While the debris investigation went on and the thermal protection material for the forward skirt, frustum, nose cap and aft skirt were changed on the next flight (March 13, 1989, STS - 29R), (new material that never again came off, that had been in work for over three years because of the inability of the old material, that caused damage to many of the heat tiles (on STS - 28R), to stay on, it was thought by the engineers at the time it came off due to impact with the ocean and not during flight), the people refused (although several individuals stated it was a problem and should be fixed), at that time, to believe that the thermal protection material of the fuel tank, due to its weightless nature, also caused damage and was a danger.
Am I reading your and the original posts correctly that the insulating foam that came loose on this mission to damage the tiles is not the same stuff as what was changed, “to protect the ozone layer” to the material that eventually brought down Columbia? If this were the THAT foam, before the greenie change, than it would tend to disprove the theory of some that that foam change, and thus environmentalist concerns, was at least partially to blame for the Columbia disaster.