Can we contain anti-matter?

[Aerozord]

Obviously just having anti-matter in sizable quantities existing at all on the planet is dangerous. But do we have the technology to capture and contain it?

I know we can make it, particle accelerators make it as a bi-product and could be fine tuned for that specific purpose. Now I do know even a 100% efficient one would be pointless since the energy you'd get out of the reaction would be equal to the energy it took to make it. There is the ability to make it into a weapon, but I wanted a productive use.

Was thinking, bulk of rocket fuel is used to lift the rest of the fuel. Anti-matter would save alot of fuel since its a very highly condensed energy source.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

You can suspend charged antimatter particles in electromagnetic fields. CERN has managed to contain antiprotons that way. It's still difficult and massively costly to try and make anything but the tiniest amount though.

[Amake]

Magnetic fields, man. Not just a great band but the key to space travel. What we want is a spaceship with a fusion reactor on it to power these magnetic fields that contain and direct its propellants: Antimatter to reach escape velocity and superheated hydrogen plasma for the ion engines that become useful in interstellar travel. The onboard fuel is going to have like a thousandth part of the mass of the ship. Much less if we stick a particle accelerator on there to let the ship make its own antimatter and really speed things up, but that's probably more of a built-in-orbit sort of feature that implies space elevators.

Strange conceptual kind of problem in reaching the stars, here: A rocket has to carry its own fuel, and an orbital elevator cable has to withstand its own weight. I wonder if the solution is taking a little of both. It would be a constant drain of energy on probably a type-1 civilization scale, but you could keep a simple lightweight wire of any length upright with some kind of rocket engines or, wait, how about some magnetic fields?

Once you reach space at ~100 km, I believe superconducting magnets could be used with little or no additional expense. Besides the energy production, the main problem I think will be finding enough magnetic iron and still have something left to make spaceships out of. Ever get the feeling that the universe is missing some kind of bank that could loan you a sum of energy or metals and things that you could easily pay back after you use it to build something?

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by Amake

Strange conceptual kind of problem in reaching the stars, here: A rocket has to carry its own fuel, and an orbital elevator cable has to withstand its own weight. I wonder if the solution is taking a little of both. It would be a constant drain of energy on probably a type-1 civilization scale, but you could keep a simple lightweight wire of any length upright with some kind of rocket engines or, wait, how about some magnetic fields?

Current model for space elevator is to create a counter weight in orbit and 'hang' the cable from it. If we could make a pure carbon nanotube ribbon than we could make one but our record is like one foot and we'd need hundreds of miles.

[shiney]

I wonder if harvesting asteroids from the belt would make any impact.

Of course first, we'd have to be able to get a harvester to the asteroid belt.

Of course first, we'd have to have a harvester.

Of course first, we'd have to have the technology to build a harvester.

Of course first, we'd have to fund research to build a harvester.

Of course first, we'd have to quit dicking about with oil pipeline arguments and reallocate our resources to something more important.

Of course first, we'd have to quit being fucking retarded about every other thing in the world.

I would love to see what humanity could accomplish if we were free of the shackles of self-interested businessmen.

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I have always wondered about the feasibility of a space elevator / space cable. So it woudl essentially be anchored to a space station/etc? Would it be a case of the anchor has to have more mass than the cable, to prevent it from simply falling to the earth? I also find myself wondering how we would prevent the space-anchor from orbiting too fast and wrenching the cable away or whatever. It's all very fascinating...

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by shiney

I would love to see what humanity could accomplish if we were free of the shackles of self-interested businessmen.

With the US, businessmen are the only ones interested in mining in space, or space tourism, or to a lesser extent colonization. Heck some of the biggest investors for space mining are the big wigs at Google. Yea I'd love it if we as a society dumped more money into these projects but the government doesn't have any real intention of giving NASA that kind of funding.

Originally Posted by shiney

I have always wondered about the feasibility of a space elevator / space cable. So it woudl essentially be anchored to a space station/etc? Would it be a case of the anchor has to have more mass than the cable, to prevent it from simply falling to the earth? I also find myself wondering how we would prevent the space-anchor from orbiting too fast and wrenching the cable away or whatever. It's all very fascinating...

You'd need something with higher mass counter-weighing it past the station itself so the center of gravity is at the station in geosynchronous orbit.

As for just natural drift, like with satellites it just needs minor corrections over time, no big deal. The most popular design idea is to have the base over the ocean so it can be moved if need be. This is actually for intentionally moving it though. The mass of the cable would be so high everyday wind would barely be noticeable.

Personally I think building it atop a near equatorial mountain is better. Weather is more stable, can cut off a few miles worth of cable and the influx of business and tourist traffic would greatly motivate a nation to dump alot of money into the project.

Oh and just some reading for economics of one

[Amake]

Originally Posted by shiney

I would love to see what humanity could accomplish if we were free of the shackles of self-interested businessmen.

Word.

I have always wondered about the feasibility of a space elevator / space cable. So it would essentially be anchored to a space station/etc? Would it be a case of the anchor has to have more mass than the cable, to prevent it from simply falling to the earth?

Well, the right length of cable properly weighted would balance perfectly between Earth's gravity and centrifugal force, so there's no need for a specific anchor to keep it in place. You'd set up a station at the zero G point to get somewhere for the spaceships to fall into space from, but the cable just sits there, much like a road does.

Not particularly important, but I find that a wonderfully poetic image. Until you have to start correcting the elevator's position when it drifts for one reason or another, anyway.

[Azisien]

At our current technology level it would take billions of years to make and contain even a gram of antimatter. Even if we could do it fast, it would cost billions and billions to get that gram, and I don't even want to know about how much energy we had to pump into that process to get that much antimatter, but I doubt it's efficient. I don't think efficiency in itself is a big deal for your question though. Because you're kind of talking about using antimatter as batteries. A ridiculous amount of energy goes into the making of a chemical battery (x150-500) considering the energy you get out of one, but they are still useful because they are highly portable and small.

I'm sure there will be more breakthroughs in our lifetime on the laboratory scale, though. Actually a lot of progress has been made in the last 10 years.