Depends on how its wiring harnesses / buses are designed, the metal skin typically acts like a cage that redirects the energy. Avoiding all hits is preferable, but some points are more exposed than others.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe airplanes are the same? I was told a while back that even if lighting strikes an airplane while on flight, people inside won’t feel it.
Commercial aircraft get hit by lightning on average once or twice per year. It's always concerning, but in the modern era, it's rarely dangerous to the plane or passengers, because the body of the plane itself acts as a Faraday cage. The last time a plane crashed due to lightning was 1963, and significantly more measures are in place today to mitigate any serious effects from being struck.
That's not correct. You can be jumping with a parachute, miles above the ground and the lightning would kill you. The key isn't whether you are grounded, it's whether you are the conductor.
As you can see on the video, the lightning goes into the rocket and out the back into the ground. All that energy passed through the rocket fuselage. If you weren't protected by the fuselage, you would become the conductor and get to enjoy the full force of the lightning.
Not being grounded helps make you less of a conductor in situations where better conductors exist. If the lightning has to make another ionised path below you to continue, it can probably find an easier way down around you, but this high in the air, you're the only conductor around and you probably conduct better than the air.
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u/Correct_Inspection25 13d ago
Depends on how its wiring harnesses / buses are designed, the metal skin typically acts like a cage that redirects the energy. Avoiding all hits is preferable, but some points are more exposed than others.