1. Forum
  2. Usenet
  3. SCI.ASTRO.AMATEUR

  • If an iron cap blew off a well containing a test nuclear bomb in 1957..

    From RichA@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jul 6 21:07:54 2022
    Then at 150,000mph it might be 85 billion miles from Earth, barring any kind of drag or impact. It would have been traveling too fast to have burned up on its way out of Earth's atmosphere owing to its size (4 inches thick and 2ft across) and weight,
    2000lbs. Lots of smaller meteorites make it to Earth without vaporizing, through at slower speeds. This would be the first man-launched object to break orbit. Most thought it would have been vapourized, but you'd expect they'd have at least seen that
    event happen, like a meteor burning up. Small objects have been fired at 36,000mph on Earth without having been vaporized. It would have also depended on if the cap stayed flat or went sideways providing a much smaller aerodynamic profile. Where they
    still doing underground testing, they could purposely launch a near-solid projectile this way just to see what might happen. I guess N. Korea could do it now.
    Oddly, there appears to be no pictures or motion-picture film preserved from observation of the event.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Chris L Peterson@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jul 6 22:27:04 2022
    On Wed, 6 Jul 2022 21:07:54 -0700 (PDT), RichA <rander3128@gmail.com>
    wrote:

    Then at 150,000mph it might be 85 billion miles from Earth, barring any kind of drag or impact. It would have been traveling too fast to have burned up on its way out of Earth's atmosphere owing to its size (4 inches thick and 2ft across) and weight,
    2000lbs. Lots of smaller meteorites make it to Earth without vaporizing, through at slower speeds. This would be the first man-launched object to break orbit. Most thought it would have been vapourized, but you'd expect they'd have at least seen that
    event happen, like a meteor burning up. Small objects have been fired at 36,000mph on Earth without having been vaporized. It would have also depended on if the cap stayed flat or went sideways providing a much smaller aerodynamic profile. Where they
    still doing underground testing, they could purposely launch a near-solid projectile this way just to see what might happen. I guess N. Korea could do it now.
    Oddly, there appears to be no pictures or motion-picture film preserved from observation of the event.

    67 km/s at surface air pressure would result in forces that exceed the
    material strength of iron. And that's not considering the
    acceleration. Or the fact that the plasma fireball would have been
    well ahead of it, and that's what it would have been traveling
    through.

    It's atoms.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From RichA@21:1/5 to Chris L Peterson on Thu Jul 7 22:15:26 2022
    On Thursday, 7 July 2022 at 00:27:09 UTC-4, Chris L Peterson wrote:
    On Wed, 6 Jul 2022 21:07:54 -0700 (PDT), RichA <rande...@gmail.com>
    wrote:
    Then at 150,000mph it might be 85 billion miles from Earth, barring any kind of drag or impact. It would have been traveling too fast to have burned up on its way out of Earth's atmosphere owing to its size (4 inches thick and 2ft across) and weight,
    2000lbs. Lots of smaller meteorites make it to Earth without vaporizing, through at slower speeds. This would be the first man-launched object to break orbit. Most thought it would have been vapourized, but you'd expect they'd have at least seen that
    event happen, like a meteor burning up. Small objects have been fired at 36,000mph on Earth without having been vaporized. It would have also depended on if the cap stayed flat or went sideways providing a much smaller aerodynamic profile. Where they
    still doing underground testing, they could purposely launch a near-solid projectile this way just to see what might happen. I guess N. Korea could do it now.
    Oddly, there appears to be no pictures or motion-picture film preserved from observation of the event.
    67 km/s at surface air pressure would result in forces that exceed the material strength of iron. And that's not considering the
    acceleration. Or the fact that the plasma fireball would have been
    well ahead of it, and that's what it would have been traveling
    through.

    It's atoms.

    It would be out of the atmosphere in 1/3 of a second. I don't believe it is long enough to completely vaporize a solid iron object. I don't know how fast the fastest meteorites have hit the atmosphere, but if they are of any size, some of them make it
    through.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Chris L Peterson@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jul 8 08:02:44 2022
    On Thu, 7 Jul 2022 22:15:26 -0700 (PDT), RichA <rander3128@gmail.com>
    wrote:

    On Thursday, 7 July 2022 at 00:27:09 UTC-4, Chris L Peterson wrote:
    On Wed, 6 Jul 2022 21:07:54 -0700 (PDT), RichA <rande...@gmail.com>
    wrote:
    Then at 150,000mph it might be 85 billion miles from Earth, barring any kind of drag or impact. It would have been traveling too fast to have burned up on its way out of Earth's atmosphere owing to its size (4 inches thick and 2ft across) and weight,
    2000lbs. Lots of smaller meteorites make it to Earth without vaporizing, through at slower speeds. This would be the first man-launched object to break orbit. Most thought it would have been vapourized, but you'd expect they'd have at least seen that
    event happen, like a meteor burning up. Small objects have been fired at 36,000mph on Earth without having been vaporized. It would have also depended on if the cap stayed flat or went sideways providing a much smaller aerodynamic profile. Where they
    still doing underground testing, they could purposely launch a near-solid projectile this way just to see what might happen. I guess N. Korea could do it now.
    Oddly, there appears to be no pictures or motion-picture film preserved from observation of the event.
    67 km/s at surface air pressure would result in forces that exceed the
    material strength of iron. And that's not considering the
    acceleration. Or the fact that the plasma fireball would have been
    well ahead of it, and that's what it would have been traveling
    through.

    It's atoms.

    It would be out of the atmosphere in 1/3 of a second. I don't believe it is long enough to completely vaporize a solid iron object. I don't know how fast the fastest meteorites have hit the atmosphere, but if they are of any size, some of them make it
    through.

    You can't accelerate a piece of iron like that to that speed without
    destroying it. You are several orders of magnitude beyond its material strength.

    Meteoroids can encounter the atmosphere at similar speeds, but they
    encounter it where the air is MUCH thinner. As a result, they fragment
    and burn at a high altitude, and anything that survives to the ground
    is either traveling at terminal velocity, or if sufficiently large to
    remain hypersonic, just a few kilometers per second. Nothing smaller
    than an asteroid can still be traveling tens of kilometers per second
    at ground level.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)