I love the totally illogical idea of self-destruction in space travel.
Like we don’t have self-destruct bombs on ships or planes or research stations on earth (I’m sure there’s an exception or two, but they prove the point), why the fuck would we have them in space, which is a much more fragile environment to exist within…?
Computer shutdown procedures sure, but what possible use is a bomb that’s made to blow up your own vessel? Just so silly.
“Uh, captain, we were joking. You don’t need to stay on the ship… and neither does Daniel.” *hushed whispering, quick discussion*
“Well okay, we think Daniel should stay.”
That would make sense for a cutting edge spy plane, but it’s a little weird for something like the Nostromo, which is just a standard cargo ship. I guess if you sometimes carried secret cargo, though, you would want that equipment standard, since otherwise installing it custom for one trip would be a dead giveaway that there was something secret on board.
My other thought behind it was also not necessarily that it is it’s own device/explosive but more so along the lines of “we will intentionally run this poorly to cause itself to self destruct.” Akin to running a car engine untuned and without a radiator then full throttling it.
Someone may have just developed a program that tells the engines to do that so you wouldn’t exactly need anything physically installed to have it work.
Sure, I mean, anything you need a spacecraft to do but that you can accomplish without adding extra equipment, you should probably do it that way, because it means less mass to accelerate and less equipment to test and certify and so forth. It’s definitely not hard to imagine getting this functionality without adding equipment. The question is whether the ability to do this in the rare scenarios that call for it offset the drawbacks of having a system in which the protections against such failures can be disabled. Which means you then have to include a bunch of interlocks and crap to ensure it’s as unlikely as possible that the ship can get into that mode without someone being very sure they want that. I think OP is probably right that on, say, a cargo ship, it’s pretty unlikely that “also, the engine can explode!” would be seen as a feature rather than a wholly alarming bug.
I’d assume there are those safeties and interlocks, you’d always want that, a thumbdrive with a program that disables it is just as easy and not a “bug” which is what I was getting at. But yeah, it’s unlikely most cargo ships would want that probably. I’m simply playing devils advocate because they do seem to have them, so how or why in the most reasonable sense is all I’m arguing.
To be fair, I think there’s a distinction to be made between “something is wrong, blow up the missile before it hits the wrong target” and “target reached, blow up the missile”
Most of the time it seems like it’s not a bomb, but triggering some kind of uncontrolled meltdown of a reactor that’s powering the vessel, or maybe blowing up the fuel.
In some cases sure, but even then, like… why is that so easy to do? And why are there countdowns? And why can it be intentionally triggered? That’s the real weird one. None of those things are even remotely realistic. There should be layers upon layers of safeguards to prevent the super expensive ship that took years to build from blowing up.
I mean we already have auto-shutdown processes for all sorts of explody and dangerous energy sources on earth; we even have auto-shutdown processes to prevent damage to the generator/facility. I’d assume those used to power ships would be among the safest, especially if we’ve made it to real manned exploration technology.
Warships absolutely have a “self destruct button” it’s called scuttling. Done to deny the enemy the capture of the ships, or to lodge a wreck in an important location, so it blocks passage. Usually a “self destruct” is ships scuttling, but for space - you can’t really do anything to a spaceship to “disable” it and prevent it from ever being used, unless you blow it to bits. Also, explosions are cool.
Same thing for abandonned tanks - burning those is often done - especially if you just lost a track, and the tank is fully operational but cannot move. If you have no chance of retrieving the vehicle, it’s better to burn it than to deny the enemy the knowledge about its system, weakpoints, comms etc.
Most of your suggestions require working engines. Shaking the ship apart might make the ship itself unusable but doesn’t do anything about on board equipment or intel. A “scuttling” equivalent needs to work when the ship is mostly, or even completely, non-functional, and needs to either destroy everything aboard or make it not worth the effort of recovery.
If you have a second ship then you could use its thrusters.
I also doubt that any explosion short of nuclear is going to destroy most equipment and intel considering the ship is in space and has large parts vented to space (due to combat damage or design). Maybe if you line or fill all the things you want to destroy with some explosives but I wouldn’t want to be on such a ship. More likely you’d manually lay down explosives from the ammunition if scuttling is required and then detonate it but not have it already there at the push of a button(assuming you’re not using a nuke for every ship).
In Star Trek at least, where this trope is probably the most firmly established, the self destruct involves antimatter annihilation, which is arguably in excess of nuclear.
…not really the point, the point is that either you have a nuke (or better) or an explosion isn’t going to be sufficient to destroy Intel and machinery.
Unless you can justify having a built in nuke/antimatter bomb in the ship then it’s not something a real world ship would have(excluding things like special military ships maybe).
Even if you have an antimatter reactor then it would still have to be a procedure on the order of “we’re welding the safety’s shut and overriding everything we can give us a few hours to rig the ship to blow” not “whoops pushed the self destruct button”
Point being, a colony ship or some science exploration vessel doesn’t have a built in antimatter bomb at the push of a button.
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I love the totally illogical idea of self-destruction in space travel.
Like we don’t have self-destruct bombs on ships or planes or research stations on earth (I’m sure there’s an exception or two, but they prove the point), why the fuck would we have them in space, which is a much more fragile environment to exist within…?
Computer shutdown procedures sure, but what possible use is a bomb that’s made to blow up your own vessel? Just so silly.
Scuttling purposes or of its far enough in the future/sci-fi enough you might not want the data/object surviving if you can’t have it
Didn’t German u-boats get sunk by their crew rather than allow that tech to get into the hands of the Allied powers?
