Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t tiptoe around the truth. The astrophysicist stated recently on Twitter that Tom Cruise’s character, Maverick, would have failed quite badly if his stunt in the blockbuster film Top Gun 2: Maverick had been real. At the beginning the movie, which racked up $1.45 billion worldwide, Maverick ejects from a hypersonic fighter plane while speeding along at Mach 10.5. He survives without injury, which is great, but it’s solely due to movie magic. “At that air speed, his body would splatter like a chainmail glove swatting a worm. Just sayin’,” Tyson tweeted on October 9. Mach 10.5 is equivalent to about 7,980 miles per hour, or 10.5 times the speed of sound. A supersonic airplane is transcending the speed of sound, or going faster than Mach 1. A hypersonic airplane is going faster than Mach 5. When an airplane breaks the sound barrier (about 760 mph), those on the ground hear a par… Click below to read the full story from Esquire
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