Antimatter Cost

[glitterboy2098]

given that converting regular matter into antimatter (via manipulation of quantum particles) is going to be the most difficult way of producing it... not cheap at all.

the easiest way, using atom smashers, is not much cheaper, given the size of the facilities required to produce it enmass.

[Jedrious]

Honestly, probably the SAFEst way to deal with Antimatter engins is to have Hydrogen2 fuel cells and convert as needed, I know I wouldn't want to keep raw antimatter on hand...

[glitterboy2098]

the problem with that is Antimatter is not so much as a fuel as it is an energy storage approach. producing antimatter, by any method short of magic, is going to use more energy for a given quantitiy than you'll be able to harness from said quantity.

so 'converting on the go' is a no-go, because you'd have to carry a second energy source with higher output than your main powerplant. and if you have non-antimatter powerplants that potent in portable form, you don't need antimatter reactors for power.

[Aramanthus]

What is you have a production facility located in an isolated from civilazation but heavily guarded. Say the facility was built on either a moon or a planet without an atmosphere. And if the nation built this facility they could have laid enormous levels of cash into it to produce a vast amount of anti-matter quickly enough to meet most of their needs.

[Jedrious]

the problem with that is Antimatter is not so much as a fuel as it is an energy storage approach. producing antimatter, by any method short of magic, is going to use more energy for a given quantitiy than you'll be able to harness from said quantity.

so 'converting on the go' is a no-go, because you'd have to carry a second energy source with higher output than your main powerplant. and if you have non-antimatter powerplants that potent in portable form, you don't need antimatter reactors for power.

assuming current technological capabilities. I'm willing to bet that the process has been refined enough to where it's a significantly better conversion ratio

[glitterboy2098]

the problem with that is Antimatter is not so much as a fuel as it is an energy storage approach. producing antimatter, by any method short of magic, is going to use more energy for a given quantitiy than you'll be able to harness from said quantity.

so 'converting on the go' is a no-go, because you'd have to carry a second energy source with higher output than your main powerplant. and if you have non-antimatter powerplants that potent in portable form, you don't need antimatter reactors for power.

assuming current technological capabilities. I'm willing to bet that the process has been refined enough to where it's a significantly better conversion ratio

actually thats using the studies assuming the most pie-in-the-sky ideal technologies. the studies i've read assuming realistic technologies are several orders of magnitude worse.

What is you have a production facility located in an isolated from civilazation but heavily guarded. Say the facility was built on either a moon or a planet without an atmosphere. And if the nation built this facility they could have laid enormous levels of cash into it to produce a vast amount of anti-matter quickly enough to meet most of their needs.

the biggest danger isn't the production facility, it's the fuel itself. just a few grams can level most of a small city. even a phase world starfighter is gonna have it measured in double or triple digit kilograms, with potential destructive ability equal to double to triple digit megatons. you don't want to even think about the decatonnage to kilotonnage carried by most of the big starships.. planet killers those are. you really don't want to have a containment breach.

and containment would be a big problem, since phase world implies they're using anti-hdrogen.. which is neutrally charged, and thus the most effective method, magnetic traps, won't work. Braden has alrready established that you can't use forcefeild to do it (don't work on liquids and gases, remember..), and solid anti-hydrogen is going to be hard to use as a fuel.

[Nightmask]

Yes but considering that hydrogen2 costs 1-2 million credits per ton
How many credits would a ton of Antimatter cost in the three galaxies market
There must be a market for it since so many ships run on it
Not to mention all the Antimatter cruise missiles

It might not be that costly in the 3 Galaxies setting. Remember they have technology to access the multiverse they could simply be opening up gates and cheaply acquiring it from anti-matter universes rather than converting existing matter or energy into anti-matter. Add in magic spells that can conjure up anti-matter and it becomes fairly cost efficient.

[ShadowLogan]

f a ton of Hydrogen2 which "can be easily converted into antimatter" (although I doubt its that easy) costs 1 - 2 million credits.
How much does a ton of Antimatter cost?

That would depend on how they do it.

Do they have to actually convert regular matter into anti-matter or is there natural deposits of the stuff scattered about the universe they harvest from (the novel "Flight Engineer" series used naturally occurring "deposits" of anti-matter/particles, I forget which been to long since I've read the 1st book and never read the rest of the series)?

[azazel1024]

You get about 1.1% conversion efficiency from He3 to antimatter assuming 100% efficient electrical output from He3 fusion and 100% conversion efficiency from electrical energy in to antimatter.

So if you wanted 1 ton, which is never, EVER likely to be found in that quantity all together, you'd need about 100 tons of He3, or around 100-200 million credits. Since even super cool sci fi, I think we have to assume no more than 90% or so conversion efficiency on both sides, lets say 125-250 million credits for a ton.

