Wes_W :
I cannot give you hard numbers, but a quick scan says the incident occurred more than 60 seconds into the flight at a vehicle velocity of a few thousand meters / second. The object that broke off was lightweight material, but thick enough to amount to 0.5 -1KG. Supposedly reliable sources at NASA calculated the 500mph impact velocity after an acceleration distance of ten or 20 meters. The information to do this calculation has been available for several years, along with the knowledge that these events happen with regularity.
As an institution, NASA has had the opportunity to do and be the best that mankind can accomplish in technology. Instead of that, it has become a retirement program for "old-timers", skimping on hardware and ignoring risks so it could keep the core crew of old-boy members on board until their pensions were funded.
Understandable, but a truly shi**y way to run an airline.