[hughes]

The speed listed in the introduction is wildly wrong. The foam could not possibly have hit at 28968 km/h - that is the approximate orbital speed of the shuttle. At 82 seconds into flight, the speed is about 700m/s (2500 km/h).

Even using that figure would assume that the foam came to a dead stop instantaneously after detaching from the tank. I wouldn't be surprised if the relative speed was only 1/10th of that, putting the speed of the collision around 250km/h, less than 1% of the figure stated in the article.

[speedplane]

> The speed listed in the introduction is wildly wrong. The foam could not possibly have hit at 28968 km/h

The article said "[a]s the crew rose at 28,968 kilometres per hour the piece of foam collided with one of the tiles". It did not say that it collided with the tiles at 28k km/hr, just that it collided with it during it's acceleration to that speed. So technically it's correct, but I definitely agree that it it's a false implication, likely added for dramatic effect.

[hughes]

In the next sentence the author also says the damage was caused by foam "hitting the wing nine times faster than a fired bullet." A bullet goes about 900m/s, and the "nine times" figure often symbolizes orbital velocity. It's clear that the reference is to the speed of the collision.