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From: dietz@SLB-DOLL.CSNET (Paul Dietz)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Antimatter as Rocket Fuel, SETI, US Electricity Production
Message-ID: <8602031417.AA08852@s1-b.arpa>
Date: Mon, 3-Feb-86 08:48:52 EST
Article-I.D.: s1-b.8602031417.AA08852
Posted: Mon Feb  3 08:48:52 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 5-Feb-86 02:43:28 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
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An additional comment on using antimatter for rocket fuel:

As Forward points out, the way to use antimatter as fuel is to use it
to heat much larger quantities of normal matter.  In large spaceships
there's another way: use it as an igniter for small fusion explosions.
It might be possible to implode DT fuel onto a tiny antimatter pellet
and get (almost) completely clean fusion explosives.  The fusion
reaction products can be directed magnetically (as in Daedalus or Hyde's
fusion rocket) and can be mixed with normal matter (water, say) to
vary the exhaust velocity.

I think the US energy consumption in 1940 was somewhat larger than you
say.  A modern US power plant produces (say) 2 gigawatts of electricity.
If running that plant for a decade produces 1000 years worth of
electricity at 1940 rates, the power production then was only 20 MW!
This is clearly false; we already had some pretty big hydroelectric plants
back then.  Electricity consumption had been (until recently) growing
at about 7% a year, so over 50 years would go up only about thirty times.