Comment

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

bouh@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

That is largely true, but there are still 2 things : first, the plasma is still a super hot ball of matter with very high kinetic energy. Second, the radiations are still deadly at short range, unless you have specific protections, and radiation protections are heavy and bulky. At worse, the plasma can violently accelerate the target ship and damage it with this sudden acceleration.

But you can also easily turn your atomic bomb into a more refined atomic shell. The you can have projectiles propelled by the explosion (so it’s now an atomic frag bomb), or a penetring shell with a delayed explosion so the explosion occur inside the target ship.

source

Sort:hotnew top

luluApples@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I always thought the initial explosion was so hot it vapourised everything in a certain radius. Would an atomic frag work?

source
- bouh@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Nasal developed a reactor, orion iirc, that was basically nuclear pulse propulsion: a directed nuclear explosion would propel a jet of plasma on a shield on the back of the ship to propel it, and the ship would use regular explosion for propulsion.
  
  I don’t know the exact dynamic of the nuclear explosion. The temperature turns a lot of things into plasma indeed. But I suspect some construction of the bomb (specific layers with specific materials) could make some kind of frag work.
  
  At the very least you can have an efficient plasma bomb anyway. Your frag is simply plasma in this case. Plasma is still matter that can have high kinetic energy, but it’s very hot too and with specific electromagnetic properties.
  
  In this case, the atomic explosion replaces your powder, and what matters is everything around it.
  
  source
  - GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Nasal developed a reactor
    
    Autocomplete lol
    
    a reactor, orion iirc, that was basically nuclear pulse propulsion:
    
    Yep. en.wikipedia.org/…/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls…
    
    source
    agitatedpotato@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Im getting pretty stuffy this season I could go for a Nasal Reactor tbh.
    
    source