Those protect the vehicle from the highest level of heat, those 3,000 degree temperatures, so that you dont get metal melting. But we had never had any experience in breaking a panel. What was starting to join up was youve got Video Analysis that says the strike on the orbiter created a hole in the wing. And you can see that there had been some sort of penetration against the rcc panel. Hot gas had entered in, the shuttle had lost aerodynamic control and crashed. But i think the challenge for a lot of folks at nasa was believing that foam had done that. They would say Foam Cant Break reinforced carboncarbon