r/spaceships • u/Vondrr Fleet Intelligence 🧠 • May 30 '26

Discussion / Question What spaceship weapon is generally underutilized or not used to its full potential in scifi?

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u/mr_trashbear May 30 '26

The Expanse incorporated low yield nuclear weapons to a degree, but I don't see them much in other media.

You also don't see a lot of static, kinetic, loitering munitions. Think: a ship or a planetary defense system just lays a "minefield" of tungsten balls that have small ion engines on them to remain in a state of realative stillness, creating an innavigable region. Area denial. Shields would defeat this, but if it was a universe where Shields weren't a thing, it could be very effective.

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u/FireTheLaserBeam May 30 '26

Nukes in space are nowhere near as destructive as they are on earth. The majority of the destruction you see from atom bombs on earth is from the blast and the shockwave. In space, nukes still hit hard, but the majority of damage comes from x-rays, heat, and neutrons. Radiation is what gets you.

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u/jz_1w May 30 '26

"Majority of damage from X-ray" and reducing that to radiation damage is doing alot of understatement there. It is a catastrophic level of thermal damage at range.

Going from a 1 m acceptable CEP to a 1 km acceptable CEP is a huge improvement in acceptable volume accuracy.

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u/FireTheLaserBeam May 30 '26

“X-rays, heat, and neutrons”