Hopefully this is on-topic here (as opposed to Space Exploration).
I have searched for answers and found related ones (include this question on minimum asteroid size to impact Earth), but none seem to answer this specific question.
Given the height and density gradient of Earth's atmosphere, is there a way to calculate the kinetic energy required for an object to reach Earth's surface (from space) before it reaches it's (sea-level) terminal velocity? The object can be assumed to be spherical and indestructible (other than normal ablative interactions with the atmosphere, which influence drag).
It seems as though a relationship depending only on object radius and kinetic energy could be constructed.
Intuitively, such an object would need to be on the order of a very large meteor (100m+ diameter??) to do this.
