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[[File:gradius-meteor.jpg|link=Gradius|frame|[[Bullet Hell]]? More like [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxATMfC1H_k Asteroid Hell] ]]
{{quote|'''Leia''': "You're not actually going IN to an asteroid field?"
'''Han Solo''': "They'd be [[Try and Follow|crazy to follow us]], wouldn't they?"
'''Leia''': "...you don't have to do this to impress me."
|''[[Star Wars]]: [[The Empire Strikes Back]]''}}
In science fiction movies and TV, asteroids form a vast, hyperkinetic, obstacle-strewn [[Death Course]]: Enormous rocks spin like tops and whiz around all over the place, frequently even smashing into each other. Trying to navigate one is like asking a chicken to cross a busy Los Angeles freeway during rush hour: Small nimble spacecraft flown by skillful [[Ace Pilot
It's unfortunate that [[Real Life]] asteroid fields, while they do exist, don't have such a flair for the dramatic; [[Real Life]] asteroids are strewn much farther apart from each other; ''so'' far that the chance of even ''seeing'' one (let alone crashing into one) is pretty much nil; scientists have sent space probes through our friendly neighborhood asteroid belt for decades (and haven't lost a single one in the process).
Conversely, planetary rings are (relatively) much more sparse in fiction than real
A subtrope of [[Artistic License Astronomy]], [[Space Does Not Work That Way]] and [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]].
Compare [[Space Clouds]], a trope about the similarly unrealistic portrayal of
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* In the second season of ''[[Uchuu Senkan Yamato|Space Cruiser Yamato/Star Blazers]]'', Yamato attempts to elude the Earth Defense flagship ''Andromeda'' by flying at high speed through our solar system's asteroid belt. (To his credit, Captain Gideon of the ''Andromeda'' simply flies ''around'' the asteroid belt and is waiting for our heroes on the other side.)
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* ''[[Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko]]'' episode 5.
* Episode 6 of ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross]]'' used the "rings of Saturn" variation.
* ''[[Galaxy Express 999]]'' episode 3 depicts our solar system's asteroid belt this way. Granted, the series runs on [[Rule of Cool]], but the asteroid field isn't some futuristic device designed to look like an old-fashioned inaccurate sci-fi asteroid field... it just ''is'' an inaccurate sci-fi asteroid field.
* In ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'', Earth is surrounded by an incredibly thick asteroid field. It was born when an experimental jumpgate exploded near the Moon, and a good third of it blasted into pieces, raining down into Earth's gravity field. And daily meteor showers because of it.
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* In the [[Marvel Comics|Marvel]] ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' comic, our solar system's asteroid field is portrayed in precisely this manner; in fact, the ''Ark'''s mission was to destroy a bunch of asteroids so that Cybertron could pass safely through.
** To be fair, although the asteroid belt is portrayed incorrectly, at this time in the comic Cybertron was said to be "Saturn-sized". This size would make the chances of a cataclysmic impact more likely (though still very low).
* The trope is turned [[Up to Eleven]] in ''[[
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* In ''[[Star Wars|The Empire Strikes Back]]'', Han, deprived of his hyperdrive, has to [[Wronski Feint|slalom through densely packed asteroids to evade an Imperial fleet]]. And then echoed in ''Attack of the Clones'' when Obi-Wan is trying to evade Jango Fett in a planetary ring.
** The asteroid density from ''Empire'' is apparently nothing unusual in the galaxy far, far away. Rather, C3P0's cited statistics indicate they're ''all'' insanely-difficult to navigate.
*** The thicket is described as an asteroid ''field'', which is presumably different from a belt in some
*** A planet in the middle of formation? In such situation there could be plenty of flying rocks in close vicinity to each other.
*** They could have rewritten it to be the remains of Alderaan, although it would be kind of goofy for the rebel base to be in the same system as Alderaan...
