or

Ein doppeltes Bangen.

or as we would say

Ein doppelter Knall!

(I love me some Knall.)

@Airpillo
The foam didn’t cause damage to the structure, it dislodged some heat tiles, which allowed the heat of reentry to damage the wing structure until the shuttle broke up. A bird could definitely dislodge heat tiles, but by then heat isn’t really an issue. I doubt a bird could cause any significant structural damage I’d say the birds should be more worried than NASA :)

Oh, I know, but I’ve seen footage of a simulation that was later run by NASA, firing a piece of foam from an air cannon at the leading edge of a 1:1 model shuttle wing edge.

Many NASA scientists expected the soft material to bounce off with minor damage. The shocking reality was that the foam literally punched a clean hole in the wing’s leading edge, into the interior cavity behind it. It was a very scary result, the kind of damage that I think would change the handling of the shuttle, an already unwieldy aircraft during glide. This was a simulation of launch conditions, though, so I don’t know what bearing that has on glide velocity strikes.

Here’s a video, for the curious. The latter half is the full-scale testing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suniiico7z4

We’d heard on the radio that there’d be a sonic boom. My mother, uncle, and I walked down to the beach at the end of the road to watch and listen.

Now, my uncle is an awesomely stubborn know-it-all. He was sure, absolutely sure, that we’d see and hear nothing.

While were chatting the air was shattered by two enormous BOOOM!!!!!s. Dogs barked, and hundreds of birds took to the air.

My uncle was speechless for about ten seconds. “Aha!” he declared, “The fired off a cannon to scare the birds away from the shuttle’s flight path.”

My condolences.

THANK YOU! i just read this whole page trying to figure out if i heard that right!

My uncle was speechless for about ten seconds. “Aha!” he declared, “The fired off a cannon to scare the birds away from the shuttle’s flight path.”

That’s silly, but it makes me wonder what a bird strike might actually do to a shuttle.

Testing after Columbia was lost suggested that at high speeds even a couple pounds of soft foam could literally punch a big, structurally significant hole in the wing’s leading edge, and birds are harder than foam. Hmmm…

That’s silly, but it makes me wonder what a bird strike might actually do to a shuttle.

Probably very little. The major problem with “birdstrike” (as if it’s the bird’s fault) is the bird getting sucked into the sensitive turbine blades of a jet engine air intake.
Shuttles have rocket engines which are exit-only and not (or barely?) used on re-entry.

The tiles on the outside are still vulnerable, but by the time a Shuttle is likely to encounter a bird it has slowed down enough that the heat resistant tiling isn’t necessary any more.

http://somafm.com/missioncontrol/played