Quote:
Originally Posted by Gliese 581 C
"Zwicky was proud of having contributed essentially to the 1957 shot of the first human bullet into space, an object manufactured on earth which should leave the gravity of earth for ever. These experiments were done with German V2 rockets, which when reaching the highest point would shoot a bullet away. These experiments with 'artificial meteors' have begun shortly after world war II and were first unsuccessful."
From here. |
We have a Bingo. Althought, the question called for the amount of time it took from the time of Sputnik's launch. The answer is 12 days! I find that quite a quirk of history.
The first atempt was in 1946, long before Sputnik. They had about 30 telescopes out there including one loaned from Palomar. Also, Palomar was watching from 1000km, too. The explosives never fired.
However, it was published in the New York Times. I would be curious the reaction of the USSR when the read it.
It was Oct. 16, 1957 when the sucessful event took place (at least according to him). They had made measurements of the blasts velocities which exceeded 30km/sec for the gas and about 14km/sec for metal slugs, apparently. [11.2km/sec is the escape velocity.]
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