10Kg of antimatter with 100% conversion to electricity can produce 1GW for 50 years. Which is a poop ton of power. I'd assume NOTHING really carries 50 years of antimatter. That kind of damage if the core were breached would be catastrophic. Even a little suit of power armor that might only need a few hundred killowatts of output peak, and only part of the time (lets assume 100% duty cycle 1hr out of every 24hrs for 50 years and 250KW of max output) would be something north of 16PJ of energy or roughly 40 kiloton explosion if/when the core was breached. Say good by to any nearby cities in combat once PA starts getting knocked out. Even with amazing containment strategies, fuel storage WILL get breached occasionally.

A much more plausible storage scenario, especially for things like power armor and the sort are to store no more than than a couple of months of fuel in the suit unless you need really long duration, then you might store 6 months or so. Even then you are talking half a kiloton yeild detonation with 6 months of fuel in the thing.

Spaceships likely would store a longer fuel duration, but even then likely aren't going to have more than 1-3 years of fuel on board at most. The ship's fuel would also serve to refuel the ship's spacefighters, power armor, etc between missions/periodically so that you didn't have too much antimatter in anything at any one time. Maybe only a week or three's worth of fuel in a PA suit or spacefighter unless it needs to go on protracted duty away from refueling.

MY vision is that the 50 year life span is the maximum operating life of the power core. After that the core needs replacing. However, refueling has to occur periodically, anywhere between monthly up to every couple of years depending on the design of the vehicle.

Also for places like space ports or even civilian refueling of their CG packs, antimatter powered airplanes, etc refueling stations would have some pretty impressive fusion power generators converting antimatter on the spot and only storing tiny amounts.

To power up your high performance hovercar that might use 250kw of power, 1hr a day and 30 days worth of fuel between refueling it would take around 7,000kw/hr of fuel energy. That is 25 seconds of power output from a 1GW fusion reactor. That would take 13 miligrams of He3 to generate the 7,000kw/hr. It would cost you roughly less than 1 credit to refuel your hovercar with cost it would take based on the fuel inputs to generate the antimatter, assuming close to 100% electrical and antimatter conversion efficiencies.

Of course factor in capitol costs to make the reactor, run the refueling operation, all the safe guards you need, etc and realistically you'd probably be paying 10-30 cedits "at the pump" to fill up your hovercar monthly.

For a spaceship, I'd assume it would need a boat ton more antimatter. For something like a small freighter it probably needs about 1kg of antimatter per 6 months of normal operations. With a 1.1% conversion efficiency that works out to around 1 ton of He3 to manufacture that antimatter. So roughly 1-2 million credits worth of antimatter per 6 months to keep the ship running. You could maybe even figure somewhat less antimatter than that. Afterall, 1kg is 5 years of power production at 1GW. Even if the power requirements are higher than 1GW (which I'd think they would be to run things like massively power lasers, even if they are short range/low power ones...massively powered compared to today's lasers, shield incredibly fast sublight engines let alone FTL engines, environmental systems, etc)...you only need to produce the power for 6 months, which would be 10GW 24/7/182.5 days worth.

So a light frieghter might only need a few hundred grams of antimatter, maybe a couple of hundred thousand credits to refuel twice a year.

Bigger ships and things like military ships would need a lot more on each 6 month refueling stop (and some of the ones designed for longer term independent operation might take on 1 or 2 years or more of fuel at a time). Even something like a big bad azz battlewagon probably doesn't store more than a couple of hundred kilograms of antimatter on board to supply it with power for half a year.

[DhAkael]

Or simple; you say anti-matter is 100 creds a microgram.
Why?
Beacuse you are the GM, that's why.

[Aramanthus]

You should be able to contain it in a magnetic bottle provided there is an uninterupted power supply.

[Qev]

Wellllll... if you're techy enough, you can always just make/find a baby black hole and use that to make antimatter. Start-up costs are probably a bit high, though.

Just start dumping random crap into it, doesn't really matter what. Matter goes in, 50% matter 50% antimatter comes out as Hawking radiation (provided you don't overfeed the poor little thing and make it fat). Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.

[azazel1024]

AFAIK, hawking radiation is not an equal mix of matter and anti-matter particles. At least I haven't read that anywhere. Now, for power production, yes you could just feed the black hole and harness the hawking radiation (plus also the heat/radiation produced by gravitational compaction on the way to the event horizon) and produce antimatter through another process using that "free" energy.

[glitterboy2098]

Hawking radiation is thought to be caused by black holes absorbing halves of the particle/anti-partical virtual pairs beleived to arise spontaniously from the quantum fluctuations in space/time. the radiation itself is expected to be high energy photons. so far hawking radiation has not yet been observed from any known singularity. in part this is due to the massive radiation outputs caused by regular matter infalling into the event horizon, which probably swamps the signals with noise. there has been some question as to the validity of hawking's models however, given recent discoveries in quantum physics.

your best bet for making antimatter in quantity is massive electrical discharges along a planet's magnetic field lines.. though trapping the result wouldl ikely be a rather involved process. the output is ideally suited for storage however.

[drewkitty ~..~]

I am using the Three Galaxies book page 152 as the reference here.

