Possible Challenger To Sputnik, manhole first manmade object in space? |
Possible Challenger To Sputnik, manhole first manmade object in space? |
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![]() Newbie ![]() Group: Members Posts: 4 Joined: 18-April 05 Member No.: 250 ![]() |
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 |
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
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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. |
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Member ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 688 Joined: 20-April 05 From: Sweden Member No.: 273 ![]() |
QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jan 3 2006, 09:36 PM) 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 |
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#4
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![]() Senior Member ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 ![]() |
QUOTE (tty @ Jan 3 2006, 05:27 PM) 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 Correct me if this is apocryphyl, but didn't von Braun say "Today the spaceship was born" after the first successful V-2 launch in 1942? -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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