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Once again, you are failing to understand that the air is moving past the shuttle at 1000 mph plus. The object takes on the speed of the air quickly, as in a sail. You hood blows up on your care. The hood was traveling at the exact same speed of the car. But in the wind which catches it, that hood assumes the speed of the air in less than the arc accompanying five feet of motion. Don't tell me that something falling off the top of the tank would only be going 40 to 150 mphs. I'm sorry but that is absurd.

That the object takes on the speed of the air is very dependent on its size and weight. A dense, small object will tend to hold its speed in air much longer than a light object with much surface area. (think rock -vs.- feather in an atmosphere, or leaf vs. acorn if you prefer). If the object is moving at the same speed as the shuttle as this one was until it came loose, its rate of deceleration will be related inversely to its weight. So, a stone with little wind resistance would tend to slow down much more slowly than would a light piece of sheet material with its large surface area.

The loose piece of insulation wasn't a hood, nor is a space shuttle a windshield. It is designed to withstand a great deal of abuse from space debris, asteroids and such. This would be particularly true of the the leading edge of the wing structure. It inherently is strong in that direction as the structure is behind it, much like a knife blade, but without the sharp edge.

Look at the debris that followed the shuttle as it entered the atmosphere - it was much smaller than the main fuselage, but it held its speed almost lock-step with the ship while in the atmosphere. It almost looked like a squadron of sorts, flying in unison formation. It was inside the atmosphere, though in a thinner part of it. Still, it kept up with the ship.

Once again, you are failing to understand that the air is moving past the shuttle at 1000 mph plus.

At what altitude? Yes, I neglected the effect of the wind, but the higher the altitude, the less important that is. At whatever altitude, the object will only take on the air's velocity quickly if it's not very dense. If it's not very dense, it's not going to have all that much energy/momentum when it hits the wing. I think I heard this afternoon, that they were at 80 something seconds when the debris hit the wing, so they were fairly high. High altitude works in favor of it speeding up, relative to the shuttle, less quickly. If they were doing 1000 mph at the time, they were already fairly high

Whatever it was didn't appear to fall from the top of the tank, but rather from the forward attach point.

Once again, you are failing to understand that the air is moving past the shuttle at 1000 mph plus. The object takes on the speed of the air quickly, as in a sail. You hood blows up on your care. The hood was traveling at the exact same speed of the car. But in the wind which catches it, that hood assumes the speed of the air in less than the arc accompanying five feet of motion. Don't tell me that something falling off the top of the tank would only be going 40 to 150 mphs. I'm sorry but that is absurd.

I am certaily no expert, but if the debris was flying past the shuttle at 1,000 mph, would both the debris and the windows of the shuttle be relatively in focus?