If a ton of Hydrogen2 which "can be easily converted into antimatter" (although I doubt its that easy) costs 1 - 2 million credits.
How much does a ton of Antimatter cost?

I'm betting its not cheap.

That is like asking "How much do missiles cost?"
There are only a few missile listings which list their costs. The rest are "w/o a list cost".

[flatline]

AFAIK, hawking radiation is not an equal mix of matter and anti-matter particles. At least I haven't read that anywhere. Now, for power production, yes you could just feed the black hole and harness the hawking radiation (plus also the heat/radiation produced by gravitational compaction on the way to the event horizon) and produce antimatter through another process using that "free" energy.

It's my understanding that equal amounts of matter and anti-matter particles are created, but the anti-matter particles are statistically more likely to be gobbled up by the black hole while their sibling particle flies off into space (somehow dependent on the curvature of the event horizon).

It's been a long time since I looked into this stuff, but I remember calculating that any black hole small enough to get a significant amount of energy out (say, converting 1kg of mass to energy per second) was orders of magnitude small than a proton, so feeding such a black hole would be problematic.

--flatline

[drewkitty ~..~]

AFAIK, hawking radiation is not an equal mix of matter and anti-matter particles. At least I haven't read that anywhere. Now, for power production, yes you could just feed the black hole and harness the hawking radiation (plus also the heat/radiation produced by gravitational compaction on the way to the event horizon) and produce antimatter through another process using that "free" energy.

Hawking radiation Just Happens. There is no need to feed anything into the black hole for it to happen.

10Kg of antimatter with 100% conversion to electricity can produce 1GW for 50 years.

Is this 1GigaWatt "Per hour", "per minute", "per second", "Per day", or "per year"?

[azazel1024]

The feeding of the black hole would be to generate radiation (xray in this case) from the compression of the matter stream nearing the event horizon. The hawking radiation does "just happen", but for a large black hole, it is insignificant. The rate of hawking radiation production increases the lower the mass of the blackhole. Which means truely massive blackholes produce very little, but as they slowly evaporate from hawking radiation production, the amount of hawking radiation they produce will go up to the point where right before the dissappear they will produce hawking radiation on the scale of the equivelency of tens of thousands of kilotons of TNT per second in the last seconds of a black holes life.

As for the 1GW for 50 years, it is 1GW for 50 years. Measurement of power, not energy (otherwise I would have said something like 1GW/hr per day, second, minute etc). So 1GW of power, 24/7/365/50. That is about 1.5 million terrajoules of energy (or 1.5 billion gigawatt hours).

[Qev]

It's my understanding that equal amounts of matter and anti-matter particles are created, but the anti-matter particles are statistically more likely to be gobbled up by the black hole while their sibling particle flies off into space (somehow dependent on the curvature of the event horizon).

It's been a long time since I looked into this stuff, but I remember calculating that any black hole small enough to get a significant amount of energy out (say, converting 1kg of mass to energy per second) was orders of magnitude small than a proton, so feeding such a black hole would be problematic.

AFIAK they should produce roughly equal amounts of matter and antimatter, since it's more-or-less thermalized pair production, but I'm not actually a physicist so...

And yeah, feeding such a tiny black hole can be a problem. I suppose you could use gamma ray lasers to do so, but if you can power those, you probably don't need the black hole in the first place! On the other hand, the curvature near the hole is going to be so extreme that I could see it spaghettifying other particles handily...

Hawking radiation Just Happens. There is no need to feed anything into the black hole for it to happen.

Well yeah, the idea here is to use the black hole as a matter-to-antimatter converter. You have to keep feeding it or it keeps shrinking and then explodes, taking your power plant (and the moon it's located on) with it.

[flatline]

AFAIK, hawking radiation is not an equal mix of matter and anti-matter particles. At least I haven't read that anywhere. Now, for power production, yes you could just feed the black hole and harness the hawking radiation (plus also the heat/radiation produced by gravitational compaction on the way to the event horizon) and produce antimatter through another process using that "free" energy.

Hawking radiation Just Happens. There is no need to feed anything into the black hole for it to happen.

Hawking radiation reduces the mass of the black hole, so if you want to continue to harvest the hawking radiation, you'd better be feeding mass into the black hole to achieve a steady state mass and output.

If you let the black hole evaporate away, your facility will be destroyed since in the last moments of evaporation, the power output approaches infinity.

--flatline

[Nightmask]

AFAIK, hawking radiation is not an equal mix of matter and anti-matter particles. At least I haven't read that anywhere. Now, for power production, yes you could just feed the black hole and harness the hawking radiation (plus also the heat/radiation produced by gravitational compaction on the way to the event horizon) and produce antimatter through another process using that "free" energy.

Hawking radiation Just Happens. There is no need to feed anything into the black hole for it to happen.

Hawking radiation reduces the mass of the black hole, so if you want to continue to harvest the hawking radiation, you'd better be feeding mass into the black hole to achieve a steady state mass and output.

