I was at a party with Fritz Zwicki and he told me that the U.S. had beaten the Soviets in launching the first artificial satellite. I scoffed lightly at this and expressed wonder that I had not heard of this accomplishment and asked how they did it. He explained that they built a rocket to be launched from the wing of a modified B-29 and in 1951 this was carried aloft over the equator to 40Kft and fired at a shallow upward angle. There was timing so that as it reached apogee a shaped charge in the nose was fired - thus sending slug of molten metal into orbit; and also explaining why I had never heard of this. Brent Meeker On 7/16/2015 6:09 AM, Henry Baker wrote:
FYI --
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/16/america_soviets_space_race/
"in a test codenamed Pascal B"
"The camera was set up to record one frame every millisecond. When the nuke blew, the lid was caught in the first frame and then disappeared from view. Judging from the yield and the pressure, Dr Brownlee estimated that it left the ground at more than 60 kilometres per second, or more than five times the escape velocity of our planet."
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