[Lawgvr1955]

Could someone tell me how the speed the foam was traveling came to be over 500 miles an hour? Weren't the foam and the tank traveling at the same speed as the shuttle when the foam came loose? I assume that the 500 miles an hour was the speed the shuttle accelerated between the time the foam came loose and the wing struck it? It seems to me that the shuttle couldn't have accelerated that much in the brief instance of time between the foam coming loose and the wing striking it.

Isn't escape velocity somewhere around 12,000 miles per hour?

[poindexter]

"Could someone tell me how the speed the foam was traveling came to be over 500 miles an hour?"

The foam is light compared to it's surface area, and thus drag. Imagine a piece of styrofoam sheet flying out of the bed of a pickup truck. It wouldn't go 50 feet before it decelerated to 0. Same with the foam on the shuttle, except the drag on the foam chunk was many times greater, due to the great speed the shuttle was flying. Drag increases as the _square_ of velocity!