** The unreality of the ''Empire Strikes Back'' sequence is lampooned in [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/482.html this] [[Irregular Webcomic]]. See also the page quote.
** In "A New Hope", though, it's [[Justified Trope|justified]]: the "asteroids" are really fragments of Alderaan, which has ''just been destroyed''. So obviously they're everywhere.
*** Is it? To stop the pieces of planet from falling in on itself and becoming a new planet, the asteroids would have to be flying apart at close to the planet's escape velocity so even by the time Han Solo and Co. get there, they should have already scattered an awful lot.
**** So what if Alderaan's remains will eventually reform? It was never stated in the films that they wouldn't.
***** Perhaps it wasn't stated, but the scene depicts Alderaan's remains are being flung out at a rather high fraction of ''c''. It's not coming back together. Mind you, that raises a whole host of other issues, so eh.
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== Literature ==
* Averted in ''[[2001: A Space Odyssey]]''. While passing through the asteroid belt ''Discovery'' passes within visual range of one asteroid. They deliberately chose their route to bring them close enough to make observations of that asteroid.
** This is another example of Clarke getting stuff right. When ''2001'' was written, scientists weren't sure if it was even ''possible'' to travel through the Asteroid Belt. In fact, this was one of the reasons why Pioneer 10 and 11 even were launched, to make sure that the more expensive Voyager probes would be able to make it. While they were wrong about the
*** In addition, one of the planned approaches to Saturn would have taken one of the Voyagers through the [[wikipedia:Cassini Division#Cassini Division|Cassini Division]], which appears as a gap from Earth. Turns out it's chock fully of lovely dust that would have put an end to the mission real quick.
** Speaking of being chock full of lovely dust: Although ''2001'' portrays the asteroid belt as being nearly empty of '''big''' rocks, it also describes ''Discovery''{{'}}s main communications antenna dish as being riddled with extremely tiny holes, punched by the micrometeorites that permeate the asteroid belt.
* Averted and explained in ''The Martian Way'' by [[Isaac Asimov]], who says that perhaps the spaceships didn't have to waste propellant to go around the asteroid belt, since, while on map it looks like a swarm of insects, it would take real stroke of bad luck in order to hit a rock.
** Asimov's first published story, ''Marooned off Vesta'', embodies this trope; but as explained in the 2001 example above, this is [[Science Marches On]], not [[Did Not Do the Research]].
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*** In ''The Stars like Dust'', Gilbret claims he discovered {{spoiler|the rebellion planet}} when his ship was damaged by a stray asteroid and they rescued him.
*** In the short story "Feminine Intuition", important information about a possible nearby life-bearing planet is being transported via an aircraft. The aircraft is hit and destroyed by a meteorite. Because of how improbable it is, the characters speculate as to whether some higher intelligence orchestrated the meteor strike to keep Earth from learning about their alien neighbors. The odds against this happening are astronomical.
* [[Robert A. Heinlein]] said the same thing in ''[[Farmer in the Sky]]'' when the narrator observes that the
** In the universe of this book, the Asteroid Belt is more densely packed than it is in Real Life, as it's stated a couple times that the Belt used to be a planet. This is a case of [[Science Marches On]]; it was once thought that the Asteroid Belt might have been a planet that broke up, until we discovered there's not nearly enough material in the Belt to have ever made a planet-sized object.
* Justified in Tobias S. Buckell's ''[[Halo]]'' novel ''The Cole Protocol.'' The Rubble is explicitly said to be very unusual, the asteroids having been tethered together, and is kept stable by constant adjustments controlled by an AI.
** With the outer colonies glassed by the Covenant, it seems Insurrectionists have chosen to colonise asteroids instead, as the crew comes across one in ''First Strike''.
* Subverted in Allen Steele's ''A King of Infinite Space,'' where the protagonist claims to expect the asteroid field to mirror his recollections of ''[[Star Wars|Empire Strikes Back]]'', only to discover the scientific reality of the asteroid field.
