Nuclear weapons IN SPACE!

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

Well, nukes in space have a relatively short blast radius. Vaccuum is a lousy wqy to carry a shockwave. One of the things that makes Nukes so dangerous on Earth is an atmosphere that will carry the blast. (The atmosphere is also what produces the EMP effect, X-rays ionize the air a few miles up and that big mass of charged air molecules pulls in electrons like crazy, so using a nuke to short out a spacecraft from a distance isn't going to work.) The damage that comes from the blast is heat light etc for the most part. A very reflective armor on the ship helps tremendously.

This.

Space ships will already have shielding against hard rads, and ways to dump heat. Nukes have to detonate really close to the vessel to do much.

Moreover, they're expensive and complex pieces of machinery. Why would anybody use them, when you can just fire a rail-gun round at a velocity of 10 km/s? At that velocity, a the kinetic energy of the mass of the ammunition does 10 times the damage of an equivalent mass of TNT.

Alternatively, fire a missile with a submunitions warhead (basically, a giant shotgun shell) and have it go off so the ball-bearings get in the flight-path of the enemy ship. That's probably a little more expensive than a rail-gun round, but still nowhere near the price and complexity of a nuke.