Space Shuttle Dangers

The Shuttle went up. And once again a piece of "foam" fell off something and damaged the underside of the shuttle. How many times has this happened before? What IS this "foam" stuff?
Why does it cause such damage? Why is it always falling off? Anyone ever phone up the Foam company to see what's wrong? How can they fix that? Don't they have glue? Now they need to try and repair it in space?
Do you imagine, like me, that a Dixie Cup piece is going to cause the shuttle to come flaming to Earth? Chewing a peanut butter cookie with gum will fix anything. But I suppose they don't have any peanut butter up there either.
Now we learn that the shuttles have encountered over 15,000 hits in space causing damage of an inch or more! No wonder these guys and gals need a drink out there. I bet the Russians have a bottle of Stolichnaya hidden somewhere in that space station.
NASA, smarten up, try foam rubber or something, at least it'll bounce off.
The space walk pic sorta reminds me of Dustin Hoffman lying at the bottom of the pool in "The Graduate", to get away from it all.