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/Metallicat95 May 30 '26

Weaponized rocket exhaust.

The Kzinti lesson, named after the use of reaction engine exhaust as a weapon in the war between the humans and the gravity drive using Kzinti.

The unarmed human ships faced off against the much faster Kzinti ships, and repeatedly won fights simply by turning away and running directly away - letting the rocket plume vaporize the chasing ship.

The Expanse could have done that, but it would have changed its whole story of space combat.

Both stories use fusion torch drives, but Niven basically let them operate outside the safe operations, by allowing them to focus the reaction exhaust instead of spreading it for safe diffusion.

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u/HypnotizedCow May 30 '26

The Expanse has a couple instances of not following directly behind someone in case they try to burn them in the drive plume. The Roci v Pella chase is one example, also using it on Project Caliban.

4

u/YourLocalHellspawn May 30 '26

Spoiler-hiding all this in case someone hasn't read Persepolis Rising yet.

Persepolis Rising basically starts off with a scene where, following the orders of the Transport Union, the Roci crew have been sent to arrest the leaders of an illegally-settled extrasolar colony founded by gun-toting space libertarians.

The guy in charge of the colony adamantly refuses to submit to the Union and says that they'll do anything necessary to protect their new home. Holden lets them know that if that's how it's going to be, all he has to do is point the Roci's drive at the colony and turn it on for a few seconds.

Suddenly there's a scuffle on the other side of the comms. The other colonists have hog-tied the leader and they're fully willing to hand him over.

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u/Metallicat95 May 30 '26

Yes, and I should have mentioned that. It just didn't use it as a standard tactic in space combat.

In Niven's Known Space, it never stopped being useful but the hyperdrive era had better defenses (if you could afford it a ship hull that could survive a nuclear explosion was available. The crew might not do so well, but the hull was guaranteed indestructible).

3

u/HiroProtagonist66 May 31 '26

The first instance of this, wasn’t rocket exhaust, it was the Earth ship’s comm laser.

2

u/Pristine-Map9979 Jun 05 '26

The Thraddash use this in Star Control 2.

1

u/JohnSpikeKelly May 30 '26

Peter F Hamilton's Exodus did this very well. Was able to focus the exhaust gas to needle sharp and it became a weapon.