If nuclear bomb will detonate in space 400 meters from spaceship, ship will be safe?

Question

If nuclear bomb will detonate in space 400 meters from spaceship, ship will be safe?

Answer 1

If a nuclear bomb as you call it detonated within 400 meters of a solid cube of lead, the lead would be vaporized. The gamma radiation alone would be enough to completely evaporate any kind of known spaceship. It has nothing to do with an atmospheric shock wave, the bomb makes it's own shockwave and generates an incredible amount of heat. If you are talking about a thermonuclear bomb, then we are talking about the reaction that makes the sun burn. Nothing could stand up to being 400 meters away.

Answer 2

Well, that heat is generated from a release of energy that is pinned up inside of atoms.



The Sun has a very similar process going on and it is running just fine in space and we feel all of that heat from it. AT 93 million miles away (average distance from the Sun), it takes just eight minutes to reach the Earth.



At four hundred meters, a typical nuclear bomb's explosion would obliterate the ship. The electromagnetic energy (which will be everything from radio waves up to gamma radiation, including visible light) will torch, kill, destroy, mangle, and devastate anything that is too close and four hundred meters is too close. That is just under four and a half football fields.

Answer 3

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Answer 4

particular it may. The detonation of a nuclear occurs by applying putting jointly 2 chunks of radioactive textile (frequently U-235) to attain the so called extreme mass. while the bite of uranium has reached the extreme mass, the radiation from that's going to enhance up the fission lots that an explosion will ensue. The explosion happens because of the fact of a multitude of heat which makes the radioactive metallic soften and then evaporate, inflicting it to enhance notably. This technique does not count on oxygen. the only factor in a nuclear bomb which could in all probability require oxygen is the two plenty which rigidity the two chunks of metallic jointly. even though it is often solved by applying including a nitrate or another oxidizing agent which will launch oxygen. it is comprehensive even while the bomb won't be able to be fired in area to make water resistant. there is likewise yet another style of nuclear bomb, a so called "grimy bomb" that may not explode because of the fact of radioactivity yet because of the fact the uranium catches fire and spreads interior the process the air. the objective of one in all those bomb is to infect the surroundings around it. A "grimy bomb" might in all probability no longer be obtainable to detonate (effectively) with out oxygen.

Answer 5

It would be destroyed, probably vaporized by the neutron and gamma rays from the blast. Even if the ship itself survived, the radiation would easily pierce the hull, kill the crew instantly and probably wreck the electronics too. Energetic neutrons can destroy microchips and short out electrical systems. Gamma rays heat up everything that absorbs them. That is why nuclear blasts create a blinding fireball, it's because of gamma rays smashing into air molecules and heating them to millions of degrees. As the radiation is absorbed then re-emitted, it's downgraded into visible light. There wouldn't be a blast or a fireball in space, but a nuclear bomb would still destroy a spacecraft near it, let alone one hundreds of miles away from it in the case of a high yield nuclear bomb.

Answer 6

Actually the radiation pressure from a fission bomb is enough to cause nuclear fusion in a hydrogen bomb.

Answer 7

Actually, I'd still worry about the radiation. There would be a lot of electromagnetic radiation, maybe even an electromagnetic pulse (could damage computers on the ship, including the environmental controls). There would be gamma rays and X-rays (definitely bad for anyone looking out in the direction of the blast.



The radiation would probably cause heat spikes on the skin (and even inside if there are portholes).



The heat would simply be just another form of radiation (infrared -- probably the least dangerous of the lot).

Answer 8

If it was a small bomb and an extremely well shielded space ship, maybe. 30-50% of the bomb's energy is thermal and that's a LOT of heat, but with a properly heat reflective surface, maybe. 5% is ionizing radiation, again, properly shielded you might be OK.



On the plus side, if you did survive the first second, you'd probably be OK because fallout and blast aren't issues in space.



I wouldn't want to be on that ship, but a SMALL bomb might well be survivable at that range depending on the ship's construction.

