Possible Challenger To Sputnik, manhole first manmade object in space? Options

[PaleBlueDot]

I was browsing around and found some intresting articles about there is some debate whether or not a metal cover for a underground nuke test a few months before Sputnik made it to space or not. Pictures from the test (launch??) give a lower bound of its velocity at 56km/s. the main argument agianst is that it would have blead off the speed in the atmosphere. anyways, kinda cool

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/...ob.html#PascalB

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Brownlee.html

what do you think?

m

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

I first read about the manhole cover years ago in a letter to "Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine". Since it weighed several hundred km, there's an excellent chance that some of it survived its trip through the atmosphere -- and while it certainly was not "the first object to enter space" (the best claim for that honor probably goes to the Aerobee second stage on that 1949 Bumber-WAC launch from White Sands), it would have been both the first man-made object to escape from Earth and the first one to hit solar escape velocity.

Moreover, in (I believe) Nov. 1957, a small suborbital research rocket was launched to detonate, at high altitude, a grenade stuffed with little metal pellets to simulate micrometeoroids entering the atmosphere; and photos indicated that at least two of them went upwards at more than escape velocity, and that some portion of them likely survived the air friction.

[tty]

I first read about the manhole cover years ago in a letter to "Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine".  Since it weighed several hundred km, there's an excellent chance that some of it survived its trip through the atmosphere -- and while it certainly was not "the first object to enter space" (the best claim for that honor probably goes to the Aerobee second stage on that 1949 Bumer-WAC launch from White Sands), it would have been both the first man-made object to escape from Earth and the first one to hit solar escape velocity.

The second stage of the Bumper WAC was a WAC Corporal - not an Aerobee. The Bumper WAC is often claimed as the first two stage rocket but it wasn't, since the original WAC Corporal itself was actually two-stage with a Tiny Tim solid booster. And in any case the german 1944 Rheinbote artillery rocket was four stage! As a matter of fact it had a somewhat higher top speed than the A4 (V 2) and if the germans ever launched one straight up it was probably the first thing to reach space.

tty