Asteroid Thicket: Difference between revisions

*** The second ''[[Rogue Squadron]]'' game had the Rogues guiding transports through an all-concealing nebula, and later going on a mission through an asteroid thicket that was ''very'' dense.

**** Interestingly, while dense, the asteroids barely move and as such, the fields are very easy to navigate. Even the bonus level based off of the Millenium Falcon chase scene has nowhere near the amount of danger implied in the film.

** This begs the question of someone building a giant minefield [[In Space]] in the middle of nowhere. It's not as if there is a concept of a choke point in space.

** No, but there are likely common entry and egress points to a system, and getting closer to a planet...

** Though there might be [[wikipedia:Vulcanoid asteroid|Vulcanoids]]

*** It's a comedy. Shush.

** The team that created the opening said they did it on purpose partly for [[Rule of Cool]] and partly because [[Viewers are Morons|most people would think]] a fully accurate portrayal of the entire sequence [[Reality Is Unrealistic|would look "wrong."]]

* ''[[Armageddon]]'' explains the cloudburst of meteorites as the result of a comet passing through the asteroid belt and bouncing shrapnel into Earth's vicinity, including an asteroid "the size of Texas," whatever that means. This is doubly wrong, once for thinking that a single comet could collide with so many asteroids and conveniently shove them in the same general direction, and twice for thinking that a comet (size range 100 meters to 40+ kilometers) could knock a Texas-sized piece of anything out of the belt entirely.

 

 

== Literature ==

** 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 [[Asteroid Thicket]], the probes found that the radiation produced by Jupiter would have damaged the electronic equipment on the Voyager probes. They were hurriedly amended.

*** 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.

* Completely averted in [[Larry Niven]]'s [[Known Space]] universe. Larry is well known for [[Shown Their Work|Showing His Work]]. Belters are explicitly described as spending months at a time alone, flying their singleships between asteroids on prospecting runs. He even extrapolates and uses the ramifications in his stories. Not everyone has the kind of personalty to handle that amount of nothing for the length of time that is required to get from place to place. The ones who can't never come back to port. Belter society is made of the ones who can.

* ''Future Hope'' features a cocky, crackerjack space ace whom the author attempts to characterize as the greatest in the solar system by describing how he was famous for being the only pilot to ever safely navigate through the asteroid belt without his navigation tools on.

* The Boneyard in the ''[[Star Trek the Genesis Wave]]'' series. The titular wave, an [[Interstellar Weapon]], is launched from a base concealed within it.

 

** Actually, the 'asteroid field' in ''Scar'' was argued to be a protoplanetary disc, because the science advisors or whatnot knew that asteroids weren't packed together but still wanted a dangerous dogfight situation.

* The ''[[Blake's Seven|Blakes Seven]]'' episode "Mission To Destiny" features a space storm that appears as an [[The Asteroid Thicket|asteroid thicket]]. An interstellar one.

** 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.

 

 

 

== Video Games ==

** 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.

** 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 boom--violently--and you will probably die.

* ''[[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.

* The ''[[Escape Velocity]]'' series (plays like ''Privateer'', looks like ''Asteroids'') has immensely thick asteroid belts, but ships cannot collide with them. Their purpose is simply to interfere with weapons fire (though they can also be mined in the third game).

** These asteroids are identical in appearance to those in ''Maelstrom'', a clone of ''Asteroids'' which was Ambrosia Software's first published game.

** Averted, actually. The "asteroid storm" is the result of exiting hyperspace in the tail of a humongous comet. They were supposed to show up in the gas tail, but miscalculated and ended up in the debris field. It's still a touch iffy, but if we're talking a cometary body that's hundreds of kilometers across and it's on an approach vector to its sun, then it could be in the process of breaking up. The "asteroids" couldn't be harvested until blown apart, suggesting they were icy bodies.

** In another mission, a large asteroid is deliberately steered into the path of the mothership (via a huge engine built into the asteroid's "back"), as it cannot change direction when in hyperspace, and will automatically exit hyperspace when a potential collision is detected.

* Averted in ''[[Metroid|Super Metroid]]'' and ''[[Metroid|Metroid Fusion]]'': the Ceres Research Lab is stationed in the middle of an asteroid field (possibly ''the'' Asteroid Belt, given the name of the station) and the asteroids therein are completely static in relation to one another, if densely packed. In the sequel, Samus only crashes into an asteroid because the X Parasite infection had knocked her out.

* Averted in ''Darkstar One'', where navigating an asteroid field is pretty easy, with the asteroids being large, slow and very dodgeable. The only marginally difficult part is entering into special asteroids to collect pieces of the Darkstar.

* In the classic TI-99/4A game, ''Parsec'', asteroid belts are unusual indeed. The game is a [[Horizontal Scrolling Shooter]], where you fly a ship ''around the planet''. Despite this fact, you encounter asteroid belts regularly! And each "belt" contains an identical pattern of asteroids, starting with a huge column of rocks coming at you. Each subsequent belt comes ever faster, which suggests they should have crashed into each other ages ago.

* ''Edge of Chaos'' has this in spades. The asteroids will blow up like bombs if you shoot at them a few times. There was even a mod that turned this up to 11 by making the asteroids fly around at ridiculous speeds, pelting everything like a space hail storm.

* If you fight a battle in an asteroid belt in the ''[[Space Empires]]'' games, they tend to damage missiles and fighters heavily. They can even damage capital ships in strategic movement sometimes.

* In ''[[The Babylon Project]]'', the raider bases are generally located here.

** In the original game, however, the tactical battle map in some systems had squares randomly occupied by asteroid patches. Ships can't pass through them, and any missile clusters trying to pass through one of those squares get their count reduced, potentially<ref>if not regularly, statistically speaking</ref> turning a [[One-Hit Kill]] salvo into one that does little more than tickle a ship's passive defenses (shield/armor).

* In ''[[Millennia Altered Destinies]]'', the first probe to be sent to the Outer Solar System gets destroyed while passing through the Asteroid Belt. The technicians then apologize for not anticipating how dense the field is and claim the next probes and ships will fly above or below the belt. Interestingly, this does not add to the travel time. The Belt is also used for [[Asteroid Mining]].

 

== Webcomics ==

** 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.

 

 

== Web Original ==

 

 

**** That's not fair. Futurama does not endorse the cool crime of robbery.

* ''[[Invader Zim]]'' had this in one episode. Zim piloted a ship into the asteroid belt during a dogfight with Dib and it was destroyed by the asteroids. They were, respectively, piloting ''Mars and Mercury.''

* 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."

 

 

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