History Main / SpaceMines

* ''StarFleetBattles''. Ships can "roll a mine out a hatch" and leave it to blow up a ship pursuing them. Mines can be set to accept only certain sizes of ships as targets. Major space installations often had minefield belts protecting them. Some of the mine types available:

* The first few seconds of Sector X in ''VideoGame/StarFox64'' has a cloud of mines you have to go through.

* ''Literature/HaloFirstStrike'' has Moray Space Mines, which can be homing or stationary.
** ''Halo: Ghosts of Onyx'' has nuclear HORNET mines.

* In ''Literature/ArrivalsFromTheDask'', it's mentioned that, after their defeat in the four long [[GreatOffscreenWar Void Wars]], the [[HumanAliens Faata]] occasionally lay traps for human patrol ships in the Void, including corrosion mines that rip ships apart. FridgeLogic comes into play, when you realize that the Void is a volume of space completely devoid of stars or planets between the Orion and Pegasus Arms of the galaxy, so it doesn't make much sense for the Faata to know exactly where to place such mines, unless the humans there are so stupid they always use the same exact patrol routes every time.

* ''VideoGame/TachyonTheFringe'' has weapon platform space mines. During the first training mission, the flight instructor didn't know they were live, causing the pilot to be attacked.

* Earth's ocean and sea terrain contains a lot of inlets, natural harbors, bays, straights and other types of terrain that make natural choke-points where the use of mines is a practical way to deny or substantially delay passage to unwanted ships. No such barriers or terrain exists in space to prevent ships from circumnavigating such a barrier. Even protecting a very small moon with a density of one mine every few thousand cubic km would require huge numbers of mines and logistical support to successfully achieve coverage. The same logistical resources would be of better use in improving detection and interception/quick reaction capability. Can be justified if there IS a conveniently narrow pathway to barricade, such as a local entrance to {{Hyperspace}} or the PortalNetwork, or if the object to be surrounded by mines is fairly small, such as an asteroid base.
* Laying mines takes time, and the larger area you need to cover, the number of mines you would need increase quadratically. To cover large or even moderate areas could take hundreds of years, even if it only took a few seconds to lay each mine. Justified if the mines have potential to locate and approach, or shoot, their targets from massive range, thus ensuring blockade functionality despite low minefield density, or can be all released in a single spot and relocate and organise autonomously. As for the matter of quantity, this can be explained by having automated manufacturing and minelaying facilities operating over lengthy time periods, or have the mines themselves be self-propagating Von Neumann machines.
* Sea mines are deployed under water, greatly complicating the task of detecting and clearing them. There is no such barrier to visibility for SpaceMines. Unless there were some sort of mitigating factor (sensory disruption, cloaked mines, etc.) space ships could just pick them off with long range guns/lasers/missiles/decoys/whatever. May be partially justified by the fact that, unlike enemy ships, they can be inert, dormant and undistinguishable from generic space debris until they're close enough to strike.

** The Cheka, a race appearing in the StarTrekDeepSpaceNineRelaunch, employ space mines during a battle in the novel ''This Gray Spirit''.

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** The Romulans have a Nuclear Space Mine based on the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "Balance of Terror".

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* In the StarTrekNovelVerse, the Gorn Hegemony makes use of these, and fields specialized mine-launcher ships. One such vessel causes trouble for the StarfleetCorpsOfEngineers in the story “Where Time Stands Still”.

* Stewart Cowley's ''Spacecraft: 2000 to 2100 A.D.''. During the war with Proxima Centauri, the perimeter of Earth's solar system was seeded with nuclear mines. They would home in on the warp generators of arriving enemy ships and destroy them while they were recharging their power banks after the warp jump.

* In ''AnotherCenturysEpisode'' (the original), one mission (loosely based on ''GundamWing'', mentioned above) has you clearing out a minefield so Relena Peacecraft can make a goodwill visit to the colonies.

* In ''Anime/GundamWing'', the area around the space colonies is seeded with mines to prevent any unauthorized travel. Trowa's first assignment upon enlisting with OZ is to help destroy the mines, as part of OZ's "kinder and gentler" facade.

* In the pilot of the original ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|Classic}}'', the Galactica must pass through a narrow region of space in a [[SpaceClouds dense nebula]] that has been mined by the Cylons.

* Mines are used to defend a [[PortalNetwork Void gate]] in ''InfiniteSpace'', but the invading fleet cuts right through them with a massive missile barrage. The Oort Interception System around the prison planet Skantzoura is made up of mines that shoot anything that comes close like the ''Babylon 5'' example.

* The Artemis System Net from ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion 2: Battle At Antares'' is a massive minefield that surrounds the system it's built at. It has a chance of damaging or destroying enemy warships that attack the system depending on the size class.

* The ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "The Serpent's Venom" takes place in a space minefield where the mines all lock onto any sign of weapons, which is used by the Go'a'uld as a neutral meeting place. SG-1 has to reprogram a mine to attack one of the Go'a'uld ships at the meeting, in order to instigate a conflict.

* ''LightNovel/CrestOfTheStars'' has mines being one of the three main weapons being used in space battles (the other two being [[FrickenLaserBeams anti-proton beams]] and [[MagneticWeapons railguns]]). Ships deploy mines around themselves as defense, as the mines are self-piloting and follow the ship's movements; or employ them as self-guided missiles against distant enemies. The nature of space combat in the series makes them the most effective long-range weapons, with the particle beams and railguns being short-range options for when you can actually see your enemy.

* Stage 1 of ''{{R-Type}} Leo'' has space mines that form a laser grid with other mines.

* The Tothian minefield in ''Film/GalaxyQuest'' provides a rather dangerous shelter for the ''Protector'' when "Taggart" and his crew find themselves outgunned by Sarris. It comes into play again in the finale, when they use it to pull a variant on the WronskiFeint against Sarris' ship: [[spoiler: the magnetic mines trail behind the ship, and Sarris runs straight into them]]. Averts the usual problem with space mines in that the field has enough layers to cover a significant portion of space (enough to look like a nebula from a distance which is why they fly into it in the first place), though still woefully small in the grand scale of things.

* A number of space mines appear in the StarWarsExpandedUniverse, where they are particularly useful when placed along the exit points of hyperspace routes. Besides the usual exploding types, [[XWingSeries Wraith Squadron]] encountered a variant that used a gravity well generator to snatch fighters from hyperspace before triggering an ion pulse to disable them.

** Both the ''{{X-Wing}}'' and ''VideoGame/TIEFighter'' games feature mines that shoot at you, rather than exploding. Most of the missions that feature these tend to be quite [[NintendoHard difficult]].

* VideoGame/DeadSpace3 has a mined debris field about a planet. Said mines also seem to have some sort of guidance system, drifting towards active ships and people, but not derelicts and space junk.

* ''HaloFirstStrike'' has Moray Space Mines, which can be homing or stationary.