• Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    24 days ago

    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.

    • WindyRebel@lemmy.world
      1·
      23 days ago

      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.

        • tetris11@lemmy.ml
          2·
          22 days ago

          “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.”

    • Buglefingers@lemmy.world
      0·
      24 days ago

      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

      • monotremata@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        23 days ago

        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.

        • Buglefingers@lemmy.world
          0·
          23 days ago

          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.

          • monotremata@lemmy.caEnglish
            0·
            22 days ago

            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.

            • Buglefingers@lemmy.world
              2·
              22 days ago

              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.

    • rhombus@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      24 days ago

      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@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        24 days ago

        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.

    • edgemaster72@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      25 days ago

      My head canon is that he knew there was an update available to fix it, he just wanted to get away from the other astronauts. I might be biased having spent the day hiding from my family.