Often in Hollywood you will see aerial or space dogfights in which a pilot will line up on a target’s 6 o’clock, destroy the target, and then fly straight through the cloud of smoke and fire and carry on. Is this realistic?? Aren’t there massive chunks of metal in this cloud waiting to chew up the insides of the attacker’s engines? Does this happen IRL?
In: 10
There is *so much room* in the air. If you were that close to a plane that exploded because you shot it up, you’d most likely be inventing new kinds of swearword as you frantically took evasive action. That is *ramming close*.
Also, explosions don’t exactly stop. The debris still has a ton of forward momentum. If you’re turning at all – which you 100% are if debris is in front of you and close enough to see – it is very unlikely you’ll hit it.
Space is like that but all the distances are a hundred times bigger. Relative speeds might not be huge, but there’s nothing to hide behind and you’d be fighting at distances where you couldn’t even see your opponent without your computers. See the excellent *The Expanse* TV show for a reasonably good depiction.
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