In a message dated 9/15/2002 1:16:37 AM Alaskan Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:


Finally, that metal cover on the drill hole for an underground nuclear test Reynolds mentions that may well have unintentionally become the first object humanity ever launched to escape velocity -- in the summer of 1957 -- is described in a letter in one of my past issues of "Smithsonian Air and Space Magazine", which I'll try to dig up.  If I remember correctly, the damn thing weighed over 800 pounds, and it didn't just hit Earth escape velocity -- it was almost certainly launched to Solar escape velocity!  One of the strangest forgotten incidents of the early space program (although there are others).


Dumb question:  how did they know it was shot offworld, rather than just vaporizing?  What makes you so sure it hit solar escape velocity?
Presuming it DID do so... what a laugh that would be... 1000 years from now, when some crew of 'humans' is tooling through space, only to get knocked out of the void by a 'what the hell was that?'.

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