Scientist Debunks Popular Movie Scene, Gets Clap Back From Famous Astronaut

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson took to Twitter going after a scene from Top Gun: Maverick.

Tyson is known to disprove scientific inaccuracy in films and other pop culture, analyzed a scene from Top Gun: Maverick. The scene features the titular character ejecting from his plane and surviving. The main character Navy Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is a role reprised by Tom Cruise who originally brought Maverick to life in the 1986’s Top Gun.

“Late to the party here, but In this year’s @TopGunMovie, @TomCruise’s character Maverick ejects from a hypersonic plane at Mach 10.5, before it crashed. He survived with no injuries,” Tyson tweeted on Sunday afternoon.

“At that air speed, his body would splatter like a chainmail glove swatting a worm. Just sayin’.”

“At supersonic speeds, air cannot smoothly part for you. You must pierce it, which largely accounts for the difference in fuselage designs between subsonic and supersonic planes. For this reason, the air on your body, if ejecting at these speeds, might as well be a brick wall,” Tyson continued. The scientist provided infographics to support his argument.

He concluded, “When Maverick ejected at Mach 10.5, he was going 7,000 mph, giving him 400 million joules of kinetic energy — the explosive power of 100 kg of TNT. A situation that human physiology is not designed to survive. So, no. Maverick does not walk away from this. He be dead. Very dead.”

Cruise’s plane ejection was not the only scene Tyson went after. He then began to attack the film’s climactic dogfighting air combat maneuvering (ACM) scene saying, “They dangerously fly under the radar, through a narrow, winding canyon to destroy a target, avoiding multiple banks of surface-to-air missiles. But why not first take out the missile banks? Could then fly without daredevil maneuvers. Just sayin’.”

“Depends on his altitude. I was going Mach 25 when I left the ISS on a spacewalk and that was just fine,” smacked back former NASA Astronaut and retired United States Navy Captain Scott Kelly. Kelly tweeted to correct Tyson by insisting one could, in fact, survive a plane ejection at such high speeds.” To be completely clear. At the altitude at which a Mach 10 hypersonic aircraft would be flying, the ejection would be very survivable, the reentry into the atmosphere in just a pressure suit, not so much,” Kelly conceded.

Top Gun is not the first nor will it be the last to receive Tyson’s attention. He previously shared a tongue-in-cheek observation about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer along with the rest of Santa’s reindeers: “Santa doesn’t know Zoology: Both male & female Reindeer grow antlers. But all male Reindeer lose their antlers in the late fall, well before Christmas. So Santa’s reindeer, which all sport antlers, are therefore all female, which means Rudolf has been misgendered.”

Tyson has also criticized 2017’s Chappaquiddick, a film detailing the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident which left 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne dead after an automobile accident. The accident in real life was due to Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy’s negligence.

“Chappaquiddick occurred just 2 days before the first lunar landing. So you’d think the Film producers would get the Moon right for July 18, 1969. Kennedy sees it full, but the actual phase was a 4-day old waxing crescent that set long before the midnight tragedy. I’m just saying.”

Source

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Article

Newsom Outrages Californians… It’s ALL GONE

Next Article
German

Elections Rules Completely Invalid by Court

Related Posts