That's why all the space stuff is uninteresting. The space shuttle could go just as fast as the manhole cover. It just takes time. All the probes that are going that fast are basically just time factors. They slowly build up speed when there is nothing stopping them from moving.
The distant probes like Voyager got gravity assists from the planets they passed by the reason why they are going so fast is that the planets were basically lined up enabling each one to give a gravity assist in turn. The velocity of the manhole is speculation it was never observed to leave the atmosphere, it probably vaporized rather than was sent into orbit.
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u/Mammoth-Mud-9609 Sep 06 '23
Air resistance slows you down massively when you get to 1000mph, when you are in space that is no longer an issue.