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I bet they were all disappointed because if there were no significant effect the next logical step is to allow the team try again with nukes.

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Nukes in space are actually not all that great. The same goes for explosions in general. A lot of our intuition for explosions come from how they interact with atmosphere, which will compress and expand, and mediate a shock wave in a way vacuum categorically does not.

A nuke is essentially reduced to a flash of ionizing radiation and a few kilograms of gas rapidly cooling and diffusing into the vacuum of space.

Do they need some mass to throw around? I wonder if you could like embed one in an asteroid.

Also, trying to get nukes into space is not that great both in terms of "what if something goes wrong" and the optics from foreign powers.

Yeah nukes are not something I'd want to "fuck around and find out" with

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