Concepts, Problems, & Opportunities for use of Annihilation Energy:

An Annotated Briefing on Near-Term RDT&E to Assess Feasibility

RAND Note N-2302-AF/RC

B. W. Augenstein

EXPANDED PHASE A, YEAR 1 DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

7-12 month effort; focus on production, compact storage issues
- ~$½ to 2 million (depends on scope)
- Survey areas, critical experiments; propose experimenter/team choices
- Seek national level team involvement
Key outputs:
- State of knowledge
- Critical experiment definition (emphasize relevant normal matter research)
- Identify possible showstoppers (fundamental?;circumventable?;alleviating approaches?)
- Define early "demo" possibilities
- Rough out schedules/costs for whole Phase A
- Provide opportunity for first go-no go decisions
Production issues - emphasize:
- Factory scoping considerations
- Confident prediction of basic process efficiencies
- Validate issues, needs, objectives of Phase B mini-factory
Compact storage issues - emphasize
- Survey, analysis of possibilities and alternatives (widest possible range)
- Detailed definition of normal matter experiments
- Establish conditions for successful pre-storage to final storage transition
- Role of "portable" traps for experimental purposes
- Tentative selection of experimenter/experiment teams - scope, location
- Get selected critical experiments underway
Seek, where possible, for production/storage issues:
- Initial judgements of prospective developmental suitability of selected concepts

A more detailed outline of the activities appropriate for the firstyear of Phase A are shown in the chart.

By the end of year 1, enough analysis, screening of concepts,isolation of real sticking issues, definition of experiments to resolveremaining uncertainties and ambiguities, and a generally better feel forthe possibility of exploiting antimatter should permit focusing orseveral alternative outcomes concerning antimatter promise:

Attractive concepts seem reasonable, critical experiments canbe formulated and gotten under way, and useful goals seemsettable in principle. In this case, the full Phase A programwould be undertaken.
Nonfeasibility, in principle or to achieve any reasonableapplications goals, would be demonstrated. In this case noPhase A need be formally undertaken.
An intermediate position, where enough imponderables anduncertainties remain so as to make any or all of the remainderof Phase A perhaps interesting to pursue, but with noparticular sense of urgency or coherence.

Rand feels that the year 1 effort is vital to select the subsequentpath in a reasoned way. and has repeatedly urged that this initialeffort be undertaken. It seems likely that enough interesting physicsand engineering research paths could turn up to constitute a majorattraction for a very broad cross-section of the physics and engineeringcommunity for the rest of Phase A and beyond.

From the point of view of overall initial physics and engineeringinterest, consideration of storage issues, particularly, would seem tohave substantial appeal, with virtually every experiment initiallyperformable in a high grade academic or industrial laboratory setting.This is one of the factors which strongly influences our opinion thatprogress in assessing the feasibility of exploiting annihilationenergies can be substantially faster than much popular wisdom supposes.