What's a safer design for a relativistic kill vehicle?

A large railgun mounted on the spine of a mega-scale starship (20-32km) or an antimatter-powered missile launched outside the ship? For clarification's sake, when I say "safer" I'm referring to "safer for the ship firing the weapon" rather than anything else.

I figure the railgun has more combat advantages, as the projectile spends less time in open space accelerating compared to a missile, which makes it less vulnerable to premature detection and destruction by laser-intercept weapons. Additionally, its heat signature is masked by the larger heat signature of the ship, giving the enemy less forewarning that the weapon is being fired as opposed to a missile, whose engines would appear as their own distinct heat signatures apart from the ship. On the flip side however, a missile would not impart any of its destructive energy on the ship, which is a problem a railgun would certainly have. That being said, storing missiles that are fueled by antimatter is also pretty far from safe (although a ship this size would certainly need it as fuel anyway).

So which is safer for the ship firing them while still being effective in combat, missiles or railguns?

posted about 8 years ago

Z.Schroeder‭

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