Timeline for If the ship's self-destruct is such a great idea why don't real Navies do this?

Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0

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Feb 12, 2016 at 15:40	comment	added	Premier Bromanov		To add, ships don't have "self destruct" buttons because, 1) That's very easily exploitable by any rogue member of the ship, 2) designing a system to specifically destroy itself when needed proposes some awful problems with the system when it doesn't want to explode (oops, a wire got crossed, goodbye ship!), and 3) When things are designed to do something, they are designed because they need to do it gracefully, efficiently, or robustly. As it stands, blowing something up is mostly neither of those things, and so doesn't require a design. Just use onboard explosives to tear it a new one.
Feb 12, 2016 at 11:09	history	edited	Chris Johns	CC BY-SA 3.0	added 124 characters in body
Feb 12, 2016 at 11:00	history	edited	Chris Johns	CC BY-SA 3.0	added 340 characters in body
Feb 12, 2016 at 10:53	history	edited	Chris Johns	CC BY-SA 3.0	added 340 characters in body
Feb 12, 2016 at 0:28	comment	added	Nate Eldredge		@jameslarge: They almost always seem to have escape pods. Of course, for added drama, there's usually a reason why they can't be used.
Feb 11, 2016 at 23:20	comment	added	Solomon Slow		Right, but as others have pointed out in comments on other answers; simply blowing a hole in the side of a star ship is not likely to prevent the enemy from capturing it in the same way that scuttling an ocean going vessel in deep water can do. You'd need to do something more dramatic. Maybe the real question should be, why aren't any of these space-opera star ships equipped with life boats?
Feb 11, 2016 at 22:35	history	edited	Chris Johns	CC BY-SA 3.0	edited body
Feb 11, 2016 at 22:16	history	edited	Chris Johns	CC BY-SA 3.0	added 225 characters in body
Feb 11, 2016 at 22:10	history	answered	Chris Johns	CC BY-SA 3.0