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Comment on Would Nuclear Weapons be as destructive in ship to ship space combat, as they are on the ground in an atmosphere?

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Hereforpron2@lemmynsfw.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

The shock wave needs a medium (air) to travel through. So if the bomb was touching a ship, it would certainly transfer kinetic energy, but if there was any space (not air) between them, there is still no shockwave for the ship to feel.

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FireRetardant@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
A railgun would be far more effective for transfering kinetic energy and it’s munitions would likely be cheaper

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- awwwyissss@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  How about a railgun with a nuclear payload? Breach the hull and the nuke would work again
  
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  - FireRetardant@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    With a hull breach the atmosphere within leaks out and I doubt there would be enough oxygen in the ship to really help with detonation. Maybe some self sealing projectile with a nuclear tip but really any traditional explosive would work fine in that case as the ship would act as a sealed canister
    
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    fubbernuckin@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I think you overestimate how fast the atmosphere would leak out, or underestimate how fast a nuclear blast goes off. You could detonate the nuke before air really has a chance to start leaving behind the wake of the projectile moving at Mach 12 or whatever. The hole left behind i don’t think would change how the explosion worked inside the ship.
    
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    cali_ash@lemmy.wtf ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    I doubt there would be enough oxygen in the ship to really help with detonation.
    
    How would oxygen help with a nuclear detonation?
    
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zephr_c@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
A shockwave can travel along the solid structure itself as the medium. Any ship that is actually directly hit would be vaporized. It’s just the whole point of nuke is not needing a direct hit. I doubt any realistic space vessel with anything even remotely similar to plausible near future technology could survive a direct hit from even a moderately sized conventional explosive.

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- awwwyissss@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah, it takes incredible amounts of energy just to move unarmored ships slowly around our own solar system.
  
  Seems like adding armor would make them so heavy and slow that they wouldn’t be worth using.
  
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  - rambaroo@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah that’s why any reasonable hard sci-fi has to rely on highly advanced fusion or speculative energy technologies
    
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