Are explosions in space really that dangerous?

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Not talking about your ship exploding, that’s obviously bad. I’m talking about how much damage would a bomb actually do if exploded in the moon for example. I understand there is no atmosphere to push against, but I don’t understand what else appart from the shrapnel could cause damage. Isn’t most of a bomb’s damage produced by the shockwave? And shockwaves cannot be produced in a vacuum, right?
Also, let’s say it’s a nuclear bomb. The radiation is obviously bad, but with some shielding, same here, what damage will it actually do?

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11 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

So a bomb in space acts so different from on earth. First and foremost, as you know one of the deadliest parts of a traditional bomb is the shrapnel as much as the explosion itself. Luckily in atmosphere the air slows shrapnel down after a bit. In space there is no such thing. The shrapnel thrown from a bomb will travel without slowing until it hits something else. So even a distant explosion can send deadly shrapnel speeding towards something a long way off.

Bombs themselves also produce gas. It’s this spontaneous expulsion of gasses and energy that creates the shockwave in atmosphere. However in space that gas is still produced. So the threat of the shockwave is still there. However its effect is less significant than one in atmosphere. That is unless you’re in a pressurized metal space craft. Then the energy of the explosion can transfer into the craft and compromise the pressure sealing leading to all that pressure trying to escape and creating a secondary explosion via rapid decompression.

So they’re equally dangerous in or out of atmosphere. It’s just the danger changes.

Anonymous 0 Comments

u/copnonymous Covers it pretty well. Depending on the explosion, thermal radiation can be significant. That is, the radiation, even if it is non-ionizing, can be dangerous just by heating things up. Proposals for using nuclear bombs to deflect asteroids involve using intense radiation to vaporize part of the surface. The expanding rock vapor is what pushes the asteroid. Something powerful enough to blow up the moon would likely produce a tremendous amount of heat.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Nukes are quite dangerous in outer space. Much of the energy comes out as x-rays. The atmosphere is opaque to them, so a lot of the energy goes into ionizing the air. In space, the x-rays just keep going the lethal distance is much further than on Earth. For a multi-megaton shot, the lethal distance is hundreds of miles.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

On the moon, for example, shrapnel travels significantly farther with no significant air drag to slow it down, and with low gravity. It basically doesn’t slow down from velocities on the order of typical bullets, until it hits the ground, or something else. Likewise meteoroid impacts on the moon can potentially produce a lot of fast moving shrapnel/ejecta which travels dozens of km.

Anonymous 0 Comments

After an explosion on the moon, without atmosphere any shrapnel that went up would rain down without loss of speed. A simple grenade could send fragments that could come down many km away at full speed.

Obviously the shrapnel would spread and be at very low density – but when you consider that the life of people on the surface of the moon is going to depend on being in an airtight suit or chamber, a single shrapnel fragment could be deadly at km range.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m assuming is the tiny shrapnel that come flying at you at 50 meters a second. It’s like getting shot from all sides at 50 meters a second. Quite dangerous

Anonymous 0 Comments

So, what is a shockwave? That is energy pushing atoms around. The energy has to go someplace, so a lot of the energy gets eaten up by the atmosphere. In space, there is no atmosphere to absorb energy, so all of the force is used separating the bomb into little bomb pieces. This makes the shrapnel more energetic, so more damaging. There is also nothing to stop it, so it goes forever at that speed until it eventually finds something to release all that energy onto.

Lets take the moon for example. Boom on the moon. Okay, boom goes off, great. Now shrapnel goes out till it hits something. Ever play worms? That is what all the shrapnel basically does on the moon. Just arcs everywhere and lands with just as much impact as it would if you were standing on top of the bomb initially. The area is more random but the damage is much more widespread.

What about in “deep” space? Same story but not a radius is in danger. That radius expands so the liklihood of being hit decreases over distance but the area that has a chance of being hit massively increases. A boom near Saturn can potentially knock a satelite out of orbit near Earth. Low odds but not the zero odds you have on Earth if you are a few hundred miles away from the exact same boom.

Anonymous 0 Comments

In what we term as explosions, no. The majority of damage caused by an explosion is actually a blast radius which is simply the force of oxygen being pushed aside as gases are very suddenly created and heated where kinetic energy goes outward. Granted, SOME explosions work the opposite by consuming air in a certain radius so there is a sudden vacuum so the atmosphere come crashing down with all the momentum of literally tons of atmo vertically and anything below gets squished….but that doesnt apply in space.

In a vaccuum while blast radius is still an issue, it’s on a much smaller range.

The REAL issue is the shrapnel and debris: opposite to a blast radius, your FRAGMENTATION radius is now much much much higher (technically infinite until acted on by an outside force) as debris goes flying outwards at high speed.

Where as on earth the atmosphere and gravity massively reduce this range, the lack thereof make this range very far. That said, once you’re at a certain range your odds of being hit massively decrease due to spread.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It basically doesn’t slow down from velocities on the order of typical bullets, until it hits the ground, or something else. Likewise meteoroid impacts on the moon can potentially produce a lot of fast moving shrapnel/ejecta which travels dozens of km.