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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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.
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