Starburst Missile

[Vinman]

I wonder if you really want a nuclear missile that explodes based only on proximity in the middle of a pitched space battle... it might be fine for shooting off at an enemy formation at the start of an engagement, but anywhere else you run the risk of hurting friendlies.

I don't know if there would be such a big problem with the brass. There have been at least two nuclear air-to-air missiles that I know of, the unguided Genie and a variant of the radar-guided Falcon.

They were carried by interceptors and were meant to take down entire bomber formations.

I can definitely imagine a Wasp being armed with a Mace II or whatever follow on nuke there might be.

 

[McGruff]

Well, the scary part about a nuke that would not apply to an antimatter warhead is the ionizing radiation--those who are not immediately killed end up with radiation poisoning or cancer.

A ship's shields probably provide enough protection against radiation, if I remember False Colors correctly. And it's a good bet that cancer has been cured by the 27th century.

because the blade leaves more suffering to those that it doesn't kill.

I would take a nonlethal knife wound over a nonlethal gunshot ANY DAY!!!!! Knives cut tissue relatively cleanly. Bullets tear jagged holes, shock organs, and shatter bones. You could be right about the illogical intimidation factor though.

 

[Oggy]

Just drifting by,

I suppose the starburst missile might be moderately useful if you could fire it into the hangar bays of a carrier and then detonate it, but you might as well just torpedo or volley it with DF missiles

 

[Dundradal]

Just drifting by,

I suppose the starburst missile might be moderately useful if you could fire it into the hangar bays of a carrier and then detonate it, but you might as well just torpedo or volley it with DF missiles

Only if it could penetrate the shields, but then it could be an anti-personal weapon. Although that doesn't seem very WC to me.

 

[Farbourne]

Well, the scary part about a nuke that would not apply to an antimatter warhead is the ionizing radiation--those who are not immediately killed end up with radiation poisoning or cancer. That would be enough to make it seem horrifying, just as people today instinctively fear a guy with a blade more than a guy with a gun despite the gun's greater lethality--because the blade leaves more suffering to those that it doesn't kill.

I'm no theoretical physicist, but I was under the impression that in an anitmatter weapon, nearly all of its energy is released as gamma radiation when the antimatter and matter co-annihilate. And gamma radiation IS ionizing as far as I know.

Furthermore, in a vacuum like space, a nuke isn't going to generate the pressure shock that does most of the damge in a nuclear explosion in an atmosphere. I'm not sure about how the thermal energy will be dissipated--hae to think about that more. But it seems to me that most of the damage from a nuclear blast is likely to come from gamma radiation as well.

The main difference between an antimatter weapon and a nuke (other than the fact that an antimatter weapon releases a lot more energy per unit mass) is that a nuke leaves radioactive material, "fallout", in an area, whereas an antimatter weapon wouldn't. But is this really an issue in space? Any ship that isn't killed by the blast would fly away--do people really care if a particular spot of void has some radioactive particles drifting around? Now using the Mace planetside would be a different story...

 

[Ijuin]

It's not about the space being contaminated, it's about the SHIP being contaminated. Let's say that the Concordia gets hit by a low-yield nuke that cripples her. There will be contamination on the Concordia herself from the bomb, including structural material that has been turned radioactive from neutron bombardment in the explosion. That's bad news for the surviving crew.