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If you can get 1g of acceleration, the trip to mars is a couple of days, I don't think you could ever get that with solar.

Edit: reaction mass becomes the problem, say to move a ship 10^4kg, 2x10^9 m (the distance to mars) at 1g, I adapted an answer from [1]

So say the craft has a mass of 10^4 kg. To accelerate at 1 G you need F = ma = (10^4 kg)(10 m/s^2) = 10^5 N. To get a force of 10^5 N over 2x10^9 m (distance to mars), you would need (10^5 N)(2x10^9 m) = 2x10^14 J, lets say 10^14J. Antimatter is the most energy dense material we know. To get that from antimatter you would need m = E/c^2 = 10^14 J/10^17 m^2/s^2 = 1gram. So you'd only need 1gram of antimatter - is that right?

CERN has made around 1 nanogram so far, 1gram would cost around $25 billion in a 2006 estimate, its down from $62 trillion in a 1999 estimate [2], so it may be feasible one day...

Edit2: The moon is 4x10^8m, so you'd need 0.1gram of antimatter, you'd be there in an hour or so.

[1] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34996.0

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter




Only if really all the mass of the antimatter is usable energy for propulsion. A large chunk this energy would probably be in the form of gamma ray photons: they are not usable for thrust and irradiate the materials of the spaceship, another large chunk would be heat. And I assume you would also need quite a bit of energy for whatever vessel is holding the antimatter in place (magnetic fields maybe?), to avoid that the entirety of the 10^14J is produced instantly by annihilation with normal matter.




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