[DarrellZero]

I was a young engineering student and was devastated by this.

It was only after working a few years that I realized that NASA had already turned into a pointless bureaucracy and the that the shuttle program itself was not nothing like what was originally intended.

[Reily]

Senators like Glenn and other congresscritters turned NASA into a jobs program. Space exploration got downgraded. Then nitwits like Hansen turned it into a political environmental program.

[Alberta's Child]

The Challenger was a disaster waiting to happen. I was an avid amateur astronomer back in those days, it had become clear to me by 1986 that the whole space shuttle program had become more of a PR campaign than a valuable scientific and military endeavor.

The Columbia later fell victim to the same malaise.