If you don't know, the us government welded a nuke into a 500' deep hole and then blew it up which launched a 2000lb manhole cover possibly into space. it was calculated to be moving at bare minimum 150,000 mph. this also happened before sputnik meaning that if it actually made it to space it was the first manmade object to do so.
by Crazy-Rabbit-3811
5 Comments
It more likely vaporized in the atmosphere due to intense acceleration and heating.
Even if it did launch perfectly and survive the exit, it would be back by now.
It is fun to think that the manhole cover went to space but it likely disintegrated.
It likely never made it to the Kármán line, that speed at that density all but ensured it didn’t make it very high before burning up in the atmosphere. 150,000 mph is Mach 197; the Space Shuttle hit the atmosphere at Mach 25, to put that into perspective. The atmospheric pressure caused by that speed is about 5.5 gigapascals, which is, oh, about 20 times the yield strength of structural steel. The temperature from the friction would have been hotter than the surface of the sun.
It became a rapidly-expanding cloud of iron gas *long* before it would have even reached the upper atmosphere.
Side note: Harry Turtledove has a whole series about an alien species with slower than light travel arriving at earth during WW2. It… doesn’t go as well as one might think for the Aliens.