If you let the black hole evaporate away, your facility will be destroyed since in the last moments of evaporation, the power output approaches infinity.

--flatline

Hmmm, I wonder if that's where quasar activity comes from.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Hmmm, I wonder if that's where quasar activity comes from.

It comes from the superheated matter being eaten by a galaxy's central super-massive black hole, when there is a lot of matter that is being eaten.(is the simple answer)

[Nightmask]

Hmmm, I wonder if that's where quasar activity comes from.

It comes from the superheated matter being eaten by a galaxy's central super-massive black hole, when there is a lot of matter that is being eaten.(is the simple answer)

That'd be a theory, we still aren't really sure what they are we just have an idea that seems to fit best.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Hmmm, I wonder if that's where quasar activity comes from.

It comes from the superheated matter being eaten by a galaxy's central super-massive black hole, when there is a lot of matter that is being eaten.(is the simple answer)

That'd be a theory, we still aren't really sure what they are we just have an idea that seems to fit best.

Well astronomers seam to think that is the answer.
Not that scientists get everything right.

[glitterboy2098]

not to nitpick, but thechnically it's just a hypothesis, not a theory. it hasn't been tested enough to move up to a theory yet.

i think discussing black holes is heading down a dead end path. a black hole itself doesn't generate anti-matter. if you could simulate a steady gravitic singularity without the prerequisite mass you could use the effect that produces hawking radiation to generate and collect anti-protons, but by phase world canon such artificial singularities are still barely outside the abilities of the three galaxies (the TGE has a weaponized singularity generator on heavy cruise missiles, but that seems only to produce a short duration pulse of intense gravity. true artificial singularities are out of reach of the three galaxies, according to Anvil Galaxy's entry on the Forge heresies, though the faction holding the belief that the forge will appear to any group that manages to produce one is apparently working to develop the idea..which probably led to the TGE getting the singularity warheads for their heavy cruise missiles.)

the naturally occuring production due to interaction between immense magnetic fields and highly energized plasma (lightning) is probably a more pluasible source.

[Qev]

Hmmm, I wonder if that's where quasar activity comes from.

It comes from the superheated matter being eaten by a galaxy's central super-massive black hole, when there is a lot of matter that is being eaten.(is the simple answer)

That'd be a theory, we still aren't really sure what they are we just have an idea that seems to fit best.

Actually, Hubble's directly observed the accretion disc around a quasar black hole, so it's a pretty firm theory.

Anyway, you can get antimatter from all sorts of crazy places. I just suggested a manufactured black hole since, well, it'll handily convert anything into 50% antimatter for you. Trash into Cash, as it were. You could also do wacky stuff like harvesting the polar jets produced by naturally-occurring superdense bodies (black holes, pulsars), from their magnetic fields, from the enormous thunderstorms on gas giant planets...

[glitterboy2098]

trapping the reletivistic jet from a black hole or neutron star will just net you an electrically nuetral plasma though. while positrons are produced and help form the jet, it is unlikley that they would survive long in the stew of electrons and positrons also found in the jet. the fact the jet is electrially neutral means that the production of electrons is equal to the production of positrons and protons. so by the time the jet reaches a point where you could safely hold a station close enough to siphon off material from the jet, most of the positrons would have met up with electrons and annialiated, merely energizing the plasma.

[Qev]

trapping the reletivistic jet from a black hole or neutron star will just net you an electrically nuetral plasma though. while positrons are produced and help form the jet, it is unlikley that they would survive long in the stew of electrons and positrons also found in the jet. the fact the jet is electrially neutral means that the production of electrons is equal to the production of positrons and protons. so by the time the jet reaches a point where you could safely hold a station close enough to siphon off material from the jet, most of the positrons would have met up with electrons and annialiated, merely energizing the plasma.

Considering the length of the typical jet, and the velocity of its components, I would imagine you would be able to harvest antimatter from them at a reasonable range, given sufficiently advanced technology. I mean, we can detect evidence positrons in quasar jets halfway across the visible universe. The jets overall are electrically neutral, but they're confined by magnetic fields which would likely play some role in preventing immediate annihilation.

Of course a more sensible antimatter factory would just be a Dyson swarm powering some particle accelerators or vacuum-sparking lasers or something.

[glitterboy2098]

it's more a matter of yields though. i doubt that the amount of positrons you could extract from the stream is going to be high enough to make it's sale profitable, given the fact you'd need some pretty impressive engineering even in phase world to tap into the stream.

plus i'm not sure positrons are a good choice for antimatter fuel. all they do is destroy electrons, leaving protons and neutrons. which from a power generating standpoint are pretty much useless. if you use anti-protons however, what's left is electrons and neutrons. the former of which can be extracted from the resulting plasma in the reactor via magnetohydrodynamic processes, and the latter of which is just radiation to be shielded against.

this is why i suggested tapping the streams of anti-protons naturally produced from the interaction between powerful magnetic fields and immense voltages in a gas. since you can generate energy levels comparable to lightning using hydrogen fusion, building a system on planet's with strong magnetic fields that release jolts of lightning into a gasous material around the magnetic field line, then trapping the resulting anti-proton stream as it follows the magnetic field line would work well.

