It could also—and, if history has taught us anything, probably will—do other things.

“An antimatter engine could theoretically accelerate a spacecraft at 1g (9.8 meters per second squared) getting us to Proxima in just five years... That's 8,000 times faster than it would take Voyager 1 — one of the fastest spacecraft in history — to travel about half the distance, according to NASA.

“Even within our own solar system, an antimatter-powered spacecraft could reach Pluto in 3.5 weeks compared to the 9.5 years it took NASA's New Horizons probe to arrive.

“The engine system would first gather high-energy positrons from krypton-79 and then direct them toward a layer of regular matter, producing annihilation energy.”

Annihilation energy.

But apparently, this is all in fact pretty old science:

“In 1953, Austrian physicist Eugen Sänger proposed a “photon rocket” that would run on positron annihilation energy.”

The hurdle seems to be: (a) Funding, and (b) Testing. Regarding the latter, one has to be very careful where to go about testing “annihilation” energy apparently. One scientist has a remarkably bright idea though:

”'So we need an ability to test high energy density systems somewhere that don't threaten the biosphere, but still allow us to develop them,' said Howe, who thinks the moon would make a good testing base. 'And if something goes wrong, you melted a piece of the moon,' and not Earth, he added.”

Swell.

More here.

#research #space #weapons