Things That Happen and Why They Do

The Antimatter Pulse Drive

This book, Things That Happen and Why They Do, is the sister and secondary book to The Happening of Things, which is the main novel in which the events occur that are covered in this book. Nothing in this book will make sense if you have not read that one. This book is not crucial to the Happening of Things, but provides insight into the events and universe in which the main characters live.

The Antimatter Pulse Drive (appearing in 'Prologue of and to Irrelevance' in The Happening of Things.

The Antimatter Pulse Drive relies on an antimatter containment unit, which is incredibly difficult to make because one would have to make it out of matter, and matter and antimatter annihilate when they come into contact. The containment unit designed with the engine was rather simple. The idea was to build an identical copy of a magnet out of antimatter, and then use magnets outside the containment unit to keep the anti-magnet in suspension in a pure vacuum. This would keep the anti-magnet stored for an indefinite amount of time. Anti-Ferrous would be used for this task.

The engine is not just the containment unit however, and the antimatter must be extracted and used to turn its mass into energy to power a spaceship. Rather than there being a process of delicately extracting the anti-magnet to use as power, the containment unit itself is built as an engine and many of these are arrayed and layered into the total engine cell. The shared outer wall of the outer layer of these units is then removed and the antimatter is exposed to various bits of waste from the ship. The matter and antimatter annihilate and convert 80% of their mass into pure energy, creating a pulse that is channelled into a more direct stream to provide thrust pushing the ship forward.

This is used for long distance space travel and so is classified as a drive rather than an engine. This sort of drive would have to begin its journey in zero-g to achieve enough thrust to escape, but continues gaining speed for the length of the journey up to a maximum of 0.1c.

Rather than take this easy approach to space travel, humanity opted for a Kugelblitz drive, generating energy from mass by feeding mass to a Kugelblitz and harnessing the heat, light and Hawking Radiation emitted as a result. This significantly less controllable method resulted in the imploding of many ships and the loss of contact with others due to high EM interference. Kugelblitz drives can manage higher speed than antimatter ones however, but that increase just made it easier for humanity to get lost.

Ok, so I have a decent enough understanding of science but I came up with this idea for the antimatter containment unit independently and then I googled the actual way to do it and I came up with the same basic idea as real scientists who know what they're doing, only difference is they used masses of electrically charged particles (they used anti-protons) instead of a whole magnet. Also if anyone has a better idea for an energy release module than please tell me about it, I know mine is crap.