[Chronicle]

The major problem when we are looking at cost is, that we are taking current technilogical limitations into consideration. Future tech may have a better way of converting and storing it (more likely will).

On an off note i read somewhere a long time ago in an article that Antimatter might not be as powerful as first believed, but the Newer numbers they came up with still Blow anything we can do out of the water lol.

[Nightmask]

I've always wondered how you manage to acquire anti-matter at a cost that's effective, it would seem like what it takes to make the stuff costs more in energy put in. Unless you're accepting that cost because the energy density of anti-matter is worth what it takes to make it.

[glitterboy2098]

The major problem when we are looking at cost is, that we are taking current technilogical limitations into consideration. Future tech may have a better way of converting and storing it (more likely will).

actually i don't base my comments on current tech, because current tech can't produce it in any quantity. nor can it store it.
heck, i'm not even using 'near future predicted' tech.
i base my comments on physics, which are going to dictate any future technology.
but barring some form of ability to just transmute quantum particles, you can't make antimatter easily. phase world doesn't have such technology, or the setting would look a lot different.

phase world tech would however allow the known processes (atom smashers, anti-proton streams from storms, etc) to be made viable.

and the possibility of say, finding antimatter clouds (say left over from the beginning of the universe), or extradimensional sources are certainly within the capability of the setting as well.

[Qev]

On an off note i read somewhere a long time ago in an article that Antimatter might not be as powerful as first believed, but the Newer numbers they came up with still Blow anything we can do out of the water lol.

It really depends on what sort of antimatter reactions you're working with. Electron-positron annihilation is 100% efficient: two leptons go in, and you get pure gamma rays as the output. No idea how one is going to go about storing a pile of positrons though.

With larger (ie. composite) particles - antiprotons, antineutrons, etc - things get much messier. With proton-antiproton reactions (and I assume neutrons as well) you wind up with an initial burst of assorted pi-mesons, some of which promptly decay into useful gamma-rays, and the others into muon/antimuons and a bunch of high-energy neutrinos. The muons then decay into electrons/positrons and yet more neutrinos, and then the e+/-s annihilate into more handy gamma-rays. The problem is those darn neutrinos, since they wind up carrying off around 55% of the total energy, and with their ridiculous ability to ignore everyone they just wander off with it all, being of no use to anybody.

I've always wondered how you manage to acquire anti-matter at a cost that's effective, it would seem like what it takes to make the stuff costs more in energy put in. Unless you're accepting that cost because the energy density of anti-matter is worth what it takes to make it.

If you're making the stuff yourself then yeah, it isn't a fuel so much as a storage medium, albeit an enormously high density one. The natural sources of it that do exist are typically unpleasant to be around to some degree, particularly the ones that produce it in any useful quantity.

Mind you, this is Rifts we're talking about. All you really need is some clever Shifter or something to open up a rift into an antimatter universe, and offer to take the inhabitants' trash off their hands for extremely reasonable rates...

[Nightmask]

I've always wondered how you manage to acquire anti-matter at a cost that's effective, it would seem like what it takes to make the stuff costs more in energy put in. Unless you're accepting that cost because the energy density of anti-matter is worth what it takes to make it.

If you're making the stuff yourself then yeah, it isn't a fuel so much as a storage medium, albeit an enormously high density one. The natural sources of it that do exist are typically unpleasant to be around to some degree, particularly the ones that produce it in any useful quantity.

Mind you, this is Rifts we're talking about. All you really need is some clever Shifter or something to open up a rift into an antimatter universe, and offer to take the inhabitants' trash off their hands for extremely reasonable rates...

I had often thought that at least Techno-Wizards might be doing that, using a variation of the Annihilate spell to summon anti-matter to fuel the anti-matter reactors for things like power armor at least. They may do that from a technological angle in the Phase World setting, open up gates to anti-matter universes and just acquire the anti-matter where it is dominant form of matter rather than what we consider normal.

[azazel1024]

Only issue with that is that even in the Phase world setting there aren't really ways for technological Rifting or dimensional hoping. The Prometheans have it...but it also isn't clear that their's is techbased (probably phase based). Or if it is, there is always the little niggle that Center is millenia more advanced than ANYTHING else in the three galaxies.

So technological rifting of antimatter from an antimatter dominated universe isn't likely.

I think the simple matter comes down to using existing methods of power production to convert matter to antimatter really efficiently as a high energy density storage system.

I already covered the basic costs. For most things like personal vehicles, power armor, etc, using the cost of He3 as a basis, it is pennies to fuel personal vehicles. Even long running power armor, larger vehicles etc don't cost much. Heck, space ships wouldn't likely cost all that much when it comes down to it. A few hundred thousand credits every few months to a year isn't that much when you are talking about a ship costing 30 million + credits.

