How close is the human race to perfecting an anti-matter space travel engine?

Question

I've heard the ion engine is close, but anti-matter is apparently superior as far as distance traveled, and effiecency. I reach out to anyone that loves the thought of finding another intelligent civilitation.

Answer 1

Well, looks like I'll be disagreeing with the majority, again :)

Antimatter propulsion is possible and has a bright future.

Similar in design to the Orion Project designed 50 years ago and using nukes, the Antimatter pulse engine has advantages and disadvantages. See the links below.

The major drawback is in the supply of antimatter... it is difficult to produce and contain... but they're working on it!` Eventually we'll be able to produce antimatter in quantity... where there's a will there's a way!

Answer 2

John T is right....

Except I believe we can see the first anti-matter space travel engine being put into regular use in as little as a century from now....I don't think we will have that much trouble coming up with the fuel for the engine (cylindrical plutonium pellets??? I read somewhere some physicist came up with the idea of using a blast plate to propel the starship...a small cylindrical shaped charge of plutonium would be ejected out the rear end and an explosion would occur, the blast then would move the ship forward. Such explosions could occur seconds or even miliseconds after one another??? Is this Project Orion that we are talking about here??)

On the other hand I do believe we could use wormholes as a means of transportation...but I do believe near-LT propulsion engines will be the norm until we can better understand the physics of wormholes.....

Answer 3

"OOPS..."

You said, "...as far as distance traveled and efficiency."

Did you mean the Model 90441, or the Russian EL267 engine design?

Anti-matter has yet to be developed, captured, or contained here on Earth. At such a time as that happens, development of Anti-matter engines might begin some time thereafter. At this moment, the problem seems to revolve around the issue of containment. Some fairly good theories are out there right now on production of it. However, once produced, what would you store it in to make a fuel storage container? The obvious materials such as plastic, aluminum, bronze, steel, stainless steel, and titanium are all out of the question because they are made of "matter" and would instantly disintegrate when coming in contact with anti-matter. So, your container needs to be fabricated of sheets of Zeromatter17, a material presently being produced only by the Central Intelligence Agency in North America under the highest levels of secrecy. This product is the result of years of research and testing and may be the solution scientists have been looking for all these many years.

However, given the vast distances involved in reaching any other civilizations in deep space, I would not characterize the mission as being imminent. Probable missions might last for 50 years or more, and commence within the next ten thousand years, or so.

Answer 4

Wow, where'd you hear that? Somebody's been spinning tall tales (or, more likely, confusing interplanetary and interstellar). We have the capability to send robotic probes anywhere in the solar system, and are just on the cusp (or close to it) of being able to send people to the nearest planet. That's hardly interstellar travel. OTOH, we do just barely (and with great expense) have the ability to send a probe to the nearest star, if we really wanted to. It would take about a century to get there though. Any of the above might have been behind what you heard. But none of that (or even if we had Star Trek-like starships!) would make us invincible. If we were playing around in interstellar space, there could always be an alien race out there somewhere with bigger and better weapons and engines than us.

Answer 5

Astro-physics shows us that the key to inter-galactic space travel technology is not in how fast we can go but how smart we can become to reduce the distances involved.
Einstein proposed in the Theory of GR, the mathematical probability of the Einstein-Rosen bridge, However, in 1962 John A. Wheeler and Robert W. Fuller published a paper showing that this type of wormhole is unstable, and that it will pinch off instantly as soon as it forms, preventing even light from making it through.
We have since then learned that with the help of quantum mechanics, which Einstein completely disregarded, we can create a traversable wormhole held open by a spherical shell of exotic matter, as referred to as a Morris-Thorne wormhole. Later, other types of traversable wormholes were discovered as allowable solutions to the equations of general relativity, such as a type held open by cosmic strings.

This is the future of space travel, not propulsion devices!

Answer 6

We're not. Our own technologies are limited to 40-year-old hardware and computer software. We've gotten ahead on some of the long-distance stuff pitched out beyond our system, but beyond that, anti-matter is very hard to process--let alone fabricate.

Answer 7

We are no where near creating an anti-matter engine, much less perfecting one. Creating an engine to thrust using energy from matter-antimatter annihilation would be extremely dangerous, too. I hope we don't mess up and blow up Earth...Lol.

Answer 8

Not even close, humans have longs ways. Anti-matter at this point doesn't exist that we presently know. Reaching out to another intelligent cilization would mean an end to human race as we know it. Any intelligent specis would take advantages of this poor human race that can never out match aliens. We would be doomed.

Answer 9

Man has not even started work on an anti-matter engine..
Anti-matter engines are still beyond the theoretical stage,
they are in the imaginary stage..

Answer 10

Far away, very hard to accumulate large amounts of anti-matter,and anit matter is very volatile