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I guess if a collision ruptures a pressurised tank, or causes an actual explosion then you could end up with a higher-than-orbit speed?




Possibly. But more likely the thrust from escaping gas will push it in a direction to either slow the orbit down or make it more eccentric and unstable.

Right, if there's something like a small hole in a pressure tank, it's very unlikely to be aligned exactly with the CG, so the tank will spin around and the net thrust will be near zero.

If a pressure tank splits in half, both halves will fly away but that's a very inefficient way of using the energy in the gas, so the added velocity will be a small fraction of the speed of sound in the gas, which is 1/6 of orbital speed for hydrogen, less for any other gas.

You can't really get much of a chemical explosion because the fuel and oxidizer both disperse very quickly in space.




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