• Captain Aggravated
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    231 day ago

    The calculation of its speed was made by high speed camera, as you’ve probably seen the Mythbusters do. In this case the manhole cover was seen in flight in precisely one frame of high speed camera footage, and for it to go “installed, in flight, gone” in three frames means it would have had to be moving at mach jesus.

    It likely didn’t make it to space intact; it would have had ultrasonic compression heating on one side and a nuclear explosion on the other. It’s probably still here in the form of iron oxide dust scattered about the Northwestern hemisphere.

    • @dogma11
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      21 day ago

      I’d like to think that it’s possible that it was launched fast enough that it escaped the blast and Earth’s atmosphere and made its way to a neighboring galaxy where it’s now living lodged in some far off asteroid or some comet or planet.

      Manhole cover first man made object in Andromeda.

      • Captain Aggravated
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        324 hours ago

        This was in what? the 50’s? So it would have had to travel ~2 million light years in 70 years, so it would have had to hit several hundred thousand times the speed of light?