According to Snopes:
the above-mentioned Brownlee doesn't believe the metal cap launched into space.
However Business Insider states:
Robert Brownlee, an astrophysicist who designed the nuclear test in question, told Insider the unbelievable story in 2016, before he died at the age of 94 in 2018.
Brownlee refuted the non-believers and asserted that yes, it likely was the fastest object that humankind ever launched.
...
"The pressure at the top of that pipe was enormous," he told Insider in 2016. "The first thing that you get is a flash of light coming from the device at the bottom of the empty pipe, and that flash is tremendously hot. That flash that comes is more than 1 million times brighter than the sun. So for it to blow off was, if I may say so, inevitable."
"After I was in the business and did my own missile launches," he told Insider in 2016, "I realized that that piece of iron didn't have time to burn all the way up [in the atmosphere]."
Since it was going so fast, Brownlee said he thinks the cap likely didn't get caught in the Earth's orbit as a satellite like Sputnik and instead shot off into outer space.
Some people have doubted the incredible manhole cover story over the years. But Brownlee, with first-hand knowledge of the test, said he knows the truth.
"From my point," he told Insider in 2016, "it sure happened."
So who is accurately portraying Brownlee, Snopes or Business Insider?
