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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.
“Anderson”2 pages
UNCLASSIFIED/ fFOA 8FFl&IAl l48l: 8HL'I Positron Aerospace Propulsion Introduction Antimatter is considered an extremely attractive fuel for aerospace propulsion because of its enormous advantage in energy density over all other known sources of energy. However, because antimatter does not occur naturally and is unstable in the presence of matter, no vehicles have ever flown using it. After a short overview of the various aerospace applications of antimatter, this paper provides a detailed analysis of air-breathing turbojets and turbo-ramjet missiles, as well as rockets for manned interplanetary missions. It discusses new methods of producing and storing large numbers of antielectrons, or positrons, and compares their costs with those of antiprotons. Finally, the paper considers the prospects for the first, modest demonstration of positron propulsive flight within the next 10 years. Interplanetary missions on positron-propelled spaceships are described in detail, with estimates of positron requirements for each mission. Standalone positron power systems are described briefly. Studies of positrons as a fuel for aerospace propulsion applications have been sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, Atlanta, Georgia. This paper is an anthology of that work and not a general review of antimatter propulsion. The positron was predicted by Dirac in 1929 1 and discovered by Anderson in 1932.2 Along with the antiproton, which was discovered in 1954,3 the positron has the largest specific energy of any known material. Because aerospace propulsion performance is ultimately limited by specific power, this advantage was immediately appreciated. However, compared with chemical sources of energy, positrons presented new and serious production and storage challenges. Antimatter has a long history of appearing in science fiction literature, dating to a 1942 short story in Astounding Science Fiction and the 1949 book Seetee. It later appeared in the Star Trek television and film series and continues to be an appealing subject for contemporary books and films, such as Angels and Demons. Positron aerospace propulsion is now entering a critical period owing to new technologies that bear on production and storage issues. To their advantage, positrons, unlike nuclear fission and antiprotons, present no radiation or environmental safety problems. UNCLASSIFIED/ /FAR AEEICllk Wlili 8Nl¥ V
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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.