Nuclear explosions in space?

All hypothecation, of course, but without goin' into hypothecation re the direct kinetic effect of a nuke burst in near proximity to a space-borne object, there would be considerable thermal and EMF effect - both of which might be expected to have some influence on the target mass' momentum, trajectory...

Why waste time with a nuclear bomb? Aim a high-powered laser at one side of the asteroid. This creates a low-thrust reaction engine, but the thrust is constant.

Or use a series of bombs, setting each one off in the same crater. Your efficiency improves as the crater deepens.

SF authors have been writing about this stuff since at least the '50s.

If a nuclear weapon were to explode in space, there would be no explosion. One hydrogen plus one hydrogen equals one helium. There would be a CRAPLOAD of light. There wouldn;t be heat because heat is caused by the movement of acotms/molecules and since this is in a vacuum, there's no particles to haveheat. It would be akin to a miniature sun.

Surprise! The sun gives off light because of fusion. It's like millions of nukes exploding in one area.

This brings up an interesting question: If we nuked Jupiter, would it become a sun?

DrewDad wrote:

Why waste time with a nuclear bomb? Aim a high-powered laser at one side of the asteroid. This creates a low-thrust reaction engine, but the thrust is constant.

How much force does this produce? How much mass is the meteor likely to have?

DrewDad wrote:

Or use a series of bombs, setting each one off in the same crater. Your efficiency improves as the crater deepens.

SF authors have been writing about this stuff since at least the '50s.

Unlikely to work well for the reasons connected with the conservation of momentum that I have mentioned. A rocket engine could work if the amount of fuel was huge - at least a thousandth of the mass of the meteor, or if the situation were caught very early.

Rockets employing chemical (conventional) or nuclear warheads already exist. They fall short, however, in terms of range, megatonnage of yield, and ECO intercept capability. Many scientists believe that nuclear weapons systems are currently the only feasible method for planetary defense for most situations, and much analysis and research has gone into the subject. Depending on the primary factors, the rocket(s) would be launched to deflect the ECO that it would not impact the earth or to fracture the ECO into sufficiently small pieces. The rockets may be earth- or space-based. Actual employment of the weapon system would involve either a single or multiple proximal burst(s), surface burst(s) or subsurface burst(s). In general, in the deflection mode, proximal bursts minimize the potential danger of fragmentation of the ECO but at a penalty of greater required yield when compared to surface or subsurface bursts. Surface bursts could be used to deflect or destroy the ECO. Subsurface bursts would be used only to fragment the ECO. Table 7 lists the required nuclear explosive yields necessary to perturb the velocity of various size asteroids by 1 centimeter per second (sufficient time if a decade is available to achieve deflection), or, in the case of subsurface bursts, to fragment the asteroid into pieces less than 10 meters in diameter, as estimated by T. J. Ahrens and A. W. Harris.83

V.A. Simonenko et al. estimate a 1 MEGATON nuclear charge detonated on the surface can deflect a 300 meter 'astral assailant' if it is engaged at a distance about equal to the earth's orbital radius.84 Roderick Hyde et al. estimate that hundreds of gigatons of energy will be required to deflect an asteroid of 10 kilometers by about 10 meters a second at a time greater than two week's distance from earth.85

Table 7 - Nuclear Charges Required for Various Asteroid Employment Scenarios

<table snipped due to formatting>

Brandon9000 wrote:

DrewDad wrote:

Why waste time with a nuclear bomb? Aim a high-powered laser at one side of the asteroid. This creates a low-thrust reaction engine, but the thrust is constant.

How much force does this produce? How much mass is the meteor likely to have?

DrewDad wrote:

Or use a series of bombs, setting each one off in the same crater. Your efficiency improves as the crater deepens.

SF authors have been writing about this stuff since at least the '50s.

Unlikely to work well for the reasons connected with the conservation of momentum that I have mentioned. A rocket engine could work if the amount of fuel was huge - at least a thousandth of the mass of the meteor, or if the situation were caught very early.

Perhaps, but the exhaust velocity is huge. Also, it depends on how long the vector has to work. Think of the size of the Earth compared to the size of Earth's orbit. It wouldn't take much of a deflection to make something miss, assuming it was a reasonable distance away.

If a nuclear weapon were to explode in space, there would be no explosion. One hydrogen plus one hydrogen equals one helium. There would be a CRAPLOAD of light. There wouldn;t be heat because heat is caused by the movement of acotms/molecules and since this is in a vacuum, there's no particles to haveheat. It would be akin to a miniature sun.

Surprise! The sun gives off light because of fusion. It's like millions of nukes exploding in one area.

This brings up an interesting question: If we nuked Jupiter, would it become a sun?

Sorry Brandon, but the conservation of momentum you talk about is exactly the principle that makes rocket engines work, providing up to 500,000 lbs of thrust these days.

If 1% of the meteor was blown off in one direction going 5000 mph, then the other 99% would have to go (approx.) 50 mph in the opposite direction.

The mass of the fuel or explosive, whether nuclear or chemical, makes little difference to that.

The boom-boom space drive is similar: just a big solar sail with a series of nuclear bombs detonating next to it. Not much mass is expelled but it goes out REALLY fast, and to add to that thrust you can always toss in some alpha particles or whatever space dust you gather along the way.

Sound good? Well, let's do it! Who brought the skeets? "PULL!"

The reaction mass is irrelevant.

The propelled mass is what's used for thrust.
The fuel or explosive doesn't have to be part of that.

Arm the asteroid penetrator with a nuke of a few dozen megaton yield triggered to detonate a few milliseconds followin' impact, and I figure the combined effects would be pretty impressive - approachin somethin' on the order of vaporization of a few cubic miles of asteroid mass.

For example, exploding a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon at a depth of one
meter would increase the effective yield by a factor of 20, resulting in
underground damage equivalent to that of a 200-kiloton weapon exploded at
the surface of the ground. But increasing the penetration depth to five
meters would only increase the effective yield by an additional 60%, to 320 kilotons.