Misconception: In an asteroid belt, spaceships have to dodge a fusillade of oncoming rocks.

Actually: If you were in the middle of an asteroid belt, you probably wouldn’t see any asteroids at all.

A popular game in the early days of video games was Atari’s Asteroids. You would maneuver and spin a small triangular spaceship, blasting space rocks to bits until inevitably one of the asteroids smashes you into line segments. (Magically, the asteroids passed through each other unscathed.)

In space, it seemed, one had to continually dodge destruction. That was true in the “Green Lantern” movie in 2011 and perhaps most memorably in “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.”

With the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive conked out and Imperial TIE fighters and star cruisers close in pursuit, Han Solo steers his spacecraft into a thicket of asteroids.