For years the legend of a manhole has circulated (or better to say a chiusin) shot “by mistake” in space at a record speed of 200,000 km/h In 1957 due to an accident that occurred during one of the nuclear tests of the so -called Operation Plumbbob. On that occasion, the pressure air inside a well would have fired the chiusino in a few fractions of a second towards the sky, making it exceed five times the escape speed from the earth, that is, that minimum speed beyond which an object can escape the terrestrial gravitational attraction, which is worth about 40,000 km/h. If the test really took place, it is approximate information that does not provide us with absolute certainty regarding the incident. But let’s go in order.
It all started with the test Pascal-B, carried out in the Nevada desert at 15:35 of August 27, 1957. The experiment planned to detonate the nuclear device within a well of about deep 150 metersso as to study a way to contain an explosion of this type. The well used was sealed by one 10 centimeters thick steel plate and from the weight of various hundreds of tons. The director of the test Robert Brownlee He knew that this would be thrown away, but he didn’t know exactly at what speed and – above all – he did not expect such a result.
Normally, in fact, an explosion 150 meters away would not have been able to launch such a chiusin at such a high distance … but made the mistake of not considering the effect of the well in which the explosive was found. In fact, this would have channeled a large mass of overheated gas That, expanding quickly and going up the conduit, he would have given birth to a “cannon effect“, making the manhole get to travel to about 200 thousand km/ha value equal to about 5 times the escape speed of an object from the planet Earth.
However, a couple of critical issues must be underlined.
The first is related to the fact that the High speed camerasAlthough they recorded a millisecond frame, they show the take -off of the chiusino in a single frame and therefore the calculation of the actual speed is enough approximate and mainly based on theoretical calculations rather than concrete data. Furthermore, also assuming that the 200 thousand km/h were actually reached, it is not said that the object has actually reached the space!
In fact, a chusine it can hardly survive the passage Through the low atmosphere and, also assuming that it does so, it is difficult for it to maintain such high speed for a long time.
So the fact that the aluminum slab has never been found is not necessarily a proof of its escape from the orbit: this may have lost its speed and have fallen into some remote area of the desert, or it may have disintegrated in the atmosphere.
