The second fastest man made object in history

[silence dogood]

P.S, Jules Verne published a work in 1865 on a large Coumbiad cannon that shot a projectile with 3 men in it to the moon.

 

[matthewsx]

I'm thinking not. I'm not sure of the pressure of the air trapped in the bore hole but I know it would have provided some insulating qualities from the shockwave behind it.

Well, it was a nighttime test. 10:35pm so that could very well be true. It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out the direction it left in and the distance it should have traveled since then. It works out roughly to .00014 light years. At that rate it will reach the closest star to Earth Proxima Centauri in roughly 32,000 years. Assuming it was aimed in that direction. Which proved my point to my son. If the fastest we can get would take 32,000 years to get to the next star. This isn't an 18 month round trip to Mars with a stay on the surface in days. This is, you leave your own planet with everything you need so that in 160,000 generations your offspring could arrive on a world that could very well no longer be there.

You know, unless one of you guys has a flux capacitor sitting in your scrap pile.

Scientists made a real-life flux capacitor

Great Scott!

futurism.com

 

[rwm]

Very interesting problem. This is apparently somewhat controversial:

No, a Nuclear Explosion Did Not Launch a Manhole Cover into Space

In 1957, the Nevada Test Site saw a series of nuclear explosions that, according to legend, launched a manhole cover into space. Except it probably didn’t. Here’s where the story came from—and why the inadvertent source of the story has been trying to stop its spread for years.

io9.gizmodo.com

Robert

 

[markba633csi]

Seems like if it was travelling much faster than a free-fall object then it would vaporize fairly quick, especially since the atmosphere is the most dense closest to the surface of the earth...
On the other hand, at that velocity perhaps it passed thru the atmosphere so fast it didn't have time to vaporize? Hmmm
-Mark
PS I'm wondering what the diameter of the plate was?

 

[RJSakowski]

8x escape velocity is just under 300,000 ft/sec. Once the mass escapes the tube, exterior ballistics takes effect. There will be a reduction in velocity due to air friction. Unfortunately, exterior ballistics tables don't fral with velocities that high. They don't provide ballistic coeffricients for manhole cover shaped slugs either.

My expectation is that it would not be possible to melt a mass of that size in less than one second. Thermal conductivity wouldn't permit that rapid an energy transfer. The outer surface may slough off but the core would remain intact.

If/when the mass escaped Earth orbit, cooling would be due to radiation losses, Again, formulae at hand to determine the cooling rate but I'm sure it would reach background temperatures long before reaching another star system.

 

[RJSakowski]

Seems like if it was travelling much faster than a free-fall object then it would vaporize fairly quick, especially since the atmosphere is the most dense closest to the surface of the earth...
On the other hand, at that velocity perhaps it passed thru the atmosphere so fast it didn't have time to vaporize? Hmmm
-Mark
PS I'm wondering what the diameter of the plate was?

The diameter of the tube was 4 ft and the thickness of the slug was 4".

 

[7milesup]

I just read about this not too long ago. I love this forum and how different ideas are floated around.

As a pro pilot for my entire life (well, not entire because I'm not dead yet, lol), it becomes very apparent how thin and fragile the Earth's atmosphere is. At 18,000 ft, half of the usable atmosphere is below you. Think about that you are in an airliner at 35,000. Time of useful consciousness at 41,000 ft were I routinely operated was 15-ish seconds.

As RJ pointed out, I believe that that plate may have sloughed off some of its outer mass but by then it was well on its way to areas beyond our solar system.

 

[rwm]

Just to head further off course...if you were decompressed in an airliner you would not even feel short of breath before passing out. Low oxygen does not make humans have air hunger. Air hunger is caused by falling blood pH (acidic) which it usually related to rising CO2 levels.
I have tested this by breathing a bag of argon from my TIG torch. You feel perfectly fine and then you just black out. (Disclaimer- very dangerous do not try this!) Alternatively you could breath from a bag of 50% CO2. (Also very dangerous) You will immediately feel like you are going to die and start hyperventilating like you just ran 100 yards (meters.)
Unfortunately, these kind of events sometimes happen in industry when workers clean tanks. They may enter a tank of nitrogen or some other inert gas with no oxygen available. They proceed to pass out and die without feeling any air hunger or symptoms.
Robert

 

[7milesup]

Hypoxia is what you are referring to RWM. I actually went through a hypoxia simulation event sponsored by Mayo Clinic. They had us perform normal cockpit duties (in a simulator) while breathing a mixture of gasses to simulate lack of oxygen. Everyone responds differently. My response was it felt that the upper lobes of my lungs were hot. But the scary part is you also have a sense of euphoria and therefore the onset of hypoxia is insidious. The crew of Payne Stewart found that out.

 

[rwm]

I wonder what gas mixture they gave you? True hypoxemia would be dangerous unless all the participants were young and healthy.
Robert