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Originally Posted by malloyd
Probably. They'd continue to use antimatter at the same rate in air-ram mode as they would in rocket mode, so yeah, counting the antimatter as part of the fuel tank rather than separately doesn't work well here.
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Well, that's easy enough to deal with. Just say that you can carry extra fuel without any tankage (since antimatter is only around 1 part per million of AM-boosted fuel), but such fuel only can be used in air-ram mode (and that fuel is mandatory for antimatter air rams).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty
So, to reference your last example, no antimatter is involved. It doesn't slam antimatter into normal air -- it uses the energy which would normally contain and redirect the M/AM interaction to instead "ram" the air.
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For the antimatter thermal and plasma engines, the M/AM reaction is just used to heat hydrogen or water reaction mass. AM pion is the only engine that uses matter/antimatter directly for propulsion.