I will donate my power source to the project. It is a micro black hole surronded by a spherical reflector. Micro black holes evaporate at a rate inversly proportional to their size. The energy comes out as photons with a thermal distribution corresponding to the temperature of the hole. It is esentially total conversion of matter to energy. To slow it down you add more mass. The nearly perfect mirror is needed to redirect the energy back into the hole so it doesn't explode. It could be used as the reaction engine by gathering the interstellar gases and expelling them at a high temperature. Sort of like a Bussard ram jet but with a different heat source. The draw back is that it is heavy, the mass does not provide and shielding, and it is unstable. Ignore it, it shrinks, more energy comes out and then it explodes. All in all a great power source for a SF story. I haven't done the math on this yet. --DaveK
As to the origion of the black hole, I thought it would be manufactured. My first story idea had the black hole being made, going unstable and causing a big explosion. The energy cost to create one is enormous. Let's see. You get a lot of powerful lasers, point them at something to implode it--sounds like the plans for a fusion reactor. We change the target from a duterium pellet to some trans-uranic element that has to be created using some hugh particle accelerator. So if the ship loses its hole it is dead. Or another story topic. --DaveK
Or they could be mined like Niven, from the asteroid belt. He had the holes being found because the mass of the asteroid was too high for its size. We can find them because the asteroid is too warm. --DaveK
