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Originally Posted by Sanity
* I would really get rid of the anti matter, if you can. Anti Matter is highly problematic. I can see it in use on military ships, but it is not something I would like to send to a first contact mission. Shooting starts, something hits the anti mater containment wrong, and next thing is you know you have a mortal enemy making a religion out of killing you because you killed half their planet, so to say. Without even wanting it. In addition, anti matter creation is problematic - unless they carry the equipment on board (which they do not). Getting some Hx (H2, H3) production going is a lot easier if you need more fuel than creating anti matter, and even if anti matter creation is simple (super-science) you may not want to tell the natives how that is done ;)
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Switching to an easier-to-get fuel would be highly attractive, I think. Being able to refuel from gas giants, comets or planetary ocenas can be very useful.
However, I don't believe there are any great secrets to antimatter production. It just happens to require expensive equipment, lots of energy input (seeing as antimatter is actually about energy storage, never energy production or energy generation), and take lots of time.
I'm also unconvinced that even several tons of antimatter can cause significant damage to a planet. And are there several tons in this antimatter-boosted reaction mass? (I do have the PDF, but I'm too lazy to open it and check.)
Perhaps the ideal solution would be for the ship to devote an entire module to carrying nothing but pure antimatter, and then a second module that enables it to use this antimatter to create boosted reaction mass, e.g. from ocean water or gas giant atmosphere or comet materials?