The Columbia hit the foam, not the contrary.

I was watching yesterday a show that looked like it was a NOVA program on the Columbia flight. What stroke me was that everybody was in denial and could not believe a foam piece could have done that much damage. However, a simple back of the envelope calculation using the high speed imagery of the take-off shows that the foam piece is being overtaken by the shuttle at a speed of 924 fps or about 1060 km/hr.