As far as I know, the big damage from Nuclear Weapons planetside is the massive blastwave that can pretty much scour the earth, with radiation and thermal damage bringing up the rear.
But in space there is no atmosphere to create a huge concussive and scouring blast wave, which means a nuclear weapon would have to rely on its all-directional thermal and radiation to do damage… but is that enough to actually be usful as a weapon in space, considering ships in space would be designed to handle radiation and extreme thermals due to the lack of any insulative atmosphere?
I know a lot of this might be supposition based on imaginary future tech and assumptions made about materials science and starship creation, but surely at least some rough guess could be made with regards to a thernonuclear detonation without the focusing effects of an atmosphere?
If you made direct impact wouldn’t the fuselage of the ship and the atmosphere inside it still allow for the traditional blast to propagate?
I think so. I don’t think the bomb directly generates a shockwave, but rather the shockwave is generated by air being superheated which causes a pressure spike. All of the energy that would superheat air would still be present even if the bomb was activated in space, it would just be acting on the first thing it touches ie. the hull of the ship. Does vaporized metal still increase in pressure as temperature increases? I’m guessing it does, which should produce a shockwave. But idk, I’m not a doctor
Chances are there isnt enough air to make a significant difference and any ship large enough to have enough air would have air lock systems as a safety net.
Right, but the ship itself would allow the shockwave, metal is still matter for vibrations to follow.
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.
A railgun would be far more effective for transfering kinetic energy and it’s munitions would likely be cheaper
How about a railgun with a nuclear payload? Breach the hull and the nuke would work again
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
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.
How would oxygen help with a nuclear detonation?
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.
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.
Yeah that’s why any reasonable hard sci-fi has to rely on highly advanced fusion or speculative energy technologies
That would have to be a big ship to feel a shock wave without being consumed by the ball of plasma
Where would that come from? According to a posted article in this thread thermal energy can’t transfer either unless by direct connection and radiation would be the biggest factor, with increasing size compared to on the surface due to lack of atmosphere “attenuating” the distance it travels.
If we’re talking about a direct hit, the radiation is going to be substantial
True, but it’s not a ball of plasma.