ORIGINAL: Gooseman240
Entry to earth from orbit does not matter, as it already is in orbit and needs a shove to slow the orbit and it will fall, eventually but it will take a long time for that little sucker to make reentry, my assumption longer than a month (no thrusters)
Well, in the original question, the OP asked
ORIGINAL: foodstick
If an astronaut threw a balsa chuck glider straight towards the earth from the space shuttle, as hard as he could
So we are not talking about a degrading orbit. We are talking about a downward (or more accurately, an earthward) throw.
Now, if we disregarded all other factors like gravity, air friction and the speed at which they are traveling, and if we said that the glider was a dart or other non-flying object and it was thrown at 10mph, Low-earth-orbit is only about 70 miles up, so the dart would reach the surface in about 7 hours.
So it's not a matter of how many days would it take for the orbit to degrade, the plane was thrown earthward.