If someone were to fire a gun in space, would the bullet travel normally?

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If someone were to fire a gun in space, would the bullet travel normally?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

It will travel according to the laws of physics just like it does on Earth, but it would ‘look’ pretty different than we’re used to on Earth because in space there’s no atmosphere to provide air resistance and slow it down, and because on Earth due to gravity the bullet pretty quickly ends up impacting the ground (if it doesn’t hit something else first).

Assuming you were in somewhere still close to the Earth, the bullet would almost certainly remain gravitionally bound to the Earth and eventually fall into the atmosphere, but since you’re so far away from the Earth’s surface, from your point of view you’d just see the bullet travel off in a seemingly straight line and just keep going until it was too far away to see (Obviously bullets travel too quickly to really see anyways, but we’ll ignore that here).

But guns can fire in space because the cartridge contains both a propellant and oxidizer in an enclosed space, so it can produce the required combustion even when surrounded by vacuum. And then without an atmosphere the bullet will just travel in a straight line with basically only gravity affecting it. Space isn’t a perfect vacuum, especially closer to planets or other celestial objects, so the bullet would be interacting with tiny particles constantly, but we’re talking like millions of years before that would stop it.

Gravity would affect its flight path over time, but exactly how that would look would depend a lot on the specific conditions where/when it was fired.

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