What’s the fastest object humans have ever sent into space?
Back on July 26, 1957, in the Nevada desert, the US military dug a 150m vertical pit for an atomic bomb test. To stop radiation from leaking after the blast, they needed a lid. Since they couldn't find a proper material, someone scrounged up a badass 900kg steel manhole cover and plugged the hole with it.
KABOOM! After the test, the manhole cover was gone. It didn't melt; they just couldn't find it anywhere nearby, no matter how hard they looked.
It just vanished. Confused, the military set up high-speed cameras and ran a similar test. Analyzing the film, our badass manhole cover appeared in exactly one frame before disappearing. The nerds on site gathered to calculate its speed and got roughly '240,000 km/h.' It’s estimated that our hardcore manhole punched through the atmosphere and flew straight into space. According to these calculations, it would've passed Pluto in 1961 and be cruising somewhere outside the solar system by now. Honestly, it’s hilarious. The fastest man-made object wasn’t a rocket or a missile, but a 900kg chunk of iron. This is a real story from Operation Plumbbob on July 26 and August 27, 1957.
It’s true there was a steel lid. It’s true something was caught in one frame. It’s true they never recovered it. But there’s no proof it actually made it to space. That 240,000 km/h figure is just a back-calculation based on a single frame, and right after a nuke goes off, the inside of that shaft becomes plasma at tens of thousands of degrees.
Unless it's made of Vibranium, ordinary steel hitting hypersonic shockwaves and extreme air friction at the same time is very, very unlikely to stay intact through the atmosphere. Realistically, it probably shattered or vaporized instantly. Plus, you can't even tell if the thing in the camera was the whole lid or just a fragment. Our badass manhole cover remains just a legend...
The actual fastest man-made object is the Parker Solar Probe. It accelerated using the sun's gravity and clocked in at over 600,000 km/h. That's measured data, so no room for debate. Also, the farthest object is Voyager 1. Launched in 1977, it’s still sending signals from interstellar space. Distance-wise, it’s traveled tens of billions of kilometers.
In the end, NASA holds the records for both the fastest and farthest. The manhole cover is just a legend.
"Users are vibing with the 'manly romance' of a nuclear-powered manhole cover and making JoJo references while joking about creating their own deserts through accidental nuclear testing."
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