That is so f***ing COOL!

Geez... what could be done with 20 kilos of antimatter? Hopefully not bombs - what a stupid waste - but as energiser for a reaction mass... let's see. Say you wanted to reach 0.1 c. Max energy efficiency when exhaust velocity is 62.5% of the final velocity... Thus ratio is roughly 1000/1, reaction-mass/antimatter, so that's 20 tons propellant and a 5 ton vehicle+payload.

Hmmm... seems a bit wasted. How about 0.01 c? Thus we get 2000 tons propellant. But even 0.001 c is lightning fast around Sol Space. Thus 200,000 tons propellant. That's 1000 50-ton ships tanked up. Wonder what the replacement time is for 20 kilos of antimatter cosmic-rays?

Kewl!

Adam

Heck... Out-Planet missions can be done with ~ 100 km/s dV, so 20 kilos = 1.8 million tons energised propellant. And all in space. Pity anti-protons are such buggers to thermalise. Would we need to crash them into uranium nucleii to get useful decays? Dense metal and high melting point. Heavy nucleus and thus lower recoil.