[Imnidiot]

Imagine dropping a piece of styrofoam or poly foam out of your car window as you travel 70 mph down the freeway...does the foam fly along side you for awhile or does the wind tear that sucker out of your hands before you get it half out of the window?
I may be an idiot, but I can easily imagine supersonic airpressure slowing that chunk of foam tremendously.
Try this experiment: have a buddy hold up a chunk of foam...drive by at 70 and stick out your arm and let it hit your hand.
When you come out of surgery to repair your arm socket, we'll talk.

[Cold Heat]

Unfortunately it is not that simple. The area where the foam traveled to was in the turbulence and high/low pressure zones between the tank and orbiter.

NASA has studied this before and they seem a bit puzzeled by it as well.

[clamboat]

Imagine dropping a piece of styrofoam or poly foam out of your car window as you travel 70 mph down the freeway...does the foam fly along side you for awhile or does the wind tear that sucker out of your hands before you get it half out of the window?

I allowed for that in my posting. I said explicitly that the debris would decellerate, and the shuttle itself was still accellerating, but none of that implies that in the, say, <.5 seconds between the breakoff and impact in the wing that they accumulated a relative velocity of 1500 mph! 150mph, I can easily believe, even 500 mph, perhaps. but no way was the piece of foam moving at 1500 mph relative to the wing when it impacted.