You do need some sort of thrust to get into orbit though. You can get INTO space with something like spinlaunch, but you won’t stay there without a second stage to circularize the orbit.
It is theorized now that heat was actually an issue for the steel bore cap that was shot by a nuke at over 150,000 mph, which very much exceeds escape velocity.
While its more or less of a joke about “shooting a manhole cover into space”, some think that at least a tiny bit of that bore cap could have made it.
telesat.com
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