I hope this will be of some interest....
	The aim of this post (and the only one) is to show that the 
persistent dogmatic energy arguments of relativistic travel are 
unfounded and in no way make it impossible.  It is to show that even a 
rocket carrying its own fuel can obtain high relativistic velocities.  
The derivation is from Frank Tipler's work 
(Appendix For Scientists, Part N 'Relativistic Spacecraft', The Physics 
of Immortality) where he discusses a photon rocket working on matter-
anti-matter annihilation to obtain a velocity with a gamma factor of 
500,000! Or about  
0.9999999999979c  
His payload is only 100 grams however (and the craft ends up being 10 
billions tons in mass, again not impossible), using nano-technology it 
could do everything any human can (again, something not impossible).   
We can however use some of his equation (before he starts making some 
approximations like 
gamma(v) >> 1 required for his calculation).  
SCENARIO 1: Pure matter-antimatter annihilation 
The important equation (they can be derived without too much trouble) 
is:
	Mi / Mp   =  ( (c+v)/(c-v))^ (c/ 2 e)
Where Mp is the payload mass we want to get to the other system.
	Mi is the total mass of the rocket (mostly fuel)
    	C  is the speed of light
	V  is the velocity we wish to obtain
      E  is the ejection velocity of the fuel (photons thus e = c in 
this case)
Using the mechanism we can get some figures on accelerating up to 0.99c 
(gamma(v) = 7.1) and then decelerating to a stop relative to the 
initial star of departure. In this scenario the factor (Mi/Mp) is equal 
to 14.1 and if we carry the fuel to slow down as well it becomes 199 
(the ratio must be squared).  Thus we must carry, 199 times the mass of 
any payload to achieve this task (199,000 tons of electron-anti 
electron mix for a 1000 ton payload).  
The problem is that 100% conversion to photons is only possible with 
electron-positron annihilation and there is currently no way to store 
large amounts of these particles (because of their electric repulsion).  
Thus we require a less efficient hydrogen-anti hydrogen (less efficient 
because the protons decay into pions and one of the pions is neutral 
and can not be controlled, thus its energy is lost).  Since I am 
discussing current technology, we will employ a less efficient method.   
SCENARIO 2:  Less efficient hydrogen-anti hydrogen annihilation
This method is around 200 times less efficient that the first method. 
	The equation is modified to (I can explain this if need be):
      Mi/Mp = ((c+v)/(c-v))^(c/e)    and e/c = 0.935 for the pions
	      =((c+v)/(c-v)^1.07
Now, the mass factor becomes 288 and for a slow down, 83100.   Thus for 
1000 tons of cargo we require, 42 million tons of hydrogen and the same 
amount of anti-hydrogen.   This amount of anti hydrogen represents our 
sun total energy output for 1 second (2 seconds actually in production 
terms since a proton must be made along side with an anti-proton).  
This is all possible with current technology.
--- FMail 1.22
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