What Was the First Piece of Man-Made Space Junk?

Splynn asks: "I was wondering about what the very first man made object to leave Earth's atmosphere was. We all know that Sputnik was the first man made satellite, but there must have been something that actually made it out there befor Sputnik." For those who are curious, Sputnik was launched on October 4, 1957. Sputnik may have been the first satellite to orbit the earth, but was it really the first successful launch into space?

Comments

Trinity

[Henry V .009]

"What was the first-piece of man-made space junk?"

I'd imagine that is asking what the first thing we put into orbit was. If no screws came off experimental V2's, then I'd imagine that the first real "space junk" was put up with the atomic bomb detonation at Trinity.

There is actually an interesting story in regards to this. When the SR-71 was first built, they were surprised to find little black impact crators on the wind-shield--apparently received while the bird was flying at maximum altitude. Of course, that is far too high for debris. Later, after analysis, they came to the conclusion that the SR-71 had collided with insects thrown up by nuclear detonations. You can think of it as our first problem with space (high-altitude anyway) junk.

Manhole covers in space...or not.

[Mick D.]

Check the following link out. He did a good job trying to collect from primary sources, and actual known values to get the the answer. Read the article to find out, but it aint likely to be sputnick. http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20021021/manho le.shtml

Re:Manhole covers in space...or not.

[GigsVT]

Here is an account from Dr. Brownlee himself about the manhole cover. He is highly doubtful it actually entered space.

Link

Written on the subway walls...

[Otter]

The MIT subway stop has murals describing the history of science in the 19th and 20th centuries. This is the second time this week I've cited them here -- there were earlier launches of the SS-6 vehicle used to launch Sputnik. I don't feel like wasting a token to check the details, though.

Here's a link about a test launch a few months before Sputnik. The US was testing Vanguards at the same time, though, and there were other ballistic missiles on both sides.

Come on, someone must know the answer!

Other space junk

[linuxwrangler]

In it's heyday the U.S. Navy's Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake (NOTS) was known for outstanding engineering and a just-get-it-done attitude. The guys were real hackers (analog circuits and machinery but they had the knowhow and the facilities to hack together all sorts of stuff). Perhaps the most famouse is the Sidewinder (good read by the way) missile.

Less known is that just after Sputnik was launched a bunch of the engineers grabbed whatever they could lay their hands on and attempted to orbit their own satellite dubbed NOTSnik. They made six launches and while they were unable to prove a successful orbit many believe that one launch did make it all the way around. Doubt any remain as space junk, though.

anecdotal

[zogger]

--I was a gradeschool kid then and I remember that night it was announced. It scared the crap out of the adults. That's really the biggest thing I remember about it, got a sense they were all going "ohh 5|-|!7" and wondering when atomic ww3 was gonna start, because the russians were "so much ahead". I don't recall a lot of "cool-science" talk, nope, it was a lot more along the lines of "dang, russkies got the high ground, this sucks". The awarness of airpower and having the high ground was still pretty much in adults consciousness then, all of them remembered the tremendous advantage the allies had after establishing air superiority in ww2 and to a lesser extent korea, because before that, the outcome of the war was in MAJOR serious doubt.

My pet peeve was the government abandoning the x-series projects, going to the dumb capsule idea. I think if we had just kept developing the "space plane" concept then, we'd be 20 years further down the road to space travel being even more normal than it is now, and a lot cheaper. I also think that yaeger was technically the first guy in "space", certainly close enough.