Astronaut Sacrifice [Pitch Black]

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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.

Apathy Tree

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.

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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.

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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.

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I used to sit at work until 3AM just watching tv on my iPad. That was my reason.

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Second one, thanks

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I don’t think you can even make missiles without self destruct. If you can, what’s the point?

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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”

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sets down a pack of chips in front of your door, knocks and leaves silently

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The self-destruct does not activate the main weapon.

AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet

A naval ship can’t destroy an entire planet with orbital bombardment.

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you can’t really do anything to a spaceship to “disable” it and prevent it from ever being used

Except for

slowing down and hitting the closest sun/planet(even has a “countdown” as it takes a while)
hitting the nearest asteroid
Attaching or enabling anything that causes cascading vibrations (cause almost any source of wobble can cause the ship to break)
…hitting full burn in any direction, making anyone follow it burn a lot of fuel just to slow it down (would still be recoverable though)
probably a few more

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Yeah, so in summation - blow it up.

Buglefingers

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

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Sends a screaming horde of children in with multiple bags of chips and soda

Laughs maniacally

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I’d take the hug.

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Sure thing.

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Who says it’s a bomb? In most cases self destruct is overloading the reactor, or something similar.

Decoy321

Artillery?

Decoy321

For the first one, you can use a smaller boom.