* Justified and lampshaded in ''[[Starfire|Crusade]]'' by [[David Weber]]. It first comes up in the context of a closed warp point (a [[Our Wormholes Are Different|warp point]] without a significant/detectable gravity field) that happens to exist in the middle of an asteroid belt, which led to the immediate destruction of small ships transiting due to collisions - a situation immediately stated as freakish and unique. One chapter later, an enemy uses an asteroid cluster in a different star system [[Stealth in Space|to hide a fleet]], while musing that only in a handful of clusters do [[Take That/Literature|"conditions even approach those... in popular entertainment."]]
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* It's strongly averted in [[Stanislaw Lem|Stanislaw Lem's]] ''[[Tales of Pirx the Pilot]]''. The protagonist's ship was maneuvering in an asteroid cloud for several hours without actually seeing one asteroid. This trope is also lampshaded when a panicking passenger who doesn't know much about space wonders why the captain isn't trying to evade the asteroid cloud, and then declares the captain insane when he is told the asteroids aren't dangerous.
* Averted in ''[[Lacuna]]''. Liao hides the ship in the Solar System asteroid belt and Summer complains about how it's a terrible place to hide because it's so empty.
* The Boneyard in the ''[[Star Trek:
*
▲== Live Action TV ==
▲* ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined|Battlestar Galactica]]''. Guilty as charged. Rather surprising given that it's usually relatively accurate when it comes to astrophysics.
** Might have been justified when they were in the debris disk around the black hole. Every other instance, however...
** Actually, the 'asteroid field' in ''Scar'' was argued to be a protoplanetary disc, because the science
* The ''[[Blake's
* The pilot (episode, not the character Pilot) of ''[[Farscape]]'' had an [[The Asteroid Thicket|asteroid thicket]].
** In the ''Peacekeeper Wars'' wrap-up mini-series, [[The Dragon|Braca]] leads a fighter squadron through a planetary ring in order to strike at the rear of the Scarran battle fleet. Plausible (not the thicket) in that radiation would keep the squadron's approach masked from enemy sensors.
* The ''[[Lost in Space]]'' episode "The Reluctant Stowaway" (the premiere) featured the ''Jupiter 2'' being pummeled by asteroids as it drifted off course into the belt.
* The 2007 4th season premiere of ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'' has Atlantis, shot into space in the previous season, having to make its way through an asteroid field. Sheppard, McKay, and a team have to shoot the asteroids into pieces to clear a path. Sheppard, trying to reassure McKay, compares it to the video game ''Asteroids''. McKay responds, "But I was ''terrible'' at ''Asteroids''! I think I actually scored ''zero'' once!".
* ''[[Star Trek]]'':
** The ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series
** In the
** In a
** In the ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Voyager]]'' episode "[[Star Trek: Voyager/Recap/S4/E08-09 Year of Hell|Year of Hell]]," the beat-up ship hides in a nebula... and suffers from gas leaking ''in,'' implying that it's denser than the ship's atmosphere.
* Part of the race course in the ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode "[[Stargate SG-1/Recap/S7/E08 Space Race|Space Race]]" goes through what appears to be an
== Tabletop Games ==
* The ''[[Star Wars]]-Risk'' boardgame used an impenetrable asteroid field to represent planets destroyed by the Death Star, rendering travel in the region.
* ''[[Twilight Imperium]]'' features asteroid belts that take up the same amount of space as a star system and pose a serious problem for the movement of certain classes of starships.
* The Asteroid fields in ''[[Battlefleet Gothic]]'' are an [[Egregious]] example, probably caused by [[The Coconut Effect|the target audience expecting]] [[Space Is an Ocean|"terrain" to fight around]]. The effects of asteroid fields are thus: Anything unguided (a space hulk, torpedoes and so on) are automatically destroyed upon entry. [[Old School Dogfighting|Attack craft]] have a 1 in 6 chance of destruction and full space ships (from [[Standard Sci-Fi Fleet|escorts to capital ships]]) must take a command check, and if failed can take crippling damage in a single instance.
