On the prospect of nuclear-propelled interstellar travel at 10% the speed of light?

I guess I’d…go to a great steak house for my last meal!

@Blobman The bombs scattering across the earth is not the problem . The problem is you have neglected to figure out what happens when a spacecraft going ~61.7million- miles-per-hr hits the earth. Would you like to start over? :-)

I’m going to the steakhouse. Anyone with me?

@virtualist lol thats what I was thinking.

only if your are buying val

At that velocity, the explosion will destroy the steakhouse (and everything else) before you can get there, I suggest we go now, just in case….

@LKidKyle1985 I think it’ll be ok if we dine-n-dash this time…
@DrBill We’re on our way to pick you up!

Okay, so maybe its .001–5% the speed of light. The point is the scattering of the bombs

@Blobman So what exactly is the problem with the scattering of the bombs? How long of a distance did the ship come, was it scattering bombs along the whole route, and how close are the closest bombs and are they armed?

If we negate the velocity, it would depend on the strength of the bombs and how far they scatter

@DrBill How would you negate the velocity??

@Val123

Substitute a reasonable velocity.

@Blobman A few thousand thermonuclear bombs scattered across half the earth… (the other half would be in the shadowof the bombs trajectories)... would, of course lead to a dead planet . This would not be because of immediate blast damage but from the massive thrust of aerosolized matter thrust into the atomosphere to the stratospher and encircling the globe within a matter of a couple of weeks. Sunlight disappears; weather is violent and cold; photosynthesis stops. Life as you know it on the surface of earth would be pretty much gone in matter of weeks to months. The sulphur eating thermobacteria living within a few feet of the thermal plumes at the bottom of deep ocean trenches would survive, I believe. That would be about it. Read Sagan’s book on ‘Nuclear Winter’.

I think it really depends on how heavy the spacecraft is…..while at rest. Though I’m fairly sure it’ll make a damn large hole in the Earth…..along with a shockwave that’d destroy practically everything on the planet.

@Shuttle128 It’s the classic response: ” It’s not the speed that kills , it’s the sudden stop” :-(

@virtualist- Unless this craft is very, very massive isn’t the velocity mentioned is not going to destroy the planet. The Earth has been hit multiple times by high velocity flotsam and it’s still here.

@AstroChuck The premises have been changed to some unknown lower velocity vessel sufficiently massive to hold a few thousand bombs of a few hundred- to – few thousand lbs apiece. This is still quite different still from orbiting flotsam which enters the atmosphere tangentially, out of orbit, and what doesn’t disintegrate in the atmosphere lands in a field in Canada somewhere. We’re talking Vogon war , here, actually. Who knows what those darned Vogons are going to do .. and at what velocity. If they want something from us and our planet it would behoove them to enter gently and just call us out on the streets in front of our bars at dawn for a shootout. :-)

@DrBill The only “reasonable” velocity would be the velocity of the spacecraft as it jettisoned the “bombs” on it’s trip. The question is, how far of a distance did the ship have to go, how many bombs were captured in orbit around various suns and planets on it’s trip, therefore, how many bombs were jettisoned within our solar system. How many were picked up by the gravitational pull of the other nine planets OR annihlated the other nine planets, because at !0% of the speed of light, they’re going too fast for the said planet’s gravitation to slow them down to go into orbit instead of impact. Therefore, how many are on track to hit the earth at, assuming, 10% of the speed of light? How many might skip out of the gravitational field of earth, (ricochet if you will) how many may hit? Plus, what is the mass of the bombs, because that may be more telling than their nuclear capacity.

Back to your question: However fast the ship was going when it jettisoned it’s bombs, that’s how fast the bombs will go until…acted on by an equal and opposite force, which, for the most part, is absent in space.

You ever play four square…? Like with a basketball?

@Blobman BTW, you changed your speed to “Okay, so maybe its .001–5% the speed of light” what exactly is that X? Is do we use MPH as our divisor, or Miles Per Second? Or…what?

We’ll send Bruce Willis and have him detonate the bombs in space. Only this time he will make it to one of the escape pods.

Slowing to .001.5 C is still ~280 miles per second or 1, 004,400 miles per hour

LOL Matt!

What I meant was: The velocity at which the spacecraft hits Earth is not fast enough for it to destroy the planet, nor is it big enough to destroy earth. What I meant was that the speed could be from .0001% the speed of light to 5% the speed of light, as in the speed could be anywhere between those. Also, say the nuclear bombs are in some sort of super strong casing which would not allow the bombs to detonate. The only way for the bombs to be detonated would be to open the casing and detonate by hand or remotely. This would mean that an organization or government could use them as weapons.

That is a completely different premise…..why not just eliminate the idea of a spaceship carrying them and just say that there was massive nuclear weapon proliferation?

@Blobman- The nuclear weapons wouldn’t detonate from an impact. That’s not how an atomic bomb works. The real danger would be from the radioactive material released and not fallout from an explosion.

If it were really going at 10% the speed of light, there would be no need to have nuclear bombs. All they would need to throw is big rocks—the kinetic energy of the rocks hitting the Earth would result in explosions that would probably be greater than any nuclear bomb ever detonated.

@Shuttle128- the reason that the whole alien spacecraft part is in there is because they are the ones who brought them to Earth. The point is how does that affect our relationship with these new people.

@AstroChuck- the point of it is that there are WMDs spread across a large area and that some countries or organizations might want to use them in unpeacful ways.