TNE: Antimatter Missiles

In response to Roger Myhre's discussion of antimatter missiles:

Warheads for antimatter missiles wouldn't be all that small.  If you wanted a
non-impact warhead that could actually damage a ship, it would have to be
pretty large.  assuming we can get a missile within 100 km of the target, this
is 10e7 cm.  the energy per cm^2 is about 10e-15 of the blast energy at this
range.  To do one point of damage to a square cm, going by the FF&S guideline
that the effective range of a laser is where the energy is distributed over a
square cm, we need to deliver about a megajoule to a square cm, requiring on
the order of a megaton (1 megaton = 4.2e15 Joules).  This requires about 50
grams of antimatter, and it still has no hope of penetrating armor.  it could
damage surface features, but the energy would probably be too diffuse to do
much.  if a spot on a surface feature can withstand a 1 MJ laser easily, all a
1 megaton blast is going to do is lightly toast the outside of the ship.  :)

Either a much bigger warhead is needed, or the missile needs to get closer.
The consensus seems to be that impact missiles would be shot down easily.
Signifcant damage might be done by a warhead in the tens or hundreds of
megatons, but that would require more than a kg of antimatter.  manufacturing
the stuff isn't exactly easy...  Well the warhead is pretty small, if you want
to waste all that antimatter in a marginal weapon.

Ted Baltz
[email removed]