* ''[[Eclipse Phase]]'' actually manages to avoid this. There are asteroid fields, but they're exactly as they are in reality.
* In ''[[Star Fleet Battles]]'', asteroid fields are thick enough so that any ship or seeking weapon passing through them has a significant chance of taking damage, possibly enough to destroy it. They also interfere enough with sensors to allow ships and bases to hide within them.
* The Cularin system, where nearly all of ''Star Wars'' d20's [[Living Force]] campaign was set, has an asteroid thicket at the edge of the system. Cularin's depiction is unusual in that it avoids both the lack of clear spots and [[2-D Space]] at the same time. There ''are'' clear spots, but they need to be calculated and are only big enough for smaller ships, while larger ships go over/under it. The belt is only a hazard because the gravity well (alongside some other oddities in the system) takes ships out of hyperspace and forces them to travel sub-light within the system and prevents quickly escaping the system.
== Video Games ==
* The [[X (video game)|X-universe]] series of games plays this trope straight 90% of the time; one sector has about 80 asteroids (about
* One must mention the classic arcade game ''[[Asteroids]]'', where the asteroids just go through each other: either they cheat, or their dodging skills make them smarter than [[2-D Space|the player]].
** Clearly the player's ship is actually a huge arrow-shaped tower.
** It's worth noting that some Asteroids clones do feature collision detection and the asteroids will carom off one another.
* The first set of starship battles in ''[[Ratchet and Clank Going Commando]]'' take place in such a region, though again this may be justified by the fact that it seems to be gathered around a possible mining station.
** On the other hand, ''[[Ratchet: Deadlocked]]'' has a planet whose orbit takes it through an asteroid field so dense, the residents put up a planetary shield so they didn't get [[Colony Drop
* The Meteo area in the ''[[Star Fox (series)|Star
* The classic Space Sim ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'' and ''[[Free Space]]'' both used this trope, the former as a [[Death Course]] for fighters. The latter creates a very distinct mix of infuriating and awesome by making the asteroids too slow and clumsy to be a threat to fighters, then having missions where a desperate capital ship plows through them and has its small craft [[Escort Mission|play point defense]] against the [[Malevolent Architecture|Malevolent Asteroids]] that continually appear out of nowhere to converge on the target ship.
** You think that's bad? Try a game breaking bug that prevented the capital ship from jumping to safety at the end of that very mission...
** ''Wing Commander'' is worse than ''FreeSpace'' as it features mines as well as asteroids. In either game, you can shoot rocks out of the way. In ''Wing Commander'', if you shoot a mine, it goes
** And then, you got the bug in ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'' (the SNES game) where if you shoot an asteroid or mine ''miles'' away from the Tiger's Claw, you get the "Tiger's Claw Blew Up and You Drift Forever!" cutscene. Thankfully, there was also a [[Good Bad Bug]] where you could dive or climb just far enough to make asteroids go off screen. Doing so, makes them disappear from the game oddly enough.
* ''[[Freelancer]]'' carefully examines this trope. First, due to their thickness, most asteroid fields in the game are hiding places for criminals. Second, also due to their thickness, several asteroid fields are also suitable for mining operations. Third, some of these asteroid fields are actually made of junk (one of them is even a minefield!). And finally, the spacecraft manufacturers must be very aware of the difficulty of navigating these places by hand, because in order to get across an asteroid field, you just have to set a waypoint to your target, press the Go To button, and the computer will do the slaloming for you.
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** ''[[Empire At War]]'' uses them as well; large ships will usually fly around them to avoid losing shields.
** Stage 3 of ''[[Shadows of the Empire]]'' has the ''Outrider'' trying to escape from the Empire in an asteroid field, but Dash leaves the piloting to Meebo, so the player really doesn't even have to think twice about them.
