History and Development
Despite the theoretical foundations being worked out as easily as
the
late industrial age (atomic/quantum mechanical knowledge) the
difficulties of dealing with antimatter - including producing and
storing it - meant that commercial mass-production and use had to wait
for several centuries. With the development on the one hand of safe and
practical storage devices (using powerful electro-magnetic containment
rings and multisensor feedback), such as the Pionomak and the Plasma
Helix, on the one hand, and the rise of the Amat cartels like
Prometheus Inc, Nova Industries, and Helios Corporation, with their
gigantic space-based solar stations which used lasers and electron
beams to create particle-anti-particle pairs in industrial quantities,
anti-matter finally became a practical means of propulsion.
Even so the cartels kept prices high, amassing vast wealth and
political clout (not unlike the Petroleum producing nations of the late
Industrial age) and going into partnership with the big nanotech
companies like Neotek, NanoIndustries and Adaptive Nanosystems.
It was not until the later first federation period that the advances
in ultratech made it possible to replace the inefficient standard amat
rocket with a far more efficient picotech augmented one.
These types of vessels, although widely used for both military and
commercial purposes during the first federation era, were rendered
obsolete with the invention of first, the efficient amat and later the Conversion
Drive.
However, the high-tech requirements and great cost of these drives,
which requires a dedicated hyperturing onboard just to handle the
quantum fluctuations and maintain equilibrium, mean that many anti-AI
paranoid or luddite type groups and clans are unwilling to use that
technology. Hence there are still more than a few minor empires and
clans in the outer volumes which retain the old style amat rocket, not
to mention those isolated worlds that do not have access to the
required for the Conversion drive, and here the Matter-Antimatter drive
is also still in use.
The following are the main types of amat drive:
Amat Pulse/Catalyzed Fusion
- like fusion pulse but uses amat to ignite fusion. Low tech, obsolete,
interplanetary only, rarely found in any developed systems. Popular
with ludd and other lower tech polities, in wildhu reserves, and other
regions that transapients have minimal or no influence
Thermal Amat Propulsion
- low tech, but simple in design. Uses controlled amat annihilation to
heat a working fluid. Although low tech, its simplicity of design makes
it very popular in some systems away from the Nexus
Pion Drive Amat Propulsion
- uses amat annihilation to generate highly energetic pions which are
propelled out the magnetic coil nozzle. Although obsolete in ultratech
and transapientech worlds, this is a very popular drive type in some
systems and among some polities and groups. For interstellar travel it
is however very hazardous; because of huge amounts of amat required,
interstellar versions are still used by a few ludd polities. Superior
as an interplanetary vessel, where it is widely used in many systems
Amat "New Type" / Efficient
Amat Propulsion ( Photon Drive, Amat Torch etc) -
ultratech to transapientech, efficient amat propulsion. Uses ultratech
drive core shielding and gravitational focusing to extract thrust from
the energetic gamma and neutrino radiation. An order of magnitude more
efficient than the old style Amat/Pion Drive. Rarely used in the
developed regions, but common in many hinterworld systems. Although not
as efficient or as safe as true Conversion Drive, still used by a
number
of lower tech polities, especially in the outer volumes
