Capital Ship Missiles

[Nadir]

Ahoy from Italy!

Two things:

One: Firearms require an explosion; space, in its infinite vacuum, has no oxygen, and therefore, an explosion cannot occur. Missiles, or at least, rockets insofar as NASA-grade ones, go on because they use a liquid oxygen-enriched fuel and are ignitied on Earth, which has oxygen. So technically, firearms can't be fired in space.

Second: Fire cannot really exist in space unless there is oxygen-enriched area. I.e. how can there be fire when your ship gets hit? It can't be leaking THAT much oxygen, or your hull would be decompressing. And I think that would indeed be a critical hull breach.

So, there you go. I'm here in Italy, on a nice vacation, and I forgot about Disco! I'm sorry: I haven't been here to annoy you. No worries, I'll be back soon. Once I'm back in LA (or close to it) I can be back on ALL the time. Aren't you all so happy? :P

Until I get back...

Harley

Firearms and explosives contain their own oxygen donors (part of the chemical compound) but it is absolutely true that fire cannot exist in space. An explosion might be caused by a fission power plant going critical or a fusion reactor loosing containment or a matter-antimatter reaction so the explosion would be a violent release of energy, not flame.

Happy holidaying

Yes, very happy at your return - there's about 400 PMs waiting for you:)


The main problem with bullet firing in space is the recoil! The charge isn't a problem as the oxygen is part of the explosive compound. Free air doesn't have enough oxygen in it to sustain a fast enough explosion so there is what is called an oxygen donor as part of the explosive. However it's doubtful that the kinetic energy of a bullet would be significant in comparison to an energy weapon. Space ships would have to survive being hit by micro-meteors traveling many times faster than a bullet could ever be accelerated to, even by a very very long rail gun. Shields and armor would both have to brush these everyday collisions off without so much as blinking - as it were. It's calculated that a small asteroid of a 10kg or so has the kinetic energy of a WWII atom bomb. Luckily the earth's atmosphere absorbs this quite easily.

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ex