[Richard Kimball]

a piece of curved metal the size of the bed of a pick up truck.

Larger pieces of the shuttle will certainly be found. I was responding to a post asking about remains of the astronauts. I've done recovery on civilian aircraft that came down from about 10,000 feet. The shuttle was much higher and apparently involved an explosion and breakup before impact, so the dynamics of this are much different. In my experience, decent size pieces of the craft may be found, but the people are a different story. This isn't the thread for detailed discussion, so I was trying to give an idea without being too descriptive.

[dep]

what remains are found depends on whether the pressure vessel itself broke up. in, for instance, sts-51l, it remained intact until it hit the ocran, following aerodynamic forces that broke the shuttle all to pieces.

they now have smoking craters, so i suspect that it's possible, even likely, that the pressure vessel hit intact.

dep

[ladysusan]

Ah. I didn't read it, I just skimmed it.
My uncle used to investigate plave crashes back in the 60s. Out of Huntsville. Bless you my friend.