I would think self destruct is the same concept.
Many naval vessels have been sunk by their own crew rather than be captured by the enemy. It’s called scuttling.
“Uh, captain, we were joking. You don’t need to stay on the ship… and neither does Daniel.”
*hushed whispering, quick discussion*
“Well okay, we think Daniel should stay.”
I always though the point was “This is secret/must not be given to the enemy” so destruction is a better option than having it seized
That would make sense for a cutting edge spy plane, but it’s a little weird for something like the Nostromo, which is just a standard cargo ship. I guess if you sometimes carried secret cargo, though, you would want that equipment standard, since otherwise installing it custom for one trip would be a dead giveaway that there was something secret on board.
My other thought behind it was also not necessarily that it is it’s own device/explosive but more so along the lines of “we will intentionally run this poorly to cause itself to self destruct.” Akin to running a car engine untuned and without a radiator then full throttling it.
Someone may have just developed a program that tells the engines to do that so you wouldn’t exactly need anything physically installed to have it work.
Sure, I mean, anything you need a spacecraft to do but that you can accomplish without adding extra equipment, you should probably do it that way, because it means less mass to accelerate and less equipment to test and certify and so forth. It’s definitely not hard to imagine getting this functionality without adding equipment. The question is whether the ability to do this in the rare scenarios that call for it offset the drawbacks of having a system in which the protections against such failures can be disabled. Which means you then have to include a bunch of interlocks and crap to ensure it’s as unlikely as possible that the ship can get into that mode without someone being very sure they want that. I think OP is probably right that on, say, a cargo ship, it’s pretty unlikely that “also, the engine can explode!” would be seen as a feature rather than a wholly alarming bug.
I’d assume there are those safeties and interlocks, you’d always want that, a thumbdrive with a program that disables it is just as easy and not a “bug” which is what I was getting at. But yeah, it’s unlikely most cargo ships would want that probably. I’m simply playing devils advocate because they do seem to have them, so how or why in the most reasonable sense is all I’m arguing.
We have them in missiles. Oh, and on civilian rockets too.
We put them on things that are dangerous and must be stopped is something goes wrong.
I don’t think you can even make missiles without self destruct. If you can, what’s the point?
To be fair, I think there’s a distinction to be made between “something is wrong, blow up the missile before it hits the wrong target” and “target reached, blow up the missile”
For the first one, you can use a smaller boom.
Artillery?
The self-destruct does not activate the main weapon.
Most of the time it seems like it’s not a bomb, but triggering some kind of uncontrolled meltdown of a reactor that’s powering the vessel, or maybe blowing up the fuel.
In some cases sure, but even then, like… why is that so easy to do? And why are there countdowns? And why can it be intentionally triggered? That’s the real weird one. None of those things are even remotely realistic. There should be layers upon layers of safeguards to prevent the super expensive ship that took years to build from blowing up.
I mean we already have auto-shutdown processes for all sorts of explody and dangerous energy sources on earth; we even have auto-shutdown processes to prevent damage to the generator/facility. I’d assume those used to power ships would be among the safest, especially if we’ve made it to real manned exploration technology.
Warships absolutely have a “self destruct button” it’s called scuttling. Done to deny the enemy the capture of the ships, or to lodge a wreck in an important location, so it blocks passage. Usually a “self destruct” is ships scuttling, but for space - you can’t really do anything to a spaceship to “disable” it and prevent it from ever being used, unless you blow it to bits. Also, explosions are cool.
Same thing for abandonned tanks - burning those is often done - especially if you just lost a track, and the tank is fully operational but cannot move. If you have no chance of retrieving the vehicle, it’s better to burn it than to deny the enemy the knowledge about its system, weakpoints, comms etc.
Except for
Most of your suggestions require working engines. Shaking the ship apart might make the ship itself unusable but doesn’t do anything about on board equipment or intel. A “scuttling” equivalent needs to work when the ship is mostly, or even completely, non-functional, and needs to either destroy everything aboard or make it not worth the effort of recovery.
If you have a second ship then you could use its thrusters.
I also doubt that any explosion short of nuclear is going to destroy most equipment and intel considering the ship is in space and has large parts vented to space (due to combat damage or design). Maybe if you line or fill all the things you want to destroy with some explosives but I wouldn’t want to be on such a ship. More likely you’d manually lay down explosives from the ammunition if scuttling is required and then detonate it but not have it already there at the push of a button(assuming you’re not using a nuke for every ship).
In Star Trek at least, where this trope is probably the most firmly established, the self destruct involves antimatter annihilation, which is arguably in excess of nuclear.
…not really the point, the point is that either you have a nuke (or better) or an explosion isn’t going to be sufficient to destroy Intel and machinery.
Unless you can justify having a built in nuke/antimatter bomb in the ship then it’s not something a real world ship would have(excluding things like special military ships maybe).
Even if you have an antimatter reactor then it would still have to be a procedure on the order of “we’re welding the safety’s shut and overriding everything we can give us a few hours to rig the ship to blow” not “whoops pushed the self destruct button”
Point being, a colony ship or some science exploration vessel doesn’t have a built in antimatter bomb at the push of a button.
Yeah, so in summation - blow it up.
Who says it’s a bomb? In most cases self destruct is overloading the reactor, or something similar.
Protomolecule
There are flight termination systems (explosives) on rockets, but not spacecraft
A naval ship can’t destroy an entire planet with orbital bombardment.