Author Topic: Ship Explosions (Not FreeSpace related)  (Read 1932 times)

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Offline Aardwolf

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Ship Explosions (Not FreeSpace related)
I've got a hypothetical question for you guys, which will affect a game I might make soon (hopefully one with multi):

Here's the situation:

  • There's a nuclear war going on in space
  • All involved ships are at least 36 meters in length
  • Ships are powered by fusion reactors
  • The nuclear weapons used contain a little more plutonium than is needed for critical mass
  • The critical mass of plutonium is about 10kg
  • The ships have some sort of shielding which amazingly protects against nukes until it is weakened too badly
  • A nuke has detonated on or near impact with an unshielded ship

The question:

  • Does whatever unexpended ordinance onboard the ship that is about to be vaporized detonate?

 

Offline Hippo

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Re: Ship Explosions (Not FreeSpace related)
Its like asking if when you drop a bomb on a hand grenade, does it explode.


The ordinance would be consumed in the explosion, but would function as fuel or accelerant, not as a nuclear detonation.
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Offline redsniper

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Re: Ship Explosions (Not FreeSpace related)
The plutonium in the bombs stored on the ship being vaporized will not fission, but the conventional explosives will (assuming this is all similar to modern nukes and bombs and such).
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Offline Aardwolf

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Re: Ship Explosions (Not FreeSpace related)
Interesting... still, I prefer to wait for a few more responses (preferably based on realism and not what would be cool).

I deliberately did not ask if the fusion reactor would explode, because I inquired with a knowledgeable friend (who is unavailable at this time) who said it would not.

I figured that the radiation (gamma + neutrons?) might set off a reaction. Another friend (who I admit is not as knowledgeable) posited that it might put enough of an electric pulse through the detonation circuitry to cause the detonation charges to set off the nukes.


Edit:

In response to redsniper, who posted before I finished this:

Yeah, that sounds reasonable... the thing is, there isn't too much as far as conventional explosives in the design I envisioned... All I saw need for was some conventional anti-missile rounds launched by conventional explosives.

This is meant to be as realistic as possible while still being remotely fun. The shields are there to make it fun. Otherwise, everything would be 1-hit kills with nuclear railgun rounds. They're so much harder to intercept than missiles. (my father, a former navy Lieutenant, physics Ph.D., and long-time worker at the U.S. Naval Research Lab (working with magnets, not nukes) says it is the most realistic sci-fi weapon I've ever devised.)
« Last Edit: December 25, 2007, 11:44:09 pm by Aardwolf »

 

Offline Wanderer

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Re: Ship Explosions (Not FreeSpace related)
All depends on how cleverly the failsafes have been build on the nukes. In most cases this means that nukes wont detonate from a nearby nuclear reaction as the firing mechanism won't activate. And in addition nukes probably wouldn't even be 'armed' until they have been fired and cleared the ship.

However... in the end if you want them to detonate, let them - and just blame the bad quality of mass produced nuclear weapon components.

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Offline redsniper

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Re: Ship Explosions (Not FreeSpace related)
I deliberately did not ask if the fusion reactor would explode, because I inquired with a knowledgeable friend (who is unavailable at this time) who said it would not.

Well now, we don't know how a fusion reactor works, else we would be building them right now. :p And since we don't know how one works we can't say for sure what it would do if it got bombed.

However, as I understand it, fusion reactors in sci-fi generally work by taking a fusion reaction (which nowadays only results in a big boom) and somehow magically containing or controlling it so that you don't get a big boom. Now I suppose a direct hit from a nuke would vaporize your whole ship so fast that your reactor wouldn't explode, but if you were to merely damage whatever is keeping the fusion reaction in check, I don't see why you couldn't have what is essentially a hydrogen bomb going off in your ship now. :D
"Think about nice things not unhappy things.
The future makes happy, if you make it yourself.
No war; think about happy things."   -WouterSmitssm

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Offline Wanderer

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Re: Ship Explosions (Not FreeSpace related)
Hmm.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Accident_potential - Granted, not very good source but still...
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Offline Aardwolf

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Re: Ship Explosions (Not FreeSpace related)
Wow, nice link.

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Ship Explosions (Not FreeSpace related)
Well now, we don't know how a fusion reactor works, else we would be building them right now. :p And since we don't know how one works we can't say for sure what it would do if it got bombed.

's called a Tokamak. We can build them, we can even break even, we just can't do so by enough to be worthwhile. The failure mode of a fusion reactor as science understands them at the moment is not going to be a detonation. You'll lose magentic containment, the reactor plasma will get loose, and it'll burn a hole through damn near anything in the five-ten seconds before it loses all its energy. Since it uses hydrogen for fuel, if the reactor plasma reaches the fuel tanks, yes, you might get a pretty impressive explosion, depending on how much fuel's left. (Like gasoline tanks, it's the vapor form you need to worry about. That is, assuming you're using something other than the gas to store it already.)

All nukes currently in service use conventional explosives to trigger a nuclear reaction by adding the necessary heat/compression/what-have-you. However they use very safe explosives, of the kind that don't go off unless very specific conditions are met. In that case, it depends on the safety settings of the warheads. Modern ICBMs, for example, have a setup which prevents the missile from arming unless it reaches a certain velocity; until then the warhead is about as inert as you can make it. For fuzing, they use a simple VT fuze or even a timer, since most are designed for airburst. Until it arms, however, you can do all kinds of crazy stuff to an ICBM warhead, up to and including smashing it to pieces or lighting it on fire, and it won't go off. (On the other hand, I wouldn't try electrocuting it.)

With the given stuff already, I would assume that the warheads are contact-fuzed, probably with an arming timer that prevents them from arming for x number of units of time after launch; rather like a torpedo. The safety of the weapons themselves depends a lot on how they're designed to be handled and stored. If they come as all-up single units, ready to fire from out of the factory, then the safety measures will be impressive because it's able to go off somewhere you really don't want it to. If they're designed so that warheads and fuzing systems are handled seperately until the weapon is issued for use, then the safety measures will be less impressive because the probablity of it going off before it's wanted to is a lot less.
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Offline FUBAR-BDHR

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Re: Ship Explosions (Not FreeSpace related)
I agree it all depends on weather the bombs are armed or not.  If they aren't armed only conventional explosives should go off.  Then again in a nuke blast what do we know about what is standard?  Could the emp of the blast cause the electronics to malfunction and detonate the warheads?  Do the shields work both ways (need to lower to fire)  thus allowing the explosion to get to critical mass before breaking back through the shields?

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Re: Ship Explosions (Not FreeSpace related)
If your making a game trying to decide weather to make ships go critical from explosions in their ordinance, i would set it so that when said warship in your game is struck unsheilded by a nuke, then there is a chance that a ship will go critical, depending on the placement on the reactor and ordinance. You can even make the reactor a targetable subsystem to nuke to make it go critical, kinda like the lucifer, except that had 5.
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