Manhole cover launched into space with nuclear test is fastest human-made object

Reminds me of that Mass Effect conversation:

"Once you fire this husk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not 'eyeball it!' This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!"

I'll take the physicist at his word that he worked it out. I wish they would have mentioned friction - sure the thing was going fast when it left the ground, but the drag from the atmosphere would be ridiculous at that speed and the object not propelled. I'd like to know how much speed it lost by the time it got out of the atmosphere

The Parker probe should exceed this velocity.