Hell, look at today.

As an example the Carnival Freedom cost $500 million in 2007 to complete. A ship that size likely uses about 200 tons of fuel per day cruising. Figure at sea for about 200 days out of the year at around $600-1,000 per ton of fuel at todays fuel oil prices and you have in the range of $40 million a year in fuel use. So for a modern ship you are going to burn about 8% of the cost of the vessel in fuel per year...and that is a cruise ship.

So a 30 million credit runner ship having to spend maybe 200,000 credits every 6 months, call it 400,000 a year is pretty cheap to keep fueled up compared to a modern ship. That is only a little over 1% a year in fuel costs.

Crap look at even a regular car. My car has awesome milage at about 39mpg on average between summer and winter for my daily commute (85% highway, Mazda 3i). I drive about 12,000 miles per year give or take a little. That is about 307 gallons a year of gasoline at current rates of around $3.80 in my area. The car was $14,500 new off the lot. $1170 in fuel costs per year works out to about 7% of the cost of the vehicle in fuel per year...so even a car uses a significant amount more fuel as a percentage of its costs that using my math for 100% efficient conversion of He3 fusion energy to antimatter.

Of course the amount of power that runner ship might be using might vary wildly, so it might actually need 10x the fuel I estimated, or even less.

At any rate, using modern examples, having to spend 1% of the cost of the vehicle on fuel every year is a pittance compared to what most vehicles use today.

[Nightmask]

Only issue with that is that even in the Phase world setting there aren't really ways for technological Rifting or dimensional hoping. The Prometheans have it...but it also isn't clear that their's is techbased (probably phase based). Or if it is, there is always the little niggle that Center is millenia more advanced than ANYTHING else in the three galaxies.

So technological rifting of antimatter from an antimatter dominated universe isn't likely.

For some reason outside of Transdimensional TMNT Palladium's been very very restrictive when it comes to technological means of dimensional travel. They seem to have an unwritten (or maybe it is written) rule that only mages and creatures with the supernatural ability to do so can open dimensional rifts and jump between dimensions. What few that do have the technological means (like the Megaversal Legion) it's kept clearly in the background and unavailable to PC and most NPC alike.

[glitterboy2098]

actually there is canon phaseworld dimensional portal/rift technology. ignoring the stuff on rifts earth (in lone star and the time holes), if you read the section of the UWW you'll see mention of technological rift drives and dimensional portals. apparently races which develop such 'technomagic' (technology that duplicates spell like effects) qualify for UWW membership.

[flatline]

The Robojockey race got cursed because they opened a dimensional portal via technological means and pissed off some creature from the other side, so there is definitely canon examples of technological dimensional portals.

I don't think it was ever the intention to make dimensional travel impossible without magic, but clearly it is difficult and requires significant resources like a nation or megacorp might have.

--flatline

[random_username]

Fairly sure the Annihilate spell (Book of Magic page 150, and possibly Federation of Magic) either creates or summons anti-matter (from another dimension?). It could possibly be directly used by aiming it into an appropriate containment field to stabilize it (tech or magical). To achieve the magical containment / power source version it could potentially be combined with Techno-Wizardry. Alternatively perhaps a custom variation of the spell could be used to provide a more sustainable source of anti-matter.

[Jedrious]

Fairly sure the Annihilate spell (Book of Magic page 150, and possibly Federation of Magic) either creates or summons anti-matter (from another dimension?). It could possibly be directly used by aiming it into an appropriate containment field to stabilize it (tech or magical). To achieve the magical containment / power source version it could potentially be combined with Techno-Wizardry. Alternatively perhaps a custom variation of the spell could be used to provide a more sustainable source of anti-matter.

Take the example TW Device: Mystic Portable Generator, bump Call Lightning down to a Secondary Spell and add Annihilate as a Primary Spell, Up the Device Level to 14, Add in 7 Carats of Lapis Lazuli at 35,000 credits, remove the requirement of being on a Ley Line and poof, TW Antimatter Engine

[flatline]

Fairly sure the Annihilate spell (Book of Magic page 150, and possibly Federation of Magic) either creates or summons anti-matter (from another dimension?). It could possibly be directly used by aiming it into an appropriate containment field to stabilize it (tech or magical). To achieve the magical containment / power source version it could potentially be combined with Techno-Wizardry. Alternatively perhaps a custom variation of the spell could be used to provide a more sustainable source of anti-matter.

Take the example TW Device: Mystic Portable Generator, bump Call Lightning down to a Secondary Spell and add Annihilate as a Primary Spell, Up the Device Level to 14, Add in 7 Carats of Lapis Lazuli at 35,000 credits, remove the requirement of being on a Ley Line and poof, TW Antimatter Engine

Why would you use a device level of 14?

Much easier to build at a device level of 1.

