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Advanced Spaceship Drive Compendium (Narration Only)

Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur

00:00

The Basics of Photon Rocket Propulsion

Photon rockets are a good approach to achieving very high speeds. For lower speeds though, you'll get more thrust from the same energy by applying it to a propellant. A particle of hydrogen that soaked up a 1MEV gamma ray and flew out of your ship is going to have more momentum exchange than the gamma ray alone did. Such a ship could contain a large portion of its mass as photons, or suddenly it turned into photons like anti-matter or hockey radiation off a black hole. See our episode Revitalizing Project Orion, a new dawn for nuclear spaceship propulsion for details.

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