The Fastest Object in History

Back in September 1977, NASA launched Voyager I, a probe to study the outer reaches of the solar system and interspace (the area beyond our solar system).  After flybys of both Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager is continuing on her way at a speed of 38,000 miles an hour relative to the sun.  

Voyager I is the first object designed to leave the Solar System, so it carries a message from Earth to whomever—or perhaps whatever—may discover the itinerant spacecraft.  We will have to wait a while, however, since Voyager will reach the first star system, Gliese I, in only 40,000 years.

At some 15 billion miles, Voyager is the manmade object farthest from earth.

Or is it?

After 1945, the US military had a brand-new toy:  atomic weapons.  Naturally, they wanted to play with them (all in the name of research, of course).  Altogether, we did 1,054 nuclear tests above ground, underground, underwater, in the air, and in space.  The first, back in 1945, was just a little north of my home here in New Mexico.  (You know, where the jackrabbits glow in the dark so we can hunt the varmints at night!)

Some of the weirdest experiments were done in Operation Plumbbob—a series of 29 nuclear tests done in the Nevada desert back in 1957.  Both civilian and military structures were exposed to blasts to test the amount of damage they would suffer.  Surprise!  They were knocked flat.   Over 1200 pigs were left in cages at various distances to see what happened if you let a nuclear bomb go off at a barbecue.   And several tests were done with devices placed down deeply drilled shafts.  This was the same time when our government was thinking of building a new version of the Panama Canal by using nuclear bombs to blast a bigger canal across Nicaragua.

On July 26, 1957, the Army conducted Pascal-A, a test explosion down a 500-foot shaft.  This was supposed to be a relatively small test but the bomb yield proved to be much higher than expected, resulting in a jet of fire erupting from the hole, blasting hundreds of feet in the air.  This not being exactly what the Army wanted from what was supposed to be a secret test, they came up with a cunning plan:  they would weld a thick plate of armor resistant steel plate over the top of the bore hole and redo the test.

To be fair, the Army didn’t conduct the test without doing a little research:  they brought a scientist, Robert Brownlee, from Los Alamos National Laboratory for advice.  Brownlee promptly told them the idea was ridiculous and wouldn’t work, so the army went ahead and welded several tons of steel plating over the top of the tube and conducted the test anyway.  If you get the impression that the Army acted like a bunch of schoolboys playing with fireworks, gleefully ignoring what Brownlee said…. well, you’ve been reading closely.

On August 27, 1957, the test known as Pascal-B was detonated and the resulting nuclear blast, not knowing any better, went straight up the tube ripping the steel plate off, rocketing it into the stratosphere at 150,000 mph—about six times the speed needed for an object to reach escape velocity.  By the time the story made its way into print, that two-ton massive steel cap had been transformed into an ordinary manhole cover.  Well, it was steel and did cap off a round hole, so I guess that technically makes it a manhole cover.  The important thing to note was that the manhole cover was no longer on Earth.

This means a little rewriting of the history books is in order.  First, this was more than a month before Russia launched Sputnik, so technically, an American manhole cover was the first manmade object in space.  And while Sputnik remained in orbit for only three months before its orbit decayed and it burnt up reentering the atmosphere, the American manhole cover never reentered the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, that manhole cover wasn’t tracked because the technology for tracking objects that far out in space did not yet exist (nor did anyone at the test site expect to need it).  At the speed that chunk of steel was traveling, unless it collided with something, it would be even farther from Earth than Voyager I…And still moving.

You can find the story on any number of websites, and it was reported in magazine articles and reputable newspapers and… it’s mostly bullshit.  

There really was an Operation Plumbbob, and the two test explosions really did happen as reported.  What was not reported was that Robert Brownlee predicted exactly what would happen, that the steel plug would be blasted loose and sent soaring into the air.  Brownlee even calculated the top speed the steel cap would reach.  What is generally not reported is the rest of what Brownlee predicted.

The velocity of 150,000 mph was an initial velocity of an object traveling in a vacuum.  Since the steel cap—almost, but not quite a manhole cover—was at ground level it was immediately subject to a lot of air resistance.  The jet of heated plasma coming up that burr hole would have superheated the steel plate and turned it into the exact opposite of a meteor—instead of burning up as it entered our atmosphere, that steel cap burned up trying to leave it.  Until it burnt up, however, it was the fastest manmade object in history.

So, nothing was left of the steel plate long before it could have reached space?  Well, the that’s what the math says.  Or maybe Brownlee made a simple math error?  After all, there is nothing to prove that the steel cap actually burned up before it left Earth.  Maybe the first object to leave the solar system really was a manhole cover launched from Nevada!