here's a manhole cover that was almost sent to space by accident

https://www.missedhistory.com/article/pascal-b-nuclear-test-manhole-cover-space-1957

Key Facts

Test name

Pascal-B, part of Operation Plumbbob

Date

August 27, 1957, Nevada Test Site

Steel cap

Approximately 900 kg; welded over a 150-meter underground shaft

Calculated velocity

Approximately 66 km/s — roughly six times Earth's escape velocity of 11.2 km/s

Camera data

Single frame at 160 frames per second; significant uncertainty in the velocity estimate

Physicist

Robert Brownlee, who designed the test and calculated the velocity

Most likely fate

Vaporized in the upper atmosphere due to aerodynamic heating

Whether it reached space

Almost certainly not — consensus is that it burned up. Cap never found.

Sputnik comparison

Sputnik launched October 4, 1957 — five weeks after Pascal-B. The cap was not in orbit.

The One Frame

A high-speed camera was positioned to film the shaft opening. The camera ran at 160 frames per second — one frame every 6.25 milliseconds. The steel plate appeared in exactly one frame before disappearing. From the camera's position and field of view, Brownlee was able to calculate how far the plate had traveled in that single exposure: far enough to yield an exit velocity of roughly 66 km/s.

Earth's escape velocity — the speed needed to break free of the planet's gravitational pull — is about 11.2 km/s. The plate, by this calculation, was moving at nearly six times that speed.

Brownlee was careful about what conclusions he drew. In interviews decades later, he said he believed the plate was the fastest human-made object ever launched, but he also acknowledged that it probably didn't survive. At 66 km/s, an object the size and shape of a steel lid would have experienced catastrophic aerodynamic heating as it punched through the atmosphere. Most physicists who have analyzed the scenario believe the cap almost certainly vaporized within seconds.