The first man-made object in space

[Maloney]

Good to see another Australian provide the answer. And, provide another web-site to keep me busy. I’ll have to use another Dr Karl story at parties now. Maybe the one about how much radioactivity is released by coal fired power stations. But first I’ll check the facts.

[SPOOFE]

Can someone smarter than myself calculate exactly what would happen if 300kg of steel shaped into a disc (say, five metres across?) were accelerated (in the space of, say, half a second) to escape velocity (taking into account that escape velocity in this case means overcoming not only gravity, but all that air resistance on the way up - with no additional thrust)?

Dunno about the air resistance, but this link says that an object would need an initial speed of 25,000 miles per hour (7 miles per second) at the surface of Earth in order to escape its gravitational pull, ignoring air resistance.

That’s one hell of a shove.