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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/ /FOA OFFl&IAk YSIE 8HL'I MSS, and the astronauts descend to the Mars surface on the MSL using a high thrust variant of the positron rocket engine. Positron Production Positrons are currently produced at particle accelerators worldwide for basic and applications research. For example, the positron-emitting radioisotope Na22 (2. 7 year mean lifetime) is made by bombarding targets with neutrons from a high -energy proton accelerator in the reaction Al 27(n,x)Na 22 . Capture of these positrons is used to form beams with keV (slow) to MeV (fast) energies. Handling of large radioactive sources results in limits of 106 slow positrons/sec. For intensities up to 1010/sec, bombardment of metal targets with electron beams in the 10- to 100-MeV range is used, followed by collection and acceleration (deceleration) of positrons to form fast or slow beams. In addition, it has recently been shown that slow positron beams of up to 1011/sec can be realized by converting neutrons in reactors to electron-positron pairs in thin metal foils. Much higher positron currents are being sought in a variety of proposed solutions. Illustrated below are a few of the more promising concepts. First, in 1996, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory56 proposed developing an intense source of fast positrons ( 1016/sec) utilizing compact electron betatron accelerators. Second, tabletop femtosecond laser-driven positron sources currently under development at the National Ignition Facility (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory (United Kingdom), and the Max Planck Institute (Munich) look promising, although more must be done to demonstrate efficient collection of positrons into beams. Finally, a most important step forward is multi-gigaelectronvolt (GeV) energy electron storage rings being developed for the high-energy physics International Linear Collider (ILC) project that uses undulators in electron beams to create intense photon beams that produce intense (10 14•16/sec) positron beams by pair production. 57 A schematic drawing from one proposal for the ILC is shown in Figure 18. 58 Layout of /LC Positron Source Hollcal Undulot0r In By.P s Una M. Ku KEK Figure 18. Proposed Undulator-Based Positron Source for the International Linear Collider (courtesy KEK, Japan) 59 UNCLASSIFIED/ /iiOlil OFFICIO~ U&li QN ..¥ 22
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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.