I’m aware that it’s illegal to put any kind of weapon in space, for the sake of the explanation assume there’s no legal reason why not.
My Grug Smash brain has me wondering that if nuclear weapons are so difficult to properly dispose of, surely the easiest option would be to set them off somewhere where they can’t cause any damage.
In: Physics
Launching anything into space is expensive. Rockets are not free to make or launch. What is being done for quite some time now is to use the missiles intended to launch nuclear warheads across the globe to instead launch satellites into space. So there are no missiles available to launch the nuclear warheads into space. Another big issue is that nukes will generate a big electromagnetic pulse and a lot of ions. These effects are much more dangerous in space then in the atmosphere. It means that a nuclear explosion in space will likely do a lot of damage to the satellites which are already very expensive and sensitive. This have even been suggested as a form of attack on its own. There is no need to launch such a disruptive attack in peactime.
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