So, yesterday I attached that discussion about how matter/anti-matter annihilation could theoretically act as an energy source with a high enough power density to allow for interplanetary space travel and possibly interstellar travel. Now something like this thought experiment is so nebulous in its details that even calling it a low probability outcome is being way too optimistic. The idea that a ship would contain some huge number of ultra tiny anti-matter snow balls in storage for perhaps decades of travel seems ludicrously improbable. Especially since any one anti-matter snow ball will immediately destroy the space craft if containment is breached for any of a million reasons.
And yet, in a way, the very difficulty of the process somehow makes me think that somewhere hidden in this improbability is an elegant solution to the problem that will be discovered when it becomes time for such a process to move us forward. It can’t and won’t happen now because we don’t need it now. Going to Mars or Ganymede isn’t currently something that humanity needs badly. We don’t even need a Moon base. But eventually all three of these celestial locations will become important to humanity. When or how these places will become critical is indeterminate. But just because we don’t know the when or the how makes no difference. We went to the Moon in 1969 because German missile technology and American technological curiosity collided during the Cold War and handed us space flight.
Something else will come along and we’ll stumble into the next piece of the puzzle while working on something completely different. And this pattern will repeat itself over the course of a decade or two and, then voila! A matter/anti-matter rocket will be tested in space. And then twenty years later it will become old-hat.
Does this mean that I believe that we can do anything? No. We’re not God or all powerful. Notice that I haven’t stated that faster than light travel (FTL) is possible. As far as I know humans lack the ability to reprogram the universe to increase the speed at which matter may travel to something faster than 186,000 miles per second and probably never will. But reaching a technical solution that allows us to get as close to that limit as possible is what we’ll do.
What I envision is a robot ship powered by matter/anti-matter annihilation. The first applications for this capability will be unmanned reconnaissance of the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt. And this will be followed by manned missions. Eventually, there will be a robot mission to the nearest star. What we find there may decide the trajectory of our race into the unforeseeable future. If we stumble upon a planet with life already present then that planet will become the focus of the imagination of our world. And eventually we will send men there.
But if we search planet after planet and never find life of any kind that may cause mankind to turn inward and look for progress of a different kind. And maybe that is the higher wisdom.
