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?'.
