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Re:The Theory of Interstellar Trade by adrianN on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @02:34AM (#17547760)
You can also do this by feeding a black hole with ordinary matter and using Hawking radiation for propulsion. That is probably more practical than carrying around large quantities of antimatter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_starship

Re:The Theory of Interstellar Trade by m_mueller on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @09:12AM (#17549458)
If you watch PBS Spacetime on the 'Kugelblitz' idea, it seems that one way to go about it (over the course of a couple hundred years) would be to convert Mercury into a solar energy collecting swarm by use of Von Neumann probes and essentially harvest much of what the sun has to give. That kind of energy apparently would suffice to create tiny black holes (simply by redirecting enough energy to a focused point), which is I think the theoretically most efficient battery (or star system destroying bomb, depending on how you go about it...).
Re:The Theory of Interstellar Trade by squirrelicus on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @12:17PM (#17559667)
I... can't.... Half of me recoils in horror at the impracticality, but the other half of me has a good enough armchair sense for the practicality of a high fuel ratio antimatter rocket, so I can't say you're wrong :P