What is the density of space shuttle foam?

Question

as reported, foam broke away and fell damaging some of the heat resistant tiles on the shuttle. my question is does this seem unlikely to you. is space shuttle foam extra dense or are space shuttle tiles extra fragile. the foam i think of when i hear the word is not dense like styrofoam foam, or like sponge mattress foam or like nerf ball foam. was the foam heavy because it was water soaked and frozen?

Answer 1

The foam is not really dense, but it is travelling at tremendous speed (the shuttle has to reach 25,000 miles per hour to acheive escape velocity) and the tiles are fragile. So even if if the foam isn't iced over, just travelling a few thousand MPH, you can get huge impact damage.