Documents / Report
This unclassified Defense Intelligence Reference Document from the Defense Intelligence Agency is dated 2 March 2010. It was produced in FY 2009 under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. The report reviews work on using positrons as aerospace fuel. It covers air-breathing turbojet and ramjet engines, unmanned aircraft, missiles, single-stage reusable vehicles, positron rockets and a crewed Mars mission, along with how positrons could be produced and stored. It concludes that a first positron-powered flight around the globe could be possible within 10 years.
“NASA”10 pages
UNCLASSIFIED//F811. 8FFll!l*le 1!181!! 8111!¥ Table 5, the required 150 μg for this epic flight could be manufactured in 6 months for $96 million, or 0.0007 percent of U.S. GDP. Positron Storage Confinement of antimatter has been reviewed extensively in the literature. 64 Historically, the first approach was the Penning trap. 65 Stores of 109 positrons for 1 hour have been achieved. 66 Electric potentials are required to overcome space charge forces. 67 To illustrate, confinement of 10 15 positrons in a 10-cm-radius sphere in a perfect vacuum requires an electric potential of 240 kilovolts. Laboratory control of such large potentials restricts stores to < 1 picogram (10 15 ) . .. . ---Figure 19. Penning Trap With Trapping Volume of 1,000 Cubic Centimeters (center}, Injection Apparatus (left} and Controls (right} (courtesy Positronics Research LLC} 68 In addition, with a magnetic field there are magnetic energy density restrictions on confinement of positron plasmas. The Brillouin Density Limit is: 2 n = E B /2m B o e. ( 1) For a practical magnetic field of 1 Tesla, nB = 9.7 x 10 12/cubic centimeters. In a 10-cm radius sphere, the Brillouin Number Limit is 4 x 10 16 (40 picograms). Therefore, by 24 UNCLASSIFIED/;CFQlil 8FFI&I.«11! 1!181! &••LY
Not linked to a story yet.
Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 35 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.