Answer 9

Well, first of all there would be a shockwave. In order to calculate the blast effect you would need to know the yield of the bomb which would then convert from the usual measure of kilotons to the more familiar to the typical physics problem measure of Joules. I think that there is some standard that 1kiltoton = 4.184*10^12 Joules; but I am not sure of this without looking up the exact number. Assuming that you have a given quantity of "heat", imagine that the bomb is vaporized - which it woud be, so use some of the familiar equations like PV=nRT to calcuate some meaningful number for the temperature and pressure of the resulting ball of plasma that will result. Then calculate the free exapansion of this ball of plasma into a sphere of 400 meters radius. That will give you a number for the temperature and pressure of the expanding plasma.



Now for the hint: When a volume of gas expands against a piston; or otherwise has something to do "work" on, you have to do some more exotic calculations; like "the work done by the adiabatic expansion of a gas", and for an atmospheric blast this implies that the expanding fireball does "work" on the atmosphere; and this is what causes much of the "heat and blast" effect, just like a diesel engine, i.e. the expanding fireball heats the atmosphere not simply because of the thermal effects of the explosion, but rather you have a heating effect that propagates at the speed of sound because of the compression of the air. This is in addition to the effect of radiation ionizing the atmosphere - dont confuse the two!



Now in a vacuum of course you aren't ionizing the atmosphere; you simply have a certain amount of energy given of as radiation, so the so called "radiation transport" piece goes away. That is to say that with an air burst of a nuclear device - radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere as gamma rays; then the atmosphere emits x-rays, which in turn are absorbed and re-emitted as ultraviolet and so on down the chain. This is the so-called "radiation transport" and for an atmospheric blast it makes the computations very difficult to actually perform, that is because you would have to take into account the absorption and emission spectra of the various plasmas that can be made from the atmosphere.



Now the good news finally, if there is any is that you dont have to deal with that in a vacuum, you only have to cacluate the intensity of the energy that reaches your space ship - it will all pretty much be in the form of radiation and shock wave of the expanding plasma cloud.



So lets see PV=nRT implies P=nRT/V. With V=(4*pi*(400m)^3)/3. Now to come up with reasonable values for the mass of the device, including all shielding - that is to say that we are assuming that the bomb completely vaporizes ...





Right if if ALL vaporizes ... but if it doesnt, I mean if so much as some grain of sand size particles survive the blast and are driven at high speed in the direction of the space ship - well it should be very obvious that that would be very bad for the space ship. Noting that the "peace" dome in Hiroshima was not "completely" vaporized by the blast, seems to strongly suggest that in space a nuclear bomb might still be usable as the core of a very nasty "grendade" -- lots of potential for microscopic "shrapnel" to inflict great harm to nearby space craft, or even satellites thousands of miles away.



My "guess" is leaning toward various other factors such as super heated micrometeorites moving many miles per second will pulverize any heat shielding, or "tiles" or anything else they run into. The velocity of these micrometeorites could very well be high enough to send some into higher orbits and damage or destroy orbiting satellites thousands of miles away.



I dont have the total energy from the "shock wave" but as described, it is very real - no matter what you hear about there being "no sound in space" and no matter how empty you think the space was before the blast .... so lets make a guess on the shock wave energy:



For a 10kT device, lets assume a total energy of 4*10^13 Joules; and divide that by 4*pi*(400meters)^2 - I am getting about 20 megajoules per square meter in "Windows Calculator" - the back of your envelope may vary. Now once again, based on the laws of physics -- all of this energy will be coming at your spaceship, it will be in the form of microscopic shrapnel that survives the blast, but mostly in the form of radiation and the plasma fireball that will carry much of the energy in the combined "heat and shock" of the blast. For the reasons explained, i.e. the lack of "radiation transport" over an extended distance - most of what you think of as a traditional blast, mushroom cloud, etc, wont be present.