We watched Columbia go up in a night time launch from Patrick AFB.
It was amazing seeing the night sky light up.
It [apparently] had launched just fine, so what was my problem.
Then like a lot of people, I was watching the coverage of landing on TV (while also on FR), and it was pretty obvious that something had gone horribly wrong all over the place, even as the news people were "still waiting" for Columbia to land.
There were several excellent editorial cartoons. Hard to find images to post of any of the ones I remember.