When you fire a gun in the air, where does the bullet end up? Floating in space......?

Answer 1

No, surprisingly not.

It reaches its maximum range, and then gravity takes over and it falls back to the ground.

Answer 2

Hi Wayne,

Interesting question, however, in order to better understand what happens to a bullet when "fired into the air," a bit of clarification of your question seems indicated.

First, when a bullet is fired straight-up, i.e., perpendicular to local horizontal, it will simply rise until it's momentum decays, whereupon it will fall back to earth and impact somewhere west of where it was fired, discounting the wind, of course, and assuming that the bullet muzzle velocity is less than twenty five thousand miles per hour.

To stand facing east, and beneath a bullet that has been fired straight-up (if it was possible to see it, of course) the bullet would appear to move backward (over our head) in a westerly direction, and impact somewhere behind us.

If the muzzle velocity of the fired bullet equals or exceeds twenty five thousand miles per hour, it will escape the earth's gravitational pull, never to return to earth. Where it ends up depends on a myriad of circumstances, but the most likely impact site would be our sun, where it will become a molten blob, and mix with all the other newly created elements that are being continually fused from hydrogen gas in the unbelievably hot and highly pressurized core of our sun.

Then, five billion years from now (when our sun has used up its hydrogen) the well-mixed bullet will be blown into space by a series of explosions, and will probably become part of a brand new star system that will last for another few billions of years or so.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

As others have pointed out what goes up does come down - it would have to be fired faster than mach 18 to reach escape velocity - and thats without air resistance so forget it - its gonna come back down - and as its metal and would normally be high up enough to gain a lot of speed on the way back down they are very dangerous.

Every year people are killed by falling bullets. Not enough for people to stop celebrating by firing bullets in the air. Some people are just dumb.

Answer 4

As soon as you pull the trigger gravity start accelerating the bullet towards the ground. the bullets velocity has two components vertical and horizontal. The vertical velocity will degrade two zero long before the bullet clears the earths gravity. The bullet will then accelerate towards the earth until it hits terminal velocity (maximum speed to object can reach with other forces acting on it like wind, friction, and the bullet tumbling instead of spinning).

Can a bullet fired into the air kill?.

If the bullet is fired completely vertical all components of it velocity will be vertical will degrade and it will return to the earth at terminal velocity. It will smart and hurt a bit but the combination of it's small mass and slow velocity can't kill (maybe if you catch the bullet in your eye).

As stated earlier velocity has two components vertical and horizontal. The vertical velocity is degraded by gravity, however the forces acting to degrade the horizontal velocity component are somewhat less effective and the spin imparted on a bullet makes them even less effective. So at any angle less than 90 degrees a portion of the velocity will be horizontal and that is generally what kills someone.

Obviously the lower the angle the larger the horizontal component with a maximum horizontal velocity are zero degrees but with minimum range since the vertical component in zero gravity immediately starts pulling the bullet toward the ground.

Answer 5

The bullet or round would end up coming back down to earth - a bullet or round will travel at a given speed over a given distance but this changes with climate i.e a strong wind will push against a bullet changing its direction and the velocity at which it travels.

Answer 6

In theory, if you launched a bullet with enough force to take it miles and miles high until it broke free of Earths gravitational pull, then the bullet would carry on forever, or until it hit an object.

But, the bullet comes back to earth at freefall and can easily kill a person if it hits the skull.

Have you ever seen the news when it shows masses of Arab men protesting or celebrating by firing AK-47's into the air? Imagine if they all went into space.

All our satellites would be shot to bits. The space station would be hit. NASA wouldn't have shuttle launches, etc etc.

UPDATE - Raymond is wrong, a bullet falling to earth can kill. Here's the details from the Police themselves:

http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/police_index.asp?id=20244

Answer 7

The bullet comes back down at terminal velocity for that size of bullet. There are several people killed each year by some idiot who fired a gun into the air and thought it was safe.

Answer 8

When you see all these militias firing their guns in the air on TV during some rally they don't realise or maybe don't care that the bullets will reach a maximum height and then return through gravity perhaps killing someone when they fall back to earth from about one mile or so. Thoughtless clods.

Answer 9

Escape speed, at the Earth's surface is 11.2 km/s (40,000 km/h = 25,000 mi/h).

A Winchester .308 launches a bullet of 9.7 grams (1/3 ounce) at a speed of 86 m/s (0.086 km/s = 3,076 km/h= 1,900 mi/h). It will definitely not escape to space.

If there were no air resistence, it would rise for a little over 87 seconds, and reach an altitude of 120,000 ft (3.76 km). However, air resistence will make its peak a lot lower.
Then, on the way down, it will not go faster than air resistence will allow it (this is called terminal velocity).

Back on the ground after something like 3 minutes, at most.

PS:
The Mythbuster conclusion:
"a bullet truly fired straight up will fall to Earth with barely enough velocity to give you a bruise."

Answer 10

Myth-busters did this on their show a while back , the bullet falls back to the ground, don't remember if the show stated if you could be killed by the bullet or not if it hit you. Either way not a good idea to fire any gun into the air.

Answer 11

If u mean that the gun is fired in the space where is no gravity that could be possible. Bunt here, on Earth it (the bullet) would be attracted by the gravity!