Yitram t1_ja1ke3z wrote on February 26, 2023 at 3:46 AM

Well presumably a space weapon exploding would carry its own oxidant with it, like with rocket fuels. Or alternatively would use a source of energy not dependent on that, for example, nuclear fission/fusion or antimatter.

-Major-Arcana- t1_ja1mnai wrote on February 26, 2023 at 4:05 AM

Almost all conventional bombs and missiles will explode in a vacuum, they don’t use atmospheric oxygen. But they wouldn’t work the same way without the blast propagating through air. A hand grenade will still explode and fling shrapnel around though.

AEMxr1 t1_ja1u8kg wrote on February 26, 2023 at 5:18 AM

I would assume a grenade would work in a similar manner, but minus the gravity resulting in different speed and different types of dangers in the area, continuous as it may be. The explosion itself would have a smaller radius outside the container. I’m not sure if this would be something visible for longer than a split second depending on how far away you are in space.

exceive t1_ja3b634 wrote on February 26, 2023 at 3:13 PM

The billowy puffy cloud effect we're are used to would not be present because it is the atmosphere pushing back that causes it. In space, each bit of debris would basically keep going in a straight line. Really an orbit around the local gravity well, but it would look like a straight line.

Watching the LEMs take off from the moon looked funny to me as a kid. The initial blast didn't billow. It didn't look like a blast so much as a bunch of sparks. I've been thinking about this get a while.

Actually, there could be a little of billowing, depending on how the ship blows up. If the blast starts with a relatively slow expanding has cloud and then later (possibly just a fraction of a second later) there is a faster expanding cloud, there might be some billowing when the fast has catches up with the slow. That could happen if relatively low energy stuff like the hull, cargo, life support, for example blows up first, and then high energy stuff like fuel and weapons blows up. Besides moving faster, secondary blast would probably be hotter and brighter.