* The PS3 downloadable title ''Super Stardust HD'' has asteroids that swoop down, and then start orbiting around the planet you're guarding. This appears to be because of an incredibly powerful planetary shield whose existence is for some reason entirely
** The [[All There in the Manual|backstory]] explains that the asteroids are being thrown at those planets by the attacking aliens to distract you when they attack.
* The MMORPG ''[[
* Avoided in the classic 1984 space simulator ''[[Elite]]'' and its sequels. Whereas the first game had several classic examples of [[Did Not Do the Research]] such as no star system containing more than one planet and one sun, it did, more or less, bang asteroids on the head. As the game was randomly generated, it was not unusual for players to never come across an asteroid ''ever'' when playing the game!
** In the sequel ''Elite: Frontier'' star systems were more realistic, usually having several planets of various sizes.
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*** Omega was broken apart several centuries earlier by an impact with another asteroid. The asteroids that surround it are probably remnants from the impact - but they should have drifted away by now, unless the mass effect fields that protect the station have some sort of effect on them.
** The end sequence of ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' also manages to create an awesome asteroid-maze sequence with fewer scientific issues. When the Normandy goes through the Omega-4 relay, it emerges in a frequently-replenished junkyard of wrecked ships that have passed through without the proper preparations and run into things.
* ''[[Conquest: Frontier Wars]]'' has plenty of these, conveniently on the edges of map, these thickets slowed down ships travelling though them.
** [[All in The Manual|The manual]] explains that the fields in the game are just representations of what is actually going on, and that the ships slow down in order to navigate through the field (the slaloming is not actually shown in the game). The nebulae are even weirder with their strange abilities (knocking out [[Deflector Shields|shields]], decreasing weapon effectiveness, hiding entire fleets, etc.).
* In ''[[Star Control]]'', every single space battle, no matter where it occurs features a ridiculous amount of ship-sized asteroids. They are continually spawned to maintain a stable number, never lose momentum, and are sometimes spawned aimed directly at your ship. Fortunately, they can't actually hurt your ship, unless they bump it into the planet (another feature that's always somehow present regardless of where the battle takes place). They can be a major nuisance for the slower ships that need to spend quite some effort to get going in any specific direction.
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==
* ''[[Drive (webcomic)|Drive]]''. Skitter loses a pursuing Continuum ship in one.
** Subverted, in that it's not your typical [[Space Is an Ocean]] thicket - they could easily go around it, and it's only dangerous because they're navigating it at FTL speeds.
* ''[[Far From Home]]'': [https://web.archive.org/web/20120514142037/http://mightymartianstudios.com/2011/02/18/ffh-sci-fi-webcomic-pro-01/ for scouting.]
== Web Original ==
* [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] in the [[AH Dot Com the Series]] episode ''The Machine'', in which Captain Dr. What (whose knowledge of how the universe works is mainly based on old movies) tries to hide from [[Lawyer-Friendly Cameo|the]] ''[[Warhammer
* In ''[[Pay Me, Bug!]]'', Tyrelos Station is surrounded by the debris from a recently (in astronomic terms) destroyed moon.
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* Averted/lampshaded in the ''[[Family Guy]]'' [[Family Guy Presents Laugh It Up Fuzzball|adaptation]] of [[The Empire Strikes Back]] when Threepio (played by Quagmire) says in the asteroid scene "Sir, the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field are 2-1!". To which Han (portrayed by Peter) replies "Never tell me the o-oh... well that's not bad. Never mind, let's keep going."
* This happens in the first episode of ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'', where going through an asteroid belt causes the [[Transforming Mecha|Autobots]] and [[Aliens Are Bastards|Decepticons]] to crash on [[Insignificant Little Blue Planet|Earth]].
* ''[[Star Trek: The
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[[Category:Tropes in Space]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Space Does Not Work That Way]]
[[Category:Artistic License Astronomy]]
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