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“Don’t worry, this is a shaped charge.” “What shape?” “Spherical!” - Clear Skies 3

An interesting aspect of missiles like those in The Expanse is that the more sophisticated missiles are essentially drones with considerable loiter time. The largest classes of missile carry Epstein Drives, and have interplanetary range. In principle they could be used to attack any target in the solar system by burning on an initial intercept, coasting for days, and then re-lighting their drives for the terminal engagement.
This aspect of missiles is rarely mentioned in sci-fi - if they have sufficiently advanced sensors and guidance systems, and enough battery power to loiter for a while, they can be used as almost indefinite range weapons, and also as mines that can drift in a shipping lane and light up when a target gets close enough to strike at with little warning.

7:35 I loved how in The Expanse, especially one of the battles (I think it was in S5?) the Belter missiles have yellow plumes/chemical engines, while the missiles from the Martian ships (the Roci and Free Navy ships) have blue plumes/Epstein drives. Kinda shows how the Belters are basically using whatever works while the MCRN spares no expense when it comes to weapons.

Another advantage to missiles in space, as shown in one of the examples, is that the launcher isn't always necessary.  The missiles can just float about or be in orbit, minefield like, and activate their vectoring and propulsion upon acquisition of an appropriate target.

As a kid I really liked Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda.  It's highly flawed as a series, but offensive missiles and defensive missiles both exist in the show.  In both cases, the ship had multiple magnetic launch tubes that use gauss (coil) systems to fire them rapidly.    Offensive missiles were designed for high endurance, low acceleration, high top speed.  As a result, while they couldn't evade laser or defensive missiles as well, they came in to the target at significant percentages of light speed.  On the other hand, defensive missiles had higher acceleration allowing them to quickly maneuver against fighters and intercept offensive missiles.  All the missiles were kinetic kill.  In terms of long range space combat, this is one of the more realistic depictions in soft sci-fi.  Yeah, the expanse does it far better, but this is almost 15 years before the expanse aired.

To me the difference between rocket,  missile,  torpedo would be:

Rocket: small unguided
Missile: guided
Torpedo: a miniature unmanned ship with a massive warhead

Contrary to belief, there is a point between making a missile too expensive and just be good enough to attain acceptable hitrates that you would need less missiles to destroy a target, hence saving costs and materials in the long run

Case and point, HIMARS can deliver deadly accurate strikes and do the same job with far less rockets than something like multiple GRADS would require

One kind of warhead that you didn't mention was the bomb-pumped laser warhead, though it may be more fitting for your video on nuclear weapons as it uses a nuclear detonation to vaporize lasing rods to create X-ray lasers that are then used to damage a target. One example would be the laserhead in the Honor Harrington series of novels.

I think one the most unique missiles I've ever seen in Sci fi was the Skipper Missile from the Wing Commander movie. It's essentially a cloaked nuke, but since the cloaking device renders the missile blind while active, it must decloak periodically to ping and reacquire it's target. The film itself was kind of meh, but I feel that weapon as a concept merits a second look.

Imperial missile design, meeting:

Tarkin: "the missile needs to be pointy. Round is not scary, pointy is scary."
Engineer: "but sir this would slightly decrease the paylod."
Tarkin: "according to this book I wrote, it needs to be scary not effective." gestures for guards to kill him

One neat thing about high-tech missiles in space, which The Expanse touches on a few times, is that they can function perfectly well independently of any actual missile launcher. If you have a base on, say, an asteroid that needs defending, you can just leave a few shut-down missiles in its vicinity, tied into the base's telemetry system or even just using their own passive sensors, to be activated either upon an appropriate trigger or via remote control.

I think my primary reason for enjoying your videos is retroactive appreciation for all the sci-fi I love when you help me realise how much attention to detail is present in shows like SG1 and BSG.

One thing to consider is missile acceleration. At some point, if the missile has sufficient range, the missile is going to get to such a speed that making a 5 or 10 degree course correction would take a long time relative to combat pace. I believe this is what The Expanse’s “Hammerlock” refers to, and it seems similar to the Minimum Abort Range or MAR in aerial Beyond Visual Range combat. This idea of Hammerlock and MAR basically refer to the range of which a missile must either be decoyed or shot down to avoid getting hit, as it either is still too maneuverable or has too much energy to simply dodge or run away from.

I love all of the Spacedock episodes encouraging folk to build their own worlds. Thank you for making these.

I thought for sure when you were talking about "kinetic missiles" you'd mention the Hellfire R9X which is currently in use as a precision weapon.  It literally has swords that come out of it like a giant rocket propelled broadhead arrow.  Assuming it's a soft enough target, that sort of design would be pretty devastating in space combat.

I'm pretty sure it's just coincidence, but it's mildly amusing that this comes out when NEBULOUS: Fleet Command is about to drop a major update on how its missiles function (TL;DR, you get to customize your missiles down to warhead type, guidance, and propulsion, plus all sorts of new/updated weaponry to shoot missiles out of or shoot them down with).

Quite surprised that you didn't include Macross within the video considering that they heavily use missiles in their setting and created the missile massacre trope that's common in sci-fi anime.

The missiles in Honor Harrington are of the bomb-pumped laser kind. Basically, it’s a nuclear warhead that detonates tens of thousands of kilometers away from the target, with the blast powering a series of lasing rods that fire bursts of coherent energy, usually in the x-ray band. The missiles themselves try to find a good angle for their lasers before detonating.

They later begin building multi-stage missiles to drastically increase the range.

They also start using missile pods, single-launch auxiliary launchers they are towed by tractor beams and usually kept inside the ship. The idea is to overwhelm enemy defenses with a single massed launch, so there’s no need for a second salvo

I do love the little bit of Starsector footage. I know the 2D aspect makes it a bit trickier, and it's really compressed in distance, but I would love to see you talk about some of the ships from that game some time!