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Possible Challenger To Sputnik, manhole first manmade object in space?
PaleBlueDot
post Jan 3 2006, 03:42 AM
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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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tasp
post Jan 3 2006, 05:26 AM
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I would love to see some comments on this by any of the Project Orion folks.

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nprev
post Jan 3 2006, 05:46 AM
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I don't see any way at all for the plate to survive the friction on the way up, unfortunately. Steel is an excellent conductor, so it was undoubtedly isothermal throughout its brief ascent before abruptly turning into a small cloud of plasma...

laugh.gif ...but what red-blooded guy wouldn't have given his back teeth to be there on that day with the grill fired up and a couple of coolers chock-filled with brewskis? "It blowed up REAL good, Vern!!!!!!" laugh.gif laugh.gif


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Bob Shaw
post Jan 3 2006, 11:36 AM
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Hmmm... ...first into space?

Well, the WW1 Paris Gun was marginal, but the V2 certainly made it into space. The post WW2 V2 flights by both the US and the Soviet Union, sometimes with upper stages, reached as high as 250 miles (Project Bumper).

As for the first objects to escape from Earth's gravity (but *not* to enter orbit), did not one of the early 50s Project Farside launches propel lead shot at about 30,000 mph, straight(ish) up? I think it was an artificial meteor experiment...

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djellison
post Jan 3 2006, 11:57 AM
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This item might have made it into space - but never into orbit.

Ignoring the fall off of gravity, and ignoring air resistance, getting into orbit is a two fold issue. Getting high, and getting fast.

Say you need 200km and 7500 m/sec

The pot.energy of, say, 1kg @ 200km is 200,000 J
The Kinetic Energy of that 1kg doing 7500 m/s (orbital velocity) is 28,125,000 J

Those are the two things you need to add to something to get it into orbit.

So even if they gave it enough shove to overcome friction, and it survived the massive heating, it might have got into space, but it would never have got into orbit smile.gif

Doug
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Bob Shaw
post Jan 3 2006, 01:40 PM
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QUOTE (djellison @ Jan 3 2006, 12:57 PM)
This item might have made it into space - but never into orbit.

Ignoring the fall off of gravity, and ignoring air resistance, getting into orbit is a two fold issue.  Getting high, and getting fast.

Say you need 200km and 7500 m/sec

The pot.energy of, say, 1kg @ 200km is 200,000 J
The Kinetic Energy of that 1kg doing 7500 m/s (orbital velocity)  is 28,125,000 J

Those are the two things you need to add to something to get it into orbit.

So even if they gave it enough shove to overcome friction, and it survived the massive heating, it might have got into space, but it would never have got into orbit smile.gif

Doug
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Doug:

To have an orbit which lasts for more than one pass, you need two impulses, too - one to raise the perigee from sea-level up to something which doesn't intersect the ground (or the atmosphere). Shuttle ETs have gone into orbit several times, but following an orbit which has a perigee below the surface of the Earth (that's why the OMS fires after ET Sep, to circularise the orbit of the shuttle itself).

Bob Shaw


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djellison
post Jan 3 2006, 02:12 PM
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Oh - I've flown enough Orbiter to understand all that smile.gif What I was trying to demonstrate was the fact that getting high, and getting to orbit, are very very different ballparks smile.gif

Doug
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ljk4-1
post Jan 3 2006, 03:31 PM
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Some data on those pellets launched by an Aerobee rocket in 1957:

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:JNWn7...e+pellets&hl=en


Article with photo of the actual rocket before launch. Page also links to a PDF file article on Fred Zwicky with an image of the pellets being shot into interplanetary space:

http://utenti.lycos.it/paoloulivi/aerobee.html


http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/aerobee.htm

1957 Oct 17 - 5:13 GMT - Launch Site: Holloman . Launch Complex: A. Launch Vehicle: Aerobee. LV Configuration: Aerobee Artificial Meteor.

Meteorites mission Nation: USA. Payload: Metal Pellets. Agency: USAF. Apogee: 80 km.

USAF successfully launched pellets at a speed faster than 15 km/sec (some 3.5 km/sec faster than the velocity necessary to escape from the earth) by an Aerobee rocket to a height of 56 km; the nose section then ascended to a height of 87 km where shaped charges blasted the pellets into space. It is claimed that the Superschmidt Telescope at Sacremento Peak photographed the trajectory with a rotating shutter. These little metal pellets would therefore be the first objects to be shot into interplanetary space, months before the first launch to escape velocity (Luna 1, January 1959). But also see August 1957 nuclear test that may have blasted a manhole cover to escape velocity. References: 91 , 1572 .


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Bob Shaw
post Jan 3 2006, 04:20 PM
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QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Jan 3 2006, 04:31 PM)
Some data on those pellets launched by an Aerobee rocket in 1957:

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:JNWn7...e+pellets&hl=en
Article with photo of the actual rocket before launch.  Page also links to a PDF file article on Fred Zwicky with an image of the pellets being shot into interplanetary space:

http://utenti.lycos.it/paoloulivi/aerobee.html
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/aerobee.htm

1957 Oct 17 - 5:13 GMT - Launch Site: Holloman . Launch Complex: A. Launch Vehicle: Aerobee. LV Configuration: Aerobee Artificial Meteor.

