles, onboard power systems, and crewed Mars missions. At the same time, it makes clear that the concept depends on resolving major unsolved problems in producing positrons in sufficient quantities and storing them safely for long periods, and much of the document’s discussion of flight systems and Mars missions remains conceptual rather than closely tied to demonstrated engineering practice. Its overall conclusion is that positron propulsion is theoretically attractive, but remains highly speculative as a practical technology because its core production and storage requirements remain unsolved.
UNCLASSIFIED/ ,,roR 8FFI@IAL l:l!H! 9HLY Figure 10. Artist's Rendition of a Four-Engine Positron SSRV (courtesy of Positronics Research LLC) 26 Positron-Powered Rockets A positron rocket offers significant advantages over nuclear fission and antiproton rockets. 27 Nuclear fission reactors contain enormous amounts of highly toxic radioactive material, and antiproton rockets produce radioactivity in surrounding materials by interactions of high-energy mesons and gamma rays from antiproton annihilation. The proposed nuclear fission gas core rocket and antiproton adaptations would release radioactive fission fragments into the atmosphere. In contrast, positron rockets are totally radioactivity free. Second, in the event of an accidental detonation of the positron fuel, the prompt (nanoseconds) burst of gamma rays can be shielded from humans on spacecraft. The 1/e absorption length of a 511-keV gamma ray in lead is 5.6 millimeters. A 13- centimeter (cm)-thick shield thus reduces the gamma ray flux by a factor 8.3 x 10-11 . To illustrate, a human behind such a shield at a distance of 10 meters from a 100-mg source of annihilating positrons would experience a whole-body radiation dose of 2 rem (roentgen equivalent man), which is within the annual tolerance for radiation workers in the United States. The following sections investigate three positron rockets: solid core, gas core, and photon. 28 In a solid-core positron rocket, positrons heat a hydrogen working fluid through an attenuating solid such as tungsten. In a gas-core positron rocket, gamma rays directly heat propellant through a one- or two-fluid process. In a photon positron rocket, solid propellant is ablated from a surface bombarded by gamma rays. UNCLASSIFIED/ ,'FOR. OFFI@IAL l:ISIE OHL\« 11
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 35 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.