“Real meteorites travel several times the speed of sound”
Your main point is entirely correct, but off by a few orders of magnitude. SAM’s can knock out targets traveling several times the speed of sound, about 750 mph or so.
“When the Patriot system was first designed, the primary targets were Soviet aircraft and cruise missiles travelling at speeds around MACH 2, and only operating at a few hours at a time. However, in Operation Desert Storm, they were deployed as static defences (operating continuously), tracking and intercepting Scud missiles travelling at speeds of approximately MACH 5.6 Consequently, the U.S. army had to learn how to adapt the Patriot for targets of much higher velocity.” http://sydney.edu.au/engineering/it/~alum/patriot_bug.html
However, meteorites travel at 7 to 45 miles per SECOND, roughly 30 to 200 times the speed of sound.
Thank you for the clarification. I certainly appreciate it. I did not clearly remember the true speed of most spacebourne objects and did not wish to post incorrect information as that would merely have detracted from what I was attempting to point out.
I have been close to howitzers when they fired and can attest to how simply the side blast was enough to knock the dust off of things close by. I have been aboard a ship when another in the group lit off three of its sixteen-inch guns and felt the entire ship shudder from the concussion -no small thing in a ship that size. When a true meteorite hits, it rarely looks like the pics I saw posted there -that looked more like satellite or rocket debris coming back dirtside, or a failed missile coming down. A meteorite, not that I was there of course *cough*, looks like a dark speck in the sky gradually growing lighter and brighter as it draws close and is burning its way through the atmosphere. From the moment you can determine the small and extremely bright circular object headed towards the ground the next thing you see is a streak of light lancing into the ground -within an eyeblink at most. Even from a few kilometres away, the concussion is staggering, and the crater produced from even the tiny bit left when it strikes is incredible.
Strikes into a valley are usually the easiest on things as the majority of the resulting blast is deflected upwards at an angle into the atmosphere. On the side of a mountain, not so good. The giant 'V'-shaped pattern is quite large and easily detectable from the air.