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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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.
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