--flatline

[Nightmask]

Fairly sure the Annihilate spell (Book of Magic page 150, and possibly Federation of Magic) either creates or summons anti-matter (from another dimension?). It could possibly be directly used by aiming it into an appropriate containment field to stabilize it (tech or magical). To achieve the magical containment / power source version it could potentially be combined with Techno-Wizardry. Alternatively perhaps a custom variation of the spell could be used to provide a more sustainable source of anti-matter.

I did mention the use of that spell specifically earlier (and it basically creates a mini-rift and draws in anti-matter from another dimension instead of directly creating anti-matter). However that limits the availability of anti-matter to societies with techno-wizardry since you require a TW to create these things (does explain why Warlock Marine power armor is a mix of magic and anti-matter for its power supply though). For purely high-tech societies they'd need a purely technological means of doing the same, one that was cost effective (and when you think about how much anti-matter would be necessary to power billions of space craft and power armor that's a LOT of anti-matter no matter how efficiently it generates energy).

Hmmm, you know if that's how places like the Three Galaxies gain anti-matter and have been doing it for millenia I wonder if they've imported enough mass (since anti-matter still has normal mass) to offset the nature of dark energy and start the galaxies onto a course of universal collapse.

[drewkitty ~..~]

For use in the military, the term cost effective has a couple different meanings then it does in the civilian sector.

A good part of the cost effective means is it "Mass Effective." "Does the mass it takes up, take up less mass then it's equivalent?" Or "Does the mass it takes up have more 'bang for the mass buck' then the other item?"
But then there is the "is this doing the same job more expensively then this other way?" that gets asked too. So if you ask me if I think we will still be using firearms 100-500 years from now, I will say "Yes, they are the cheapest and most reliable of the slug thrower tech that we know of."

It is known that every solar flare makes a bit of AM when it erupts.So it is conceivable for fusion reactors to be able to make AM also. (The problem would be to filter out the AM before it reacts with normal matter.)(No, I am not a physicist so don't go asking technical questions like 'How?')

So it would be conceivable for AM to be made as a 'by product' from generating the normal base load of a civilization.

[glitterboy2098]

Fairly sure the Annihilate spell (Book of Magic page 150, and possibly Federation of Magic) either creates or summons anti-matter (from another dimension?). It could possibly be directly used by aiming it into an appropriate containment field to stabilize it (tech or magical). To achieve the magical containment / power source version it could potentially be combined with Techno-Wizardry. Alternatively perhaps a custom variation of the spell could be used to provide a more sustainable source of anti-matter.

Take the example TW Device: Mystic Portable Generator, bump Call Lightning down to a Secondary Spell and add Annihilate as a Primary Spell, Up the Device Level to 14, Add in 7 Carats of Lapis Lazuli at 35,000 credits, remove the requirement of being on a Ley Line and poof, TW Antimatter Engine

Why would you use a device level of 14?

Much easier to build at a device level of 1.

--flatline

because the fact that in the technowizardry device creation rules the difficulty modifier for creating the device is not connected in any fashion to the difficulty and complexity of the spells involved is recognized as stupid. the general consensus, at least amoung those of us who actually recognize how easy it is for players to exploit that flaw to make extremely unbalanced devices, is that a TW devices device level should not be below the level of the most advanced spell involved in it's spell chain.
so a TW device using a lv14 spell would have to be built at device level 14 to work.

with Technowizardry, or even the technomancy of the UWW (which according to Braden, is far more developed and approached more like science and engineering than on rifts earth), you could certainly conjure up plenty of antimatter. which doesn't help the magic phobic technological powers like the CCW. it is also kind of ironic, since most starfaring magic societies in the three galaxies use PPE based powerplants..

For use in the military, the term cost effective has a couple different meanings then it does in the civilian sector.

A good part of the cost effective means is it "Mass Effective." "Does the mass it takes up, take up less mass then it's equivalent?" Or "Does the mass it takes up have more 'bang for the mass buck' then the other item?"
But then there is the "is this doing the same job more expensively then this other way?" that gets asked too. So if you ask me if I think we will still be using firearms 100-500 years from now, I will say "Yes, they are the cheapest and most reliable of the slug thrower tech that we know of."

It is known that every solar flare makes a bit of AM when it erupts.So it is conceivable for fusion reactors to be able to make AM also. (The problem would be to filter out the AM before it reacts with normal matter.)(No, I am not a physicist so don't go asking technical questions like 'How?')

So it would be conceivable for AM to be made as a 'by product' from generating the normal base load of a civilization.

a solar flare spewing enough plasma to equal the mass of the earth produced about a pound of antimatter.
even if 3 galaxies technology can duplicate the conditions within a star, which is unknown at the moment in terms of canon, you'd basically be getting a few anti-particles for every couple thousand tons of hydrogen you fuse.. hardly worth the effort, since the same fusion could produce enough energy on its own to power most of a planet for years.

plus the antimatter produced was mostly positrons, which as i pointed out before, are largely useless for using antimatter to obtain power.

[Qev]

plus the antimatter produced was mostly positrons, which as i pointed out before, are largely useless for using antimatter to obtain power.

Mm? Positrons are the most efficient antimatter 'fuel', since they completely react with their counterparts to produce nothing but energy. Heavier antiparticles tend to produce neutrinos, which wind up stealing large amounts of energy from the system.

[glitterboy2098]

plus the antimatter produced was mostly positrons, which as i pointed out before, are largely useless for using antimatter to obtain power.

Mm? Positrons are the most efficient antimatter 'fuel', since they completely react with their counterparts to produce nothing but energy. Heavier antiparticles tend to produce neutrinos, which wind up stealing large amounts of energy from the system.

positrons are anti-electrons. when using antimatter to produce useable power, which generally going be electricity, positrons are lousy because they destroy the electrons, leaving just protons and neutrons. instead of leaving nuetron radiation and a cloud of electricty behind, like with anti-protons, which when combined with the radiation produced by the annialation itself (mostly various energy levels of photons and some quarks, though about 50% of the result is in nuetrino's, which are pretty much useless..) will turn the hydrogen fuel into a high energy plasma, which can be used to produce power through thermal, photvoltaic, and magnetohydrodynamic processes.

positrons destroy eletrons, producing mostly high energy photons, yes. but whats left of the hydrogen fuel in the reaction is the nuclei, basically Beta Radiation. the surrounding hydrogen that didn't react absorbs the photons from the reaction, causing it to heat up, but you'd get less electrical power extraction from the resulting plasma.

positrons are great for bombs, but when it comes to power production anti-proton has the edge. at least AFAICT

[flatline]

Fairly sure the Annihilate spell (Book of Magic page 150, and possibly Federation of Magic) either creates or summons anti-matter (from another dimension?). It could possibly be directly used by aiming it into an appropriate containment field to stabilize it (tech or magical). To achieve the magical containment / power source version it could potentially be combined with Techno-Wizardry. Alternatively perhaps a custom variation of the spell could be used to provide a more sustainable source of anti-matter.

Take the example TW Device: Mystic Portable Generator, bump Call Lightning down to a Secondary Spell and add Annihilate as a Primary Spell, Up the Device Level to 14, Add in 7 Carats of Lapis Lazuli at 35,000 credits, remove the requirement of being on a Ley Line and poof, TW Antimatter Engine

Why would you use a device level of 14?

Much easier to build at a device level of 1.

--flatline

because the fact that in the technowizardry device creation rules the difficulty modifier for creating the device is not connected in any fashion to the difficulty and complexity of the spells involved is recognized as stupid. the general consensus, at least amoung those of us who actually recognize how easy it is for players to exploit that flaw to make extremely unbalanced devices, is that a TW devices device level should not be below the level of the most advanced spell involved in it's spell chain.
so a TW device using a lv14 spell would have to be built at device level 14 to work.

But that means that a TechnoWizard has to be level 14 in order to create a device that uses a 14th level spell like in this example. That completely contradicts one of the nice things about the Palladium magic system where a mage can cast any level spell as long as he has the PPE for it.

I agree that the TW rules in RUE need fixing, but I don't like your fix at all.

Instead, it would be better to not allow adding additional carats of gems and instead use the technowizard's level to modify creation and activation PPE costs. That way a device made by a low level TW would cost more PPE than the same device made by a high level TW.

--flatline

[DhAkael]

STILL debating this?!
Still?
Really seriously?

[Shorty Lickens]

Honestly, probably the SAFEst way to deal with Antimatter engins is to have Hydrogen2 fuel cells and convert as needed, I know I wouldn't want to keep raw antimatter on hand...

Yeah I think thats the reason they only gave the cost of H2, NOT antimatter. The way the game world works they didnt plan on anybody dealing directly with it.

I guess for your game world you could just make up a price you thought appropriate, for example if your campaign had a need for it.

[Qev]

positrons are anti-electrons. when using antimatter to produce useable power, which generally going be electricity, positrons are lousy because they destroy the electrons, leaving just protons and neutrons. instead of leaving nuetron radiation and a cloud of electricty behind, like with anti-protons, which when combined with the radiation produced by the annialation itself (mostly various energy levels of photons and some quarks, though about 50% of the result is in nuetrino's, which are pretty much useless..) will turn the hydrogen fuel into a high energy plasma, which can be used to produce power through thermal, photvoltaic, and magnetohydrodynamic processes.

positrons destroy eletrons, producing mostly high energy photons, yes. but whats left of the hydrogen fuel in the reaction is the nuclei, basically Beta Radiation. the surrounding hydrogen that didn't react absorbs the photons from the reaction, causing it to heat up, but you'd get less electrical power extraction from the resulting plasma.

Well, assuming you're injecting positrons in order to react them with the electrons in hydrogen atoms, you're left with a very energetic plasma of mostly protons, heated to ridiculous temperatures by all those juicy gamma rays. You can use that to generate power in all sorts of efficient ways; the lack of electrons isn't really an issue, all you need is a flow of charges.