Meteorites mission Nation: USA. Payload: Metal Pellets. Agency: USAF. Apogee: 80 km.

USAF successfully launched pellets at a speed faster than 15 km/sec (some 3.5 km/sec faster than the velocity necessary to escape from the earth) by an Aerobee rocket to a height of 56 km; the nose section then ascended to a height of 87 km where shaped charges blasted the pellets into space. It is claimed that the Superschmidt Telescope at Sacremento Peak photographed the trajectory with a rotating shutter. These little metal pellets would therefore be the first objects to be shot into interplanetary space, months before the first launch to escape velocity (Luna 1, January 1959). But also see August 1957 nuclear test that may have blasted a manhole cover to escape velocity. References: 91 , 1572 .
*



Great sleuthing!

I always thought it was a balloon-borne launch, and they were lead pellets - isn't it great how the memory plays, er, you know, what's the word?

Things?

Bob Shaw


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Phil Stooke
post Jan 3 2006, 05:22 PM
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If you can find this:

Zwicky, F., 1961. Possible operations on the Moon. Spaceflight v. 3, no. 5, September 1961, pp. 177-179.

you will see a lunar connection to the pellet 'launch': it was a scheme to get lunar composition data from the spectrum of the impact flash, if one of the pellets could be made to hit the moon. The actual test in 1957 didn't do this, but future attempts might have tried to do so.

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tty
post Jan 3 2006, 05:50 PM
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QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Jan 3 2006, 03:40 PM)
Doug:

To have an orbit which lasts for more than one pass, you need two impulses, too - one to raise the perigee from sea-level up to something which doesn't intersect the ground (or the atmosphere). Shuttle ETs have gone into orbit several times, but following an orbit which has a perigee below the surface of the Earth (that's why the OMS fires after ET Sep, to circularise the orbit of the shuttle itself).

Bob Shaw
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Actually, if You throw a rock into the air by hand it also goes into an elliptic orbit around the Earth with the perigee (way) under ground level.

tty
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PaleBlueDot
post Jan 3 2006, 06:00 PM
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QUOTE (djellison @ Jan 3 2006, 04:57 AM)
This item might have made it into space - but never into orbit.

Ignoring the fall off of gravity, and ignoring air resistance, getting into orbit is a two fold issue.  Getting high, and getting fast.

Say you need 200km and 7500 m/sec

The pot.energy of, say, 1kg @ 200km is 200,000 J
The Kinetic Energy of that 1kg doing 7500 m/s (orbital velocity)  is 28,125,000 J

Those are the two things you need to add to something to get it into orbit.

So even if they gave it enough shove to overcome friction, and it survived the massive heating, it might have got into space, but it would never have got into orbit smile.gif

Doug
*


well we know it started fast (<56km/s). im wondering if it some how made it threw atmo (to its advantage, newmexico is pretty high, so it probably started above 5000 feet, and who knows how high it got a free ride from the column of blast air). also, if it couldnt circlulize its orbit, could it still make one orbit without hitting earth?, perhaps if it kept a large amount of its velocity, if it made it past geosynchrnous orbit, would the velocity it had from earths rotation be enough to keep it in orbit?

how do rocks from meteor impacts make it into a stable orbit?

m
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Phil Stooke
post Jan 3 2006, 06:09 PM
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"how do rocks from meteor impacts make it into a stable orbit?"

They don't. They either escape (like a 'Mars meteorite') or fall back down to make a secondary crater, where that elliptical orbit intersects the surface again.

Phil


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um3k
post Jan 3 2006, 06:14 PM
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QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Jan 3 2006, 01:09 PM)
"how do rocks from meteor impacts make it into a stable orbit?"

They don't.  They either escape (like a 'Mars meteorite') or fall back down to make a secondary crater, where that elliptical orbit intersects the surface again.

Phil
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Then how was the moon formed? huh.gif
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Bob Shaw
post Jan 3 2006, 06:36 PM
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QUOTE (um3k @ Jan 3 2006, 07:14 PM)
Then how was the moon formed? huh.gif
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The currently most popular theory involves a glancing impact by a Mars-sized object ('The Big Whack') in which both the proto-Earth and the incoming object were thoroughly heated up and shattered. The Earth collected much of the debris, while the rest, due to the magic of orbital dynamics, managed to whizz off and to form a number of clumps, which fairly soon coalesced into one object, with debris raining down for some time thereafter. This theory neatly explains why Lunar rocks are so similar to Terrestrial ones, but sans volatiles - they all got boiled away. The Earth was sufficiently more massive than the Moon that it could replenish the volatile-depleted surface materials through outgassing, subduction etc, so that we see no signs of the impact on our own planet.

It has one flaw, which is *other* satellites going around other planets, none of which it so neatly explains!

Previous theories tended to see the Moon as a small planet which had somehow been captured by the Earth, but this had many problems too, not least being the similarity of it's composition to that of the Earth, but, again, without volatiles (which are to be expected in quantity on the larger asteroids).

Bob Shaw


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