NASA workers pause for solemn tribute | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Thousands of NASA workers paused from their duties today in a solemn tribute to fallen astronauts from three major tragedies in the nation's quest to explore space.

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since the Challenger blew up. At the time I was a much younger geek working as a software contractor at Johnson Space Center. My job didn't bring me in direct contact with any astronauts, just "back office" types. Some of the seven who died that day were friends of my co-workers and friends. I could still go stand where I was standing when I got this news. And I still remember the face of the guy who told me.

Every year when this anniversary comes around I'm struck by the proximity of the dates of all of the deaths in the American space program. Apollo 1 on January 27th, Challenger on January 28th, Columbia on February 1, across a span of decades but in the one six day period. Of course, these aren't all the deaths in the program, there were others. But so far as I recall who were in space vehicles when they died. The others were killed in plane crashes and ... more mundane ways.

Update: There is a mostly b.s. story on MSNBC. If you set your threshold for comments high enough to filter out the crap there's a pretty good deconstruction of the b.s. and debate about the fine points on slashdot.