Return to Flight. God Speed

I remember when the Space Shuttle Columbia took off all those years ago one cool and clear April morning (1981). I also remember being at home with the flu, listening at first to the radio and then the television, as the horrific news of the loss of Challenger and her crew slowly soaked in to my unaccepting mind. Years later, I watched the launch and assembly of the first pieces of the International Space Station via a web broadcast on my computer as my scrapbook of old news clippings from launches goneby, aged and yellowed. Only a few years ago I remember listening on my radio, once again, to the sad news about the loss of another brave and heroic crew and that pioneering ship, Columbia. My mother claims that she listened to some of the Apollo missions with the radio close enough the I might have heard it first hand... while in the womb. Needless to say I'm a supporter and advocate of the mannend space program. I have mixed emotions about tomorrow's launch as I'm sure many people do.
Tomorrow, Discovery, will launch and return the US manned space program to some semblance of what it was a few years ago. Gone, at least for a while, will be the spectacular night launches. Instead, we'll see, for the forseeable future, launches in the daytime, so that over a hundered newly installed cameras can click thousands of pictures to inspect the shuttle post launch. After Challenger I recall catching myself hold my breath after SRB seperation. I'm sure I'll be holding my breath until the tires on Discovery touch down on the runway. It would see that these accidents should remind us that this business of space travel is anything but routine. Go back to the point in time right before Challenger and read the small stories, buried on page 6 in local newspapers and read how "routine" the world thought space travel had become. I remember trying to watch the launch of Atlantis years ago, only to find ABC being the only network to carry it live. NBC wouldn't interrupt their programming to go live to the Cape. Weird to think with all the press and attention focussed on Discovery tomorrow that we seem to be the same public who started to believe that a trip to the moon in 1970 was "routine". Read, "From The Earth to the Moon" or watch Apollo 13 for a quick refresher on that episode.
Given all these events, I hope we remember and never forget and that in some ways, space travel has been forever changed in the hearts and minds of those at NASA and the average citizen. Space travel is not easy, cheap, routine, safe, routine nor unimportant. I will not begin the argument of why we should be in space, whether low Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars or anywhere else "up there". Suffice it to say that I believe we need to be there for many reasons. "We" being people of this planet and WE , being the people of this nation. I hope anyone who catches a glipse of this news story tomorrow hears and understands that these pioneers that risk there lives, do so for many reasons; that we remember that they do it gladly with full knowledge and support of their families, collegues, and willing, the citizens of this country.
They have my support and both my hopes and prayers